I am willing to consider a less direct evidence, such as, for example, manipulating the process with accelerated changes in the chemical environment in order to artifically speed up the mutation/selection apparatus. I would also take any complex form of life, not necessarily a homo sapiens, as a result.
That's a much more nuanced view, and I accept your re-statement (although we could discuss further the meaning of 'complex', I suppose). In fact, I'm pleased to learn that you would accept a successful result of such an experiment as a falsifying event for creationism/intelligent design, for I surmise that in the next few years (or decades, at the outside), we're going to be informed that just such an experiment has been performed successfully.
I'll save this thread, and if we're both alive and FReeping when the news breaks, we can laugh about it via FReepmail.
Best regards...
Pleasure talking with you.
Let me also express the theistic view, because it is often confused with fundamentalist Christian literalist view (I am Roman Catholic and I can assure you that my thinking on the origin of life is in line with most Catholics).
The relevant chapters in Genesis are there to give us guidance as to the proper relationship between man, other living matter, dead matter and God. It gives us enough knowledge to produce coherent theology and it is not intended as a manual on genetics, biology or geology.
It is then a mistake to count six days, add on the lifetimes of the Biblical patriarchs, add on 2000 years of Christendom and work out the age of the universe. Or any more complex calculus like that.
It is conceivable for a theist that God set up mechanisms according to which the universe operates and created man indirectly through these mechanisms. In fact, several aspects of the Genesis story support some form of evolution: Man is created from dust; creation proceeds in stages; the stages are roughly what the science tells us they are, from shapeless matter to stars, planets, organic life, animals, and humans. If a videotape of Darwinian evolution is discovered, proving beyond doubt the mud - bateria - ... - fish - ... - apes - man sequence, a theoist would shrug his shoulders and say,-- Ah, so that is how God made us.
Christianity is falsified if things like sovereignty of God, man's free will, man's dominion over the rest of the Creation, man's supernatural entry into in the Kingdom of Heaven judged by Christ, -- are falsified. Since these things have the supernatural as the reference point, no scientific falsification of theological constructs is possible. Faith is not threatened by science, nor science is threatened by faith, although, of course, historically the two world views resulted in real life conflicts.