==1) No genuine scientist believes in and dedicates himself to a premise and sets out to “uncover evidence” to “PROVE” it.
Absolutely not true. All kinds of scientists “believe” in hypothesis. Some find out that their belief is confirmed by the scientific method, some find out that their belief has been falsified. The key is to make sure that entrenched interests don’t develop that are capable of putting protective hedge around certain beliefs, thus making them unfalsifiable. Hunan caused global warming would be one recent example of this...Darwin’s evo-atheist creation myth would be another.
==No scientific branch has a sub-discipline with accredited courses in “Apologetics”. It is theology — not science — that is dedicated to “PROVING” its premises.
Sure they do, it’s called Creation Science. And btw, science is based on a number of assumptions that cannot be themselves proven by empirical science. They must be taken on faith. Should we then toss out the scientific method because it rests on faith-based assumptions?
PS And speaking of “drivel”, I can find no greater example of drivel than nature selecting from random processes to create a complex, specified, super-sophisticated, digital DNA code, when the only known cause of digital codes fitting this description are intelligent designers...and those codes pale in comparison to DNA. Now that’s drivel!
In a sense, your observation is accurate. Totally random processes have a generally negative result.
It is as if this version of "life" is a zombie life-form, heedlessly trundling forward in a mindless quest for an unnamed goal. And sustaining injuries and bodily insults which it can not heal.
Eventually, this pitiable creature is seen dragging its disintegrating corpse across a meaningless last measure.
Sad.
And inaccurate, of course. What you are missing is the other aspects of randomness. Randomly, reproducing animals get insertions and deletions of the normal gene sequences. Deletions are almost always deleterious, (it's possible there's a pun in there, but that's not my purpose).
Insertions, on the other hand, are a playground of opportunity for randomness. Many consequences are not beneficial, but some few are. In this is the power of change.
I have previously used the analogy of getting extra instructions for making light-sensitive pigment for the eye. As a consequence of having additional pigments, some individuals may have a useful way to distinguish ripe fruit from fruit that is not yet edible. This could help this slightly changed creature survive.
Other possibilities include changes in the size of legs, or ears, or variations in color of fur or feathers. Remember that I am postulating that this is occurring in an area of genetic information that was initially copied to a repetitive location, and then subsequently changed in a random way.
These individuals would have a slightly longer genome, having a few hundreds or thousands of base pairs in addition to the regular information. Initially, it would confer no advantage or disadvantage. It would just be there.
Fortuitously, it might change in a way that provides an advantage to the animal. If it does so, then this form of the genome might advantageously pass on to its descendants.
Do you see that in this manner, entirely random events can work out to the advantage of some progeny, at the expense of others?
This is one of the most important manners in which animals change slowly, over the course of many generations.
It is this slow, relentless tendency to change that is called evolution, as the progeny of beneficial changes compete against their not-as-blest cousins.
Evolution is not dependent on random deletion events alone. It is the nature of sexual reproduction that gives rise to the opportunity for change to be occasionally beneficial.
I would think you would be willing to join me in saying, "Thank God for sex!"