Interesting that you point out Neanderthal.  For in the latest hypothesis, it is believed he was far more advanced than Homo Sapien. However, due to quantity vs quality, the species was subsumed by the latter (Homo Sapiens).

The better mouse trap does not always win out.  Just witness Windows.

AMEN!

Ugh...Gid...I'm horrible at these arguments...I don't know what to tell them when they say "creationism is a religious fairy tale..."

I don't know what to tell them when they say "creationism is a religious fairy tale..."

Tell them to prove it is.  While creationism cannot be proven, with current science, it also cannot be disproven.  Unless you are looking at the strict interpretation of the world was created 6k years ago.

> "the fact that life happening by chance over time"

No no NO. Please, sir - you're an intelligent person. Don't cheapen your arguments with Straw Men. If you're not already aware of it, please note that evolution is not a 'chance' affair. The engine of evolution has two components: one is the, yes, random tiny mutations, caused by random events (chemical, mechanical, energetic particle etc). The other is *extremely* NON-random, in the form of the sorting of the resulting physical form by nature, by predators, ability to survive and breed and so on.

Throw away the silly analogy of the 'tornado in a scrapyard spontaneously assembling a 747' so beloved of anti-evolutionists. It's a false analogy, and its uselessness as a tool for creating complex organism is as obvious to pro-evolutionists as it is to antis.

If we must have a tornado in a scrapyard, then to complete a more accurate picture would require a team of aeronautical engineers waiting outside the fence, catching each odd item of scrap that is blown over the fence, and conferring together over how it might possibly form part of their emerging aircraft. Any piece that can't be used is thrown back. Any useful piece is added to the airplane.

> "ignores the fact that life feeds on life (we have to have organic matter to eat), and that two chance single celled organisms occurring in the same generation would result in one organism consuming the other, then starving to death. In short, the food chain, with all of its intricacies, is as fair a refutation of an evolution without intelligent design as any; an organism that evolved has to eat SOMETHING."

Here I can only assume that you suffered a momentary lapse in concentration. A moment's reflection will remind you that there are a great many organisms alive today that need no existing organic matter to survive and grow. The Chemobacteria are the oldest family of organisms alive, and they build their tissues from basic inorganic chemicals drawn from their surroundings. You will also recall that plants similarly take in only gases, water, nitrates and other basic substances to grow, without the need to eat other organisms for that purpose (the few carnivorous plants live in nitrogen-poor swamps, and must make up their deficit by absorbing insects). Although plants tend to prefer earth containing organic matter, the nourishment they receive from it is obtained only when that matter is reduced to basic, simple inorganic chemicals and minerals. Most plants are perfectly happy in hydroponic media, a simple solution of basic salts in water.

Note also that at the time of the first emergence of living cells, the oceans of the earth are believed to have been in the form of a thick soup of non-living but complex organic materials. I imagine you are aware of the Miller Experiment, in which it was discovered that a simple mixture of basic gasses and water, if exposed to energetic radiation from electric arcs (lightning) or unshielded solar radiation, will rapidly begin to self-assemble into complex organic chemicals. Over short periods a sealed apparatus with these conditions will turn to a sludgy mass of amino acids, peptide chains, nucleotides, vitamins and other constituents of living matter. Imagine such an experiment carried out in an ocean-sized flask, over millions of years! Today such seas would begin to decompose and rot immediately, but with no fermenting organism the thick soup would have simply become richer and more complex as eons passed.

We have yet to reverse-engineer the simplest self-sustaining organism that can possibly be made out the raw ingredients of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen (and a few other trace elements, K and P being most prominent in today's living tissue). It may be that the true first life was not one single ur-cell arising from the goo, from which all other life has descended. Perhaps the seas of soup became filled with little vaguely cell-like structures - non-living, but forming a receptacle for the true chemicals of life when they arose. Such cell-like structures are made today in laboratories, acting as delivery packages for specialised chemicals: you will have heard of the artificial liposomes developed and patented by Garnier, and used by them to deliver cosmetics, but by organic chemists for pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps the earliest RNA-like molecules entered such structures, and spread from one to another. True reproduction - that tricky process - need not have been necessary at first. RNA can duplicate itself in the right conditions.

At any rate, all this is speculation. My point is that, looked at closely, the arrival of the first life on earth seems less miraculous the closer one gets - to the point where it appears almost inevitable. If nothing else, there certainly seems enough circumstantial evidence to suppose that it could have natural origins, without having to adduce supernatural intervention - no small matter.

CD

Wow, that's bizarre, I was just thinking about the Miller experiment last night, but couldn't remember the title of it, since it was about 12 years ago when I first learned about it. Interesting coincidence.