Evolution is the best theory for the diversity of life.

1) Robert Wiedersheim happened to be an anatomist who claimed ... not mean that the evolutionary theory is supported.They are used for balance in running, courtship displays, and etc...So the wings do not actually count as vestigial.As per the definition you gave yourself, vestigial does not mean useless or without function. I also made a point to quote the article on the logic of calling ostrich wings vestigial."For example, wings are very complex anatomical structures specifically adapted for powered flight, yet ostriches have flightless wings. ...The specific complexity of the ostrich wing indicates a function which it does not perform, and it performs functions incommensurate with its complexity." -http://www.talkorigins.org...The problem is that this is all speculation (literally no evidence provided) on my opponent's part.The point of that whole paragraph was to explain why evolution predicts the existence of vestigial organs. "However, since the difference is minuscule and not drastic, anatomical vestiges are bound to be left over, at least for a period of time, as evolution continues to whittle down the size of the wings (or, as is the case in our world, ostriches begin using their wings for other purposes)."It wasn't the retelling of some orthodox evolutionary narrative, but an explanation of why this fact is evidence, namely that it is directly predicted by evolutionary theory.I'm also disappointed to see that you didn't address my second example of vestigiality, which I definitely see as being stronger on an intuitive level. 2)This means that the animals had to have had scales and then lost them and got feathers. It most certainly does not mean that. This misconception seems to come from the kind of Pokemon model of evolution - one previous, "inferior" form is done away with completely in favor of the evolved "superior" form. This is just wrong. There's no reason that feathers and scales couldn't coexist on early bird ancestors, especially considering that they coexist on modern birds. So how would a creature with no scales and not quite having functional feathers survive? It couldn't. Or, as I said, the two traits coexisted and an animal dominated by scales gradually evolved into an animal with mostly feathers. As for the Tiktaalik roseae, I am not sure where my opponent is going with this. I don't see how some fossil discovery helps prove that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life.Tiktaalik was a discovery prefaced by a very specific prediction based on what evolutionary theory had previously uncovered. Essentially, evolution said they should find a proto-tetrapod on Ellesmere Island, and so a small team went and actually found it. Predictive power is crucial in any scientific theory. My opponent then states that none of this is part of his argument anyway. Guess what I have written in point two doesn't do much then.Actually, no, I was saying that the information contained in the link I gave you wasn't part of my argument. As I said:"If you're interested in more examples of this, feel free to go to this link (https://skeptoid.com......). None of that is part of my argument, however. It's just supplemental information in case you're interested. If not, don't worry about visiting the link."3)"...but the nested hierarchical tree can also easily give evidence for a common designer. The "clear, organized arrangement of living things into groups and sub-groups is evidence for intentional forethought. For instance, man-made vehicles are obviously intelligently designed, and yet we can organize them into a clear tree structure, with groups inside groups. For instance, we have the main groups: airplanes, buses, trains, ships, and automobiles. Inside of automobiles we have cars, trucks, minivans, SUVs, jeeps, etc"This actually is a great time to illustrate my point further. Yes, we can agree that those machines for transportation were intelligently designed, but they actually bolster my argument. See, the point of my nested hierarchies argument was that there is a clear pattern in complex derived traits with no exceptions. Let's take the example of a jet. If we were to make a nested hierarchy including jets, it might look like this: machines_________________| machines used for transport| | ...that fly______________| | | ...and have jet engines_| | | | jets_______________What I was saying was that, assuming for the sake of argument that machines are subject to evolutionary theory, we should never expect to find some example of something with jet engines that is not a flying machine used for transport. This is because the jet engine is too unlikely to have formed exactly in the same way more than once over the course of evolutionary history. However, since we know that machines aren't subject to evolution, we can find violations of the nested hierarchy. My favorites of these are those people who attach jet engines to their bikes () or cars (), for example. Both are machines used for transport, but they violate the nested hierarchy at the point of "...that fly". Seriously, this become much easier to grasp with the real-life example of a nested hierarchy in our DNA, ERVs (https://youtu.be...), which I also noticed you didn't address.This is not even close to being true. In the intelligent design theory, birds and the other animal would have been created very different and hence there would never be a pegasus.This is just your personal opinion. What I was saying is that while evolution prohibits such violations of nested hierarchies, creationism can account for them easily (e.g. "That's just how God designed them").4) evolution doesn't offer an explanation for how life began It's not supposed to. Evolutionary theory has a very specific role, and that's to explain how life changes once it already exists. The origin of life is studied in the field of abiogenesis, which I'm not here to discuss. What you're doing is akin to criticizing atomic theory for not explaining where atoms come from. It's not supposed to. As I said in the first post of this debate:"...this debate is about evolution's utility as a theory of biodiversity and not an overall origin of the universe or even life. ...its explanatory domain starts when and only when life already exists, and only concerns how that life changes over time."and it can't explain the existence of moralityIt's not necessarily supposed to, but a sort of extension of evolution can explain morality pretty well. There are few things that all humans see as universally abhorrent, but killing other humans in the "in-group", for example, wouldn't make much sense in evolutionary terms. Societies that were alright with killing their own members en masse wouldn't survive as long unless strict prohibitions were placed on killing. This is what we see; killing is generally seen as justified in self-defence and in the defence of one's kin, but not for fun. Early humans, as a social species, relied heavily on each other to survive. 5)In other words, micro focuses on small changes within specific kinds of animals (Example: Darwin's finches) and macro focuses in on organisms changing into new organisms.I'm well aware of what the distinction is, and stand by what I said. They're the same process on different time scales. Your last sentence is something I want to specifically clear up - macro- focuses on changes from one species to another. Species is an objective term with a decent (although not unanimous) definition. Whatever the controversy, I'd say any scientist would agree that two animals of opposite sexes that can never produce fertile offspring together cannot be the same species, so we'll use this definition. So, once one ancestral group has given rise to two daughter groups that can never produce fertile offspring with each other, by any credible definition, speciation has occurred. As "macroevolution" is defined by your own definition as "at or above the level of species" and "on the scale of separated gene pools" (and two groups of animals that cannot interbreed with each other and produce fertile offspring are, by definition, separated), the above scenario has to constitute macroevolution. I eagerly await your replies, and thanks for taking time to discuss this with me so far.