real life wrote:Let's start at the beginning. You are most likely an adherent of the Big Bang theory, in some form. Where did the original matter and energy come from? They must be accounted for somehow. What's your explanation?
I think the science and mathematics forum would be better equiped to help you with this one. It has nothing to do with evolution.
real life wrote:Fast Forward to ancient earth. How did simple chemicals arrange themselves by blind chance into complex functioning (or at least able to function when the cell came together) structures
By 'complex functioning', do you mean self-replicating? There are, of course, many hypotheses concerning this. Perhaps you could set up an abiogenesis thread, and we could discuss each theory in turn?
real life wrote:Only after answering these questions can you even START to posit whether such a thing as evolution took place or not.
Why? That's a bit like saying you have to detail every pre-Roman civilization before you can START to posit that Rome existed.
The historical evidence that supports evolution in no way requires an explanation of the origin of the universe, or the process by which abiogenesis occurred, to be considered proof of the occurence of evolution. The historical evidence stands alone.
Presumably, though, since you are of the opinion that, historically, evolution did not occur, you must have reviewed all the evidence that has been sufficient to convince the vast majority of the world's biologists, palaeontologists, etc., and judged that it is all either faked, or misinterpreted.
I think we can only progress with this discussion by taking this one example at a time. Perhaps we could start with this:
Farmerman wrote:The research of Ed Drescher from the Devonian of the the hills of Heiner in the Appalachians and the Devonian of Canada is rather compeling for the transition of osteicthes to amphibians. Lots of key skeletal intermediates showing evidence that the bony fishes of a specific family actually developed walking limbs while a fish, then , within a 10 million year period , fossils of amphibians with similar dentition and eight finger limbs like the ancestral fish had developed, and these wre true amphibians who retained fish characteristics. So many features remained between the bony fish and the amphibians that it reminds one of the 21 or so common features between late Jurassic dromaeosaurs and early bird like reptiles and then reptile like birds (like archeopteryx)
Do you think the evidence Ed Drescher has put forward was faked, or do you think it is a misinterpretation to regard it as evidence for evolution (as an historical fact, I think we should leave the question of evidence for the theory of evolution by natural selection for the moment)?