Could the theory of evolution as it stands be wrong??

I don't think there is much the matter with natural selection as a biological theory. However it is clear that the meaning of the theory has been used in the context of many issues which were previously understood to be philosophical and/or religious. It also might be the case that it is not as complete as it has always been held to be. So it is fair to question the extent to which it provides a complete account of the nature of life and the universe. The fact that no discernable purpose can be observed in the level of the interaction of species with the environment does not necessarily mean that there is no such purpose. If there were a 'purpose', a 'grand design', how would you test for it? How would it show up?

Saying 'it all happens just so' is not an explanation of anything.

It is incomplete in one absolutely important fact, evolution does not explain how life started, how it morphed from inanimate elements into living protoplasm

A fundamental but elusive step in the early evolution of life on Earth has been replicated in a laboratory.
Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn't explain how these ingredients might have formed.
"It's like molecular choreography, where the molecules choreograph their own behavior," said organic chemist John Sutherland of the University of Manchester, co-author of a study in Nature Wednesday.
RNA is now found in living cells, where it carries information between genes and protein-manufacturing cellular components. Scientists think RNA existed early in Earth's history, providing a necessary intermediate platform between pre-biotic chemicals and DNA, its double-stranded, more-stable descendant.
However, though researchers have been able to show how RNA's component molecules, called ribonucleotides, could assemble into RNA, their many attempts to synthesize these ribonucleotides have failed. No matter how they combined the ingredients - a sugar, a phosphate, and one of four different nitrogenous molecules, or nucleobases - ribonucleotides just wouldn't form.
Sutherland's team took a different approach in what Harvard molecular biologist Jack Szostak called a "synthetic tour de force" in an accompanying commentary in Nature.
"By changing the way we mix the ingredients together, we managed to make ribonucleotides," said Sutherland. "The chemistry works very effectively from simple precursors, and the conditions required are not distinct from what one might imagine took place on the early Earth."

Like other would-be nucleotide synthesizers, Sutherland's team included phosphate in their mix, but rather than adding it to sugars and nucleobases, they started with an array of even simpler molecules that were probably also in Earth's primordial ooze.
They mixed the molecules in water, heated the solution, then allowed it to evaporate, leaving behind a residue of hybrid, half-sugar, half-nucleobase molecules. To this residue they again added water, heated it, allowed it evaporate, and then irradiated it.
At each stage of the cycle, the resulting molecules were more complex. At the final stage, Sutherland's team added phosphate. "Remarkably, it transformed into the ribonucleotide!" said Sutherland.
According to Sutherland, these laboratory conditions resembled those of the life-originating "warm little pond" hypothesized by Charles Darwin if the pond "evaporated, got heated, and then it rained and the sun shone."
Such conditions are plausible, and Szostak imagined the ongoing cycle of evaporation, heating and condensation providing "a kind of organic snow which could accumulate as a reservoir of material ready for the next step in RNA synthesis."
Intriguingly, the precursor molecules used by Sutherland's team have been identified in interstellar dust clouds and on meteorites.
"Ribonucleotides are simply an expression of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry," said Sutherland. "They're doing it unwittingly. The instructions for them to do it are inherent in the structure of the precursor materials. And if they can self-assemble so easily, perhaps they shouldn't be viewed as complicated."

Got a reference on that one?

I find it interesting Alan for how much you seem to pick out of the science stuff you post that you have failed to come across this:
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To make a statement like you did and not know the current state of bio-chemistry is confusing. Maybe you don't accept the findings? Maybe you reject the findings? Maybe you want to ignore the findings? I can't figure it out Alan. Were you not aware of these experiments? Were you not aware of the success of these experiments?

thanks Dave I will have to take this in some more. But I am still resistant to the idea of trying to explain all human attributes by way of evolution.

Interesting but they did not create life!! Maybe one day they will but as for me I very much doubt it Anyway they are using material that already exits, man creates nothing only discovers what already exists

THE FEMALE PELVIS Human adaptation to walking upright has made giving birth more dangerous for women than for any other primate.

