iama: Name one plank in the evolutionists' paradigm which ISN'T an assumption / speculation;

* That the universe is billions of years old.

* That the Earth is billions of years old.

* That the fossil record shows a number of different varieties of creatures arising over time and often becoming extinct over time; humans and dinosaurs never shared the Earth.

* That these creatures can be organized into nested hierarchies based on their genetic relatedness where samples are available.

* That each individual genome includes some number of mutations.

* That some mutations make small changes and some make sweeping changes.

* That mutation rates are different for different species and even different parts of the same genome.

* That the beneficial mutation rate can be very high --- 16% has been observed --- in underfit populations.

* That mutations can add or delete or change genetic information.

* That some number of those mutations are heritable.

* That natural selection works to capture those mutations that are beneficial.

* That populations separated by geography or behavior (whooping cranes raised by sandhill cranes) can accumulate more and more differences between them, until they can not interbreed, as has been observed in ring species.

* That there is no biological limit to how many such mutations can accumulate in a population.

* That populations that are severely reduced in number show evidence of that event in their genomes.

* That humans are biologically invertebrates, mammals, primates and apes and share a successively greater genetic commonality with those groups than any others.

* That all the mechanics observed about biological evolution in general apply to humans.

That's what I can come up with off the top of my head --- I bet other posters can add to that.