Thank you for your reply!
My problem with the theory of evolution is that it seems to have become something of a religious dogma. It is, after all, only a theory, and not a particularly strong one. It's simply the best thing anyone can come up with that excludes God, and excluding God seems to be primary goal.
I don't believe life can come from the absence of life. I believe variation occurs within species, but that is conservatory, not evolutionary. If there are a variety of wolves, it isn't because wolves are trending in the direction of evolving into something else. The variety is conservatory...it's to help wolfkind survive. If an ice age kills the short haired ones, the long haired ones will survive. If a food shortage kills the big ones, the smaller ones (needing less food) will survive. I think the mutations we see in micro-organisms are likewise conservatory, not one tiny step in a micro-organisms' evolutionary trend towards becoming a 3,500 pound mammal.
I think natural selection is proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. But I don't think there's a shred of evidence that if you traced a giraffe's ancestry back through the ages, you'd arrive at a single celled organism.
There really seems to be no explanation as to why something like an elephant would ever evolve, given that the things it supposedly evolved from are more fit to survive than an elephant.
It seems to be a quagmire for evolutionists. They must assume that the earliest life forms were simple. The old primordial soup somehow spawning some simple living cell. Though there's no evidence that life can come from its absence, that's easier for people to swallow than telling them a sabre toothed tiger simply popped into existence after lightning struck the right mixture of chemicals in some mud pit.
So they have to start with the simple and assume it evolved, over the ages, into the countless millions of species we see today. All that time extinction was occurring, but we have to assume that every time something became extinct, two or more new creatures evolved. Otherwise, the number of species would never increase to even two, let alone millions.
Yet, at every step along the way, increased complexity decreases fitness. Single celled organisms, our supposed starting point, are still going strong and can reproduce easily simply by splitting, yet they "evolved" into creatures that have to track down mates to survive, gestate their offspring, nurture their offspring, etc., not to mention many other problems.
I'm not a scientist by any means. But I do think evolutionists need to be a little less dogmatic and certainly less smug given what they're working with.
I don't really get this argument. Elephants are a quite succesful species. Once they reach adulthood, they have no predators (other than man). They are long-lived, intelligent, social animals. They fill their niche quite nicely.
Yet, at every step along the way, increased complexity decreases fitness. Single celled organisms, our supposed starting point, are still going strong and can reproduce easily simply by splitting, yet they "evolved" into creatures that have to track down mates to survive, gestate their offspring, nurture their offspring, etc.,
The point you miss is that species evolve as a result of environmental pressures. One of the reasons multi-celled species survived was probably because larger species can eat smaller species more readily. So, in an environment where almost all the living things are unicellular, a mutation that leads to a multicellular being would be an evolutionary advantage.
Similarly, a large animal such as an elephant is well-suited for its environment for no other reason than because it can stomp on a lion without breaking a sweat.