Err... careful. Just because I say it isn't perfct doesn't mean I would use descriptions like "quite incomplete". I'm a physicist. My idea of a 'perfect' theory is Quantum Electrodynamics. (
http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/Cracks/QED.html Ignore the bit about not converging. I mainly wanted to show how disgustingly well proven this theory is.) Evolution may not fall into that category, but not many theories do. I think it's a wonderful description of how life most likely propogates on this planet. That said, I'll certainly take you at your word that you aren't a creationist. I don't really have a problem with creationists anyway, unless they try to force their ideas into the classroom. I do have a problem with people who don't think. I can't debate someone like f.Christian, but I can debate you, however much I may disagree.
Moving on.
I'm going to have to let someone more up on the current trends in evolution debate you on natural selection. I really don't know what other major possibilities there are. Guess I've had my head stuck in a laser cavity too long.
This part DEFINITELY intrigues me, though:
" have another question. What's the benefit to reproducing at all? You get your genetic material passed along, but what does that get you? Our whole belief system of evolution is based on the idea that getting your genes into the next generation is the be-all and end-all of an organisms purpose here on earth. Well why? That's not the lowest energy state. That's not the most energetically favorable state. A ball of rock with some primordial soup was the closest thing to equilibrium that this planet has seen. IMO this is one thing that evolutionists don't address at all. Whats the point?"
"Passing on your traits to future generations" sounds like a very hollow motive indeed. We do have a desire to reproduce, though. In fact, I think the technical definition of "life" is something that can self-propogate and reproduce. If you don't want to reproduce, that's fine, but your lack of desire to do so will get bred out of the population. Those who do reproduce will have wanted to. I've heard it said that only our DNA is actually active, and we are merely the vessels by which it propogates. Certainly not a high position for the human race, and I'm not sure I agree with it, but then we've thought the universe revolved around us before.
The last part of your statement sounds VERY close to the old "Second Law of Thermodynamics" argument. The law is this: "elements in a closed system tend to seek their most probable distribution; in a closed system entropy always increases." (
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/SECOND_THERM.html) The translation in English is: In a closed system, things will always tend toward disorder. I can see this at work in my desk on a daily basis. Left to its own devices, it accumulates crap and becomes VERY disordered, VERY quickly. This sounds like an indictment of evolution. Life is obviously a more ordered state than random dust, so why be flesh and blood instead of dust? Why go through all the work of reproducing when it is far easier to sit on your butt and decompose? Doesn't evolution, which seems to favor more complex life forms over more disordered forms, violate this?
First off, Evolution, and natural selection in particular, don't favor complexity. They favor survivability. Viruses are quite simple, yet they survive just fine so there is no reason they should go extinct in favor of some other life form. Insects, as you point out, are every bit as likely to survive than humans. More so in fact. Roaches might well survive a nuclear war, while I doubt we could pull that off.
Secondly, and more important for the second law bit: There are two critical words in the definition I just gave. "Closed system". A closed system in which there is no outside source of energy. Entropy is a measure of how much disorder there is in a system, Energy is defined as the capacity of a system to do work, which can be thought of as a means to fight this disorder. (To physicists out there, I know this sounds wierd, but I think it's a reasonable analogy for my puposes here.) A car motor with a full tank is a closed system so long as no one refills the tank. Eventually it runs out of gas and goes from an ordered state of running efficiently to just sitting there and rusting. My desk is a closed system, provided I don't bother to do work (expend energy) and clean the damn thing. The universe itself seems closed, implying that there is a finite amount of energy available and eventually everything will cool to nothingness (the old heat death idea). The Earth, at present at least, is NOT a closed system. The Sun provides a constant, abundant source of energy and thus the capacity to create order. Sure life is not an energetically favorable state as you put it, but it doesn't have to be. We've got pleanty of fusion powered energy available. Will it continue forever? No. But has continued long enough to allow the generation of self-propagating life, at least for the time being.
The energy argument against evolution just doesn't hold water.
*gasp* Okay. Done with that. Hope I wasn't putting words in your mouth, by the way. It's just that I've heard this particular argument elsewhere so I thought I'd post it anyway, even if it's not what you meant.