Evolution occurs through the process of accumulations of changes in DNA. Evolution is, therefore, inevitable and continuous.
I could say the same thing about my checking account, but I am unlikely to ever find a million dollars in it. No one has ever demonstrated that those mutations are going anywhere. You are extrapolating and assuming the observations you see today explain the observations you cook out of the fossil record. But you haven't shown that to be the case.
The idea that evolution can only happen if a whole new biological system appears fully formed and functional is a literal creationist straw man.
That "straw man" only exists because you are assuming something happened that you can only explain in principle, not in detail. We are all fully aware that these things have to evolve one tiny step at a time, but since you are incapable of detailing those steps even in hypothesis, I lack the faith you have.
So fossils are imaginary? You feel that all science is just a matter of belief--that the radioisotope dating methods are just peculiar religious rituals, akin to saying the Lord's Prayer in church?
My kids enjoy visiting fossil exhibits very much. Among evolutionists, that is probably an accurate portrayal.
I see that your math skills are as strong as your science skills--100,000 bacterial generations takes:
Lenski has been studying E. coli for 20 years and supposedly has taken them through 50,000 generations. Lenski Long Term E. coli experiment.
Here is the point: From homo habilis to homo sapiens required massive changes in human DNA you can't even quantify (such as tripling brain volume). In a similar number of generations, Lenski has only estimated 10-20 beneficial mutations. And much of those "mutations" are specialized adaptation to the experimental environment that ultimately would prove harmful if the bacteria were re-introduced to a more natural environment. It is very likely his strains would die back and what would be left would not be remarkably different than "wild" strains.
Etc., etc., etc. It is obvious that you do not want to acknowledge that the efforts of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years actually led to a fairly sophisticated understanding of the forces that shape the biological world. I know that no matter how many facts or how much evidence is presented, you will refuse to understand them. Your objections are emotion-based, and are neither factual nor logical.
That "straw man" only exists because you are assuming something happened that you can only explain in principle, not in detail. We are all fully aware that these things have to evolve one tiny step at a time, but since you are incapable of detailing those steps even in hypothesis, I lack the faith you have.
You are still asking for several volumes of details to be condensed into a couple of sentences, which I cannot do. If you want the details on the evolution of a specific trait or system, I suggest you do your own homework. Or go and get a PhD by researching the evolution of a specific trait--I even already gave you a workable research plan. I describe the general principles because *those* can be condensed down to a few sentences; the fact that I don't attempt to condense the specifics of thousands of articles into a few sentences does not mean I do not know what I am talking about (as you suggest), or that I have some kind of "faith" in some imaginary religion of "evolutionism."
Lenski has been studying E. coli for 20 years and supposedly has taken them through 50,000 generations. Lenski Long Term E. coli experiment.
Your link was bad (but I got to the site anyway). Lenski grows his bacteria in selective media, which explains the slow generation time. E. coli, when provided with all of their growth needs, divide once every twenty minutes. While you try to discount the evolutionary forces working on those bacteria as merely being "specialized adaptation", his experiment demonstrates quite a few things about evolutionary processes.
Point one: "adaptation" is really a misleading word. If mechanisms for adaptation are already encoded into the DNA, then adaptation will occur--for instance, when people gain weight, they adapt by growing more skin. The bacteria mutated; those with mutations conferring a survival advantage in the selective environment survived.
Point two: the charlatans who make money by selling people on "creation science" use the word "adaptation" instead of evolution to convey the impression that they're being completely biblical *and* scientific. "Adaptation" is not in the Bible, nor is it scientific the way they use the word.
Point three: most DNA mutations are invisible without molecular analysis (i.e. sequencing). The Lenski study, as described in the Wikipedia article, mostly described phenotypic changes. Under the experimental conditions, those phenotypic changes are uniquely due to DNA mutations.
Here is the point: From homo habilis to homo sapiens required massive changes in human DNA you can't even quantify (such as tripling brain volume). In a similar number of generations, Lenski has only estimated 10-20 beneficial mutations. And much of those "mutations" are specialized adaptation to the experimental environment that ultimately would prove harmful if the bacteria were re-introduced to a more natural environment. It is very likely his strains would die back and what would be left would not be remarkably different than "wild" strains.
We can quantify the changes between humans, and our closest living relative, the chimpanzees. Our DNA is ~96% similar; there are an estimated 40 million differences between the genomes. Many of those differences take the form of gene duplications; the number of actual base changes accounts for only ~1.2% of the genome. This is not an astronomical number, especially when considering chimps and humans diverged from a common ancestor around 5 or 6 million years ago. It certainly did not, as you put it, require "massive changes in human DNA you can't even quantify."
Whether or not those bacteria would survive if introduced back into the environment where E. coli are normally found, the gut, is irrelevant. The Wiki article pointed out that during the course of the experiment, probably every single point mutation that can occur has occurred (meaning they don't have any of the original genome left). In other words, the bacteria evolved (which happens spontaneously), and the selective media were used to show the effects of evolution. It's highly improbable that any ancestral-type bacteria would survive.
As for the estimate that only 10-20 mutations were beneficial, that scales up to nearly 700 beneficial mutations for humans in the same number of generations (or roughly one million years). And that doesn't count the larger number of neutral mutations, or the small number of harmful mutations which, for various reasons, are not always eliminated from the population.