Quote:
Originally Posted by leewong
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"Fossil residues of ancient life-forms discovered in the rocks do not reveal a simple beginning."
Yes they do. You are conflating abiogenesis with evolution. What you want is the precursor to cells and cell colonies which you will probably never find (in the fossil record). Such material doesnt fossilize well. Granted it is a hole in our knowledge but we know that certain strands of molecules can reproduce and from there it isnt impossible to arrive at cellular life.
Maybe a divine being placed the first cells, maybe an alien seeded the planet, maybe a comet from mars carried the life, maybe they evolved from much simpler chains of protein. Who knows? You dont and neither do I. That's why we investigate and experiment.
What we can clearly demonstrate is that life in the fossil record shows simple life was on the planet 3.5 billion years ago. We dont ever find a rabbit or fish fossil lodged in geologic layers from that time. We only find the simplest organisms. As time progress the geological record shows that organisms became more and more complex. First there are colonies of cells, then there are simple organisms, then there are complex organisms.
If all life arose on the planet at the same time then we would find rabbits, proto-fish, dinosaurs, wolves, apes, etc. all sandwiched in the same geological layers together.
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"“To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”—In Search of Deep Time—Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, by Henry Gee, pp. 116-117
Henry Gee supports the theory of evolution.