Within recorded history we have earthquakes, volcanoes, lightning storms and every other sort of thing and we never see new animals on account of any such so that you'd figure you'd need to be talking about the sort of catastrophes you read about in the Bible to even start to think along such lines; but even Velikovsky and his followers were never talking about more than a dozen or so such catastrophes in the planet's history.
Evolution in the general sense means change, so of course it “works”. Change goes on constantly. From the perspective of Darwinism, which is natural selection as the origin of species, no, Darwin’s version of evolution doesn’t work at all. I’ve said so plenty of times, including on FR.
Catastrophe can be and has been the agent of extinction. There have been many catastrophes, including literally millions of volcanic eruptions (which are local catastrophes, with some broader, temporary microclimate effects); the full number of impacts over 4.5 billion years will probably never be known, but it is in the thousands or tens of thousands, with a number of those resulting in broad, sometimes worldwide effects. That number is perhaps a hundred, perhaps somewhat more; the major impact events (and they were probably a short series of impacts by pieces of a former single object, a la SL-9 on Jupiter) which terminate each paleontological layer and brought on mass extinction, number a dozen or so.
Velikovsky was only looking at a window of a few thousand years, during which time a related series of planetary encounters occurred, during historical times.
“Face it, there’s no version of evolution which works.”
So you assert that no species evolve?
I disagree - but agree that more than 150 years ago when Darwin postulated his theory he certainly didn’t have a complete understanding of what would be discovered in the future.
It is fascinating that folks still make such strong proclamations busting Darwin’s chops without acknowledging that you’re still talking -nay, fixating about him after 150 years, and that is quite an accomplishment. He has advanced our understanding of biology immensely by advancing his theory, no matter how much of a beating it has taken within science and religious groups - it still stands as a great work that was presented to the world to prove or disprove.
Usually folks that still flog Darwin after 150 years are Creationists. Does that describe you?