"This popular creationist quote is also discussed by Don Lindsay. As a matter of fact, what Ridley is refering to is that with so much superior data avialable demonstrating natural selection and common descent, the academic paleontology argument whether gradulism or "punctuated equilibrium" are superior explanations of the fossil record no longer held significance in the discussion of evolution theory. This was true 23 years ago. An easily available discussion of genetic analysis of common decent by Wesley R. Elsberry is Sequences and Common Descent: How We Can Trace Ancestry Through Genetics. And another good genetic article avialable on the web is Compelling Data for Common Descent from Matching Redundant DNA Sequences by Steve Hinrichs. There are of course millions of pages of texts in thousands of journals that demonstrate the validity, and utility of evolutionary theory today.
I'll give Ridley the last words on this topic, 'The theory of evolution is outstandingly the most important theory in biology.' Evolution Boston: Blackwell Scientific, 1983."