What an astonishing argument!
Do you expect scientists to replicate in a test tube what it took God billions of years to evolve?
Do you think scientists should be so omnipotent?
Or do you imagine God is so nearly human?
The fact is that scientists have found evidence for and even partially replicated very ancient forms of "pre-life" chemicals.
Some day, who knows?, maybe they will reconstruct the entire evolutionary sequence leading to life.
But why should it make much difference to us whether they do or haven't yet?
OneWingedShark:
There are many, many biological examples today of asexual or semi-sexual reproduction amongst plants, animals and other little critters that seem never to have gotten the "have sex" memo.
Those who did "get it," of course, have done much better, for obvious evolutionary reasons.
>>Here’s the two big ones for me:
>> 1) The transition from nonlife to life; the complexities of even the “simple” forms of life [such as viruses] is staggering.
>> Scientists have been unable to even *engineer* new fully-functional life.”
>
>What an astonishing argument!
>Do you expect scientists to replicate in a test tube what it took God billions of years to evolve?
You’re assuming that God used billions of years* to DO anything; further, the theory of evolution is itself a Godless theory (that is you can take God out and it still ‘works’).
*Granted, I’m not sure that we can call the first several days in Genesis “literal days” as ‘day’ is defined to be the time it takes the Earth to rotate one revolution in relation to the sun... which was uncreated in the first several days.
>Do you think scientists should be so omnipotent?
They proclaim themselves to be the ultimate purveyors of knowledge (just look at how they, as a society, treat the dissidents of their “established scientific fact” [i.e. “Global Warming Deniers”]), so I think the adaptation of the saying “Let them enforce it” applies: “Let them show it.”
>Or do you imagine God is so nearly human?
What? Where are you getting that from?
>>”The development of sexual reproduction...”
>
>There are many, many biological examples today of asexual or semi-sexual reproduction amongst plants, animals and other little critters that seem never to have gotten the “have sex” memo.
>Those who did “get it,” of course, have done much better, for obvious evolutionary reasons.
And this even flies in the face of the assertion that the “less useful” developments of an organism will be “pruned away” by the evolutionary theory. The appendix was said, for a long time, to be such a “vestigial organ” by evolutionists whereas Creationists had the stance that if God put it there it must have a purpose even if it was not readily obvious. Well, recent research has shown that the appendix DOES serve a function: whenever the bacterial culture in your intestines is flushed out (say by a bad case of diarrhea) the appendix can repopulate the bacterial ecology of your intestines as it houses/incubates those bacteria.
Like I said, evolutionary theory does NOT, IMO, adequately explain the state of life that we see today; in fact, your earlier appeal to God [”Do you expect scientists to replicate in a test tube what it took God billions of years to evolve?”] is acknowledgment thereof.