LINEAR CHROMOSOMES The ends of linear chromosomes erode as cells divide, something that
cannot happen with circular chromosomes

EXTERNAL TESTICLES In harm's way VAGINA AND URETHRA NEAR ANUS Leaves women
prone to genital and urinary infections

WISDOM TEETH Many of us have jaws that are too small for these third molars

MUTANT GLO GENE Like most primates, humans cannot make vitamin C, rendering us vulnerable to scurvy unless we get plenty in our diet

THE APPENDIX No known function but if it gets infected it can kill you

WINDPIPE NEXT TO THE GULLET Means choking is not uncommon

ULNAR NERVE Runs behind the elbow, where it is unprotected (think funny bone), instead of in front of it

VULNERABLE BRAIN CELLS A few minutes of oxygen deprivation causes permanent brain damage in humans, yet an epaulette shark can survive for over an hour without oxygen

PARASITIC DNA Our genome is littered with "jumping genes" that can cause genetic diseases

ODONTOID PROCESS This extension of the last neck vertebra can easily fracture and damage the brainstem

FEET After coming down from the trees, we ended up walking on the "wrists" of our lower limbs, leading to all sorts of structural weaknesses

THE Y CHROMOSOME It is gathering mutations because it can't swap DNA with the X chromosome

VULNERABLE HEARTS A little heart damage triggers a disastrous cascade of events that causes further damage

HAIRY BOTTOMS Who needs them?

Consider this: if it is true that 'nature is dumb' and all of life has come about through 'unintentional causes' then ipso facto the only purposes in nature are those which conscious beings - that is, ourselves - are capable of forming.

In saying this, I am saying nothing that Plato, Liebniz, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant or Hegel would say.

It is incomplete in one absolutely important fact, evolution does not explain how life started, how it morphed from inanimate elements into living protoplasm

Got a reference on that one?

And back on that theme of existentialism and absurdism - correct, that is a response to the depiction of 'blind nature in a meaningless universe' that has been drawn as a philosophical implication of Darwinism. This is exactly what I am challenging. To put it in really crude terms, maybe nature is smart, not dumb; maybe things work towards a purpose, which is not obvious but can be discerned. That does not contradict darwin; it just considers a level of understanding which he was out of scope for what he needed to explain.

so even in light of life forming spontaneously in the primeval soup - and I am sure it did - why did it continue to become more and more intelligent?

why did it continue to become more and more intelligent?

I agree, of course it is 'advantageous for survival', but please see how it might be construed as belittling to humanity to be told that really our intellectual ability, the mind which designed the Chartres Cathedral and the Bach Fugues and the Summae Theologica is (1) an accident and (2) a byproduct of the activities of the Selfish Gene.

[CENTER]Self Organization: Patterns vs. Codes[/CENTER]

In the Origins of Life discussion, "Self Organizing" properties of nature often come up. Frequently the conjecture is "Nature has self-organizing properties, and surely, somehow, proteins came together and formed RNA, then DNA, and the seeds of life began on the primitive earth."

Nature most certainly has self-organizing properties. Obviously some molecules have an affinity for each other, and there is an entire field called Chaos Theory, or Complex Systems theory that deals with this.

[CENTER]Examples of Self-Organization in Nature[/CENTER]

The following patterns happen naturally without any assistance from a designer:

• Snowflakes
  
• Tornados and Hurricanes
  
• Weather
  
• Stalagmites and Stalactites
  
• Rivers
  
• Sand Dunes
  

And much more

Chaos theory describes the underlying principles and the math behind this; mathematically speaking, all you need is a "nonlinear differential equation" and you get chaos. The entire field of Fractals is the computer-generated version of the same thing. Nature produces these fascinating patterns, and they happen all by themselves.

But there's one kind of design that does not occur naturally, so far as anyone knows:

What does NOT occur naturally is CODES.

Symbolic codes of any kind - things that contains language, a message, or information, any arrangement symbols that represent something other than itself - do not happen naturally. Blueprints, languages, ciphers, encoding / decoding mechanisms all come from a mind.

Just as there are no exceptions to the law of gravity, or the laws of entropy, there are no exceptions to this.

There is vast difference, in fact an infinite chasm, between a pattern and a code. Patterns occur naturally, codes do not. All codes contain patterns, but not all patterns contain codes. Codes can only come from a mind. There are no known exceptions to this.

[CENTER]Information Comes in Layers
[/CENTER]
In layman's terms, all codes contain the following four "layers":

1. Alphabet (an agreed-upon set of characters, sounds or symbols)
   
2. Grammar (words and phrases, and rules about how words and phrases are organized)
   
3. Meaning (all codes mean something)
   
4. Intent (there is some larger purpose and desire behind the meaning)
   

Again, all languages, codes, protocols, blueprints and the like contain these four layers.