[explodingspleen]

"TOPS then explicitly rejects several implications of Darwinian evolution. These include: (1a) The implication that living things are best understood from the bottom up, in terms of their molecular constituents."

This is wrong-headed from the get-go. The key component of evolution is selection, which is top-down.

Notice how what you just quoted says that TOPS "rejects several implications of Darwinian evolution" (one such aspect being that things are best understood from the bottom-up). So saying it's "wrong-headed from the get-go" because natural selection is "top-down" is absurd. That is like saying "the world must be flat because a curved surface would contradict basic tenets of contemporary flat-earth theory". You cannot use a competing theory of itself to disprove a counter-proposal.

[Ichneumon]

Notice how what you just quoted says that TOPS "rejects several implications of Darwinian evolution" (one such aspect being that things are best understood from the bottom-up). So saying it's "wrong-headed from the get-go" because natural selection is "top-down" is absurd. That is like saying "the world must be flat because a curved surface would contradict basic tenets of contemporary flat-earth theory". You cannot use a competing theory of itself to disprove a counter-proposal.

You're completely missing the point -- the point is that TOPS is engaging in straw-man fallacies, by misrepresenting what the implications of "Darwinian evolution" are, and then "rejecting" something that evolution does not actually include.

[Doctor Stochastic]

TOPS has mistated what evolutionary theory said. This has nothing to do with validity, only with the TOPS writer's misunderstanding or dishonesty with respect to evolution.