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Is the proposition of evolution that all life evolved from ONE SINGLE ORGANISM, or is the proposition that all life evolved from ONE single TYPE of organism?

It's not that clear. One well known and rather popular idea put forward by the discoverer of archaebacteria, a man named Woese, is a version of the RNA World hypothesis. Woese says that the whole RNA world soup acted like one big organism with one energy exchange. There would have been one class of reactions at the bottom of the pond and another class at the surface, etc. Cellular life more or less evolved as parasites in the soup. Viruses, rather than being degenerate forms of cellular life, are in fact bits of the old RNA world that learned to parasitize the parasites. According to this idea, at least two different kinds of cellular life (archaebacteria and eubacteria) arose independently of each other from the soup. Nucleated cells arose later from a synthesis of the other two types.

Thus, there might be no one common cellular-life ancestor. Nevertheless, the common ancestor of both remains: the primitive soup mega-organism. Furthermore, not everyone likes Woese's idea.

Minor footnote in clarification: The origin of nucleated cells from a later synthesis of archaebacteria and eubacteria isn't Woese's idea but belongs to one Lynn Margulies. That's relatively well accepted now, although only about 20 years old. Google on "endosymbiosis" for more.

"Thus, there might be no one common cellular-life ancestor. Nevertheless, the common ancestor of both remains: the primitive soup mega-organism."

It is in these murky waters (metaphorically) that the two sides of this issue (evolutionists and Biblical literalists) appear to diverge. Perhaps the issue of time plays a separate role, but I think universal ancestry is the primary motivation for most Biblical literalists (including myself) to question evolutionary theory.

Biblical literalists in general do not see their (our) position as contradicting science. I think evolutionists do not see their position as contradicting the existence of a God.

Last year I read several technical scientific books and for the first time ever started to read a little about evolution. I was surprised at what I found. First, I did not find most of what I read to contradict what I believed Biblically. Second, and I suppose this reveals my predisposition against evolutionary theory, I found what I read to be truly scientific. It was not the work of people hellbent on disproving the existence of God.

I am still a Biblical literalist and not an evolutionist, but I do see things a lot differently than I did a year ago.

This is a hot-button issue as indicated by more than a thousand posts to just one article. And this comes from people who mostly agree on conservatism.

Anyway, it has been an interesting chat, but I will need to avoid jumping into the discussion mix for a while because it is just too time-consuming.

Thanks for the interesting thoughts. (Feel free to continue if you wish. I am just going to begin spending more time on some other things for a while. So I may be a little slower to respond.)