[count-your-change]

It’s a quite reasonable question: If evolution only pertains to life once begun, at what point in the history of life does evolution start operating?

You make statements about evolution so either you know what the theory stipulates or not and making silly comments like this, “Right at the point where the flying spaghetti monster dropped the first meatball....that’s when evolution began”, are not a substitute for knowing what you’re talking about.

Would you like to try again?

[Natural Law]

"at what point in the history of life does evolution start operating?"

If you consider the ability to replicate to be a defining qualification of life then process began immediately with the first replication.

[Stultis]

If evolution only pertains to life once begun, at what point in the history of life does evolution start operating?

It seems to me that darwinian evolution requires the presence of entities with the following characteristics:

--Reproduction (obvious)

--Inheritence (at least some traits get passed to offspring)

--Variability (at least some heritable traits vary at least some of the time)

--Mutation (the factors causing the state of heritable traits themselves at least sometimes change)

--Superfecundity (more offspring can potentially be produced than can possibly be supported by the environment)

So, at whatever point where you have entities with these characteristics, that's when evolution begins.

[ElectricStrawberry]

You demand an answer to a question that is irrelevant to the theory of evolution, so I give you an irrelevant answer.

Evolution began the exact moment that the flying spaghetti monster says it began. I was not around when this happened, but if you give me a time machine necessary I’ll go make observations about it all and report straight to you.

Until then, you will get no speculation from me for you to kick around....so go kick the spaghetti monster a bit.