Macro-evoluton is valid

The first mistake is that Con confuses evolution with abiogenesis.I am not confusing anything. The Theory of Evolution is designed to explain why we have the world we have today. If it is going to do this, it must also be able to explain where it came from itself. I'll get more into this later....evolution does not teach that evolution says we came from rocks. Earth is a terrestial planet, which means it's primarily rocky. If you follow what evolution teaches, it says that the earth played a part in our supposed evolution, both directly and indirectly. We therefore, over a long process, came from a rock, as it played a role in the formation of our present state.Reply to first argument rebuttalThe point of the matter is that we do not observe anything that indicates life could come from natural process. The purpose was not to say that life came from rotting meat, but that we simply don't observe life coming from anything outside of life. We know spontaneous generation does not occur, and there is no evidence of the abiogenesis hypothesis. If there is, I invite my opponent to share.Reply to second argument rebuttalMy opponent provided an article that discusses the evolution of some bacteria in a test. This is an example of micro-evolution, and I agree that this occurs. We do not, however, have any evidence to assume that these subjects will ever be anything more than bacteria. As my opponent freely admits, it was a new nucleotide combination. We know that these new combinations occur resulting in micro-evolution. This does not explain how mutations provide completely new information, though, since this is simply recombination of existing information.My opponent claims I forgot there are 3 types of mutations, yet I addressed and recognized all three types he goes on to mention."Microevolution explains how a species can evolve horizontally or downhill, no new information or a loss of information, but it does not explain how it can evolve uphill." Regardless of how these mutations affect the subject, or how they are percieved to be, they are still all just mutations. If I were to lose my arm, and I could therefore not be handcuffed by the police, one could say this is beneficial to a situation. This does not mean that losing my arm is new information. To say that uphill, or advantages, mutations are proof of new information is like borrowing yourself out of debt. When I said that most mutations were deleterious, that was a mistake that I retract. I had meant to say that most mutations were not advantageous, which we've established is accurate. That information was not found from either outdated material or creationist material as it was a mistake in type.My reasoning for bringing up inherited attributes was simply to address some misconceptions made by evolution. In past debates, I've heard that "mutations aren't our only means of gaining grounds. In fact, we know the giraffe has a long neck because it had to stretch it's neck to get to the top branch." I was simply covering the detail in the event that it may arise. As it is clear, however, my opponent would not propose something of the sort, so I will retract the statement as it is now irrelevant to the discussion.Reply to third argument rebuttalClaims that fossils of primitive, apelike men are overstated at best. For example, we know 'Piltdown man,' 'Ramapithecus,' 'Nebraska man,' 'Java man,' 'Peking man,' and 'Homo Habilis,' just to name a few, were all hoaxes or incomplete stories. Lucy is no exception. Australopithecines have bodily proportions that are, as far as we can tell, not intermediates of men and apes. {1} Studies of the inner ear showed many similarities to other apes but the same couldn't be said about humans. {2} Lucy in particular likely swung from trees, unlike what is commonly proposed. {3} Several other reasons help reach the conclusion that the Australopithecines is simply an extinct ape. {4}1 - Donald C. Johanson et al., “New Partial Skeleton of Homo Habilis from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania,” Nature, Vol. 327, 21 May 1987, pp. 205–209.2 - Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, “The Human Genus,” Science, Vol. 284, 2 April 19993 - “For my own part, the anatomical basis for the claim that the Australopithecines walked and ran upright like man is so much more flimsy than the evidence which points to the conclusion that their gait was some variant of what one sees in subhuman Primates, that it remains unacceptable.” Sir Solly Zuckerman“This Australopithecine material suggests a form of locomotion that was not entirely upright nor bipedal. The Rudolf Australopithecines, in fact, may have been close to the ‘knuckle-walker’ condition, not unlike the extant African apes.” Richard E. F. Leakey, “Further Evidence of Lower Pleistocene Hominids from East Rudolf, North Kenya,” Nature, Vol. 231, 28 May 19714 - “... the only positive fact we have about the Australopithecine brain is that it was no bigger than the brain of a gorilla. The claims that are made about the human character of the Australopithecine face and jaws are no more convincing than those made about the size of its brain. The Australopithecine skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian as opposed to human that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white.”“Let us now return to our original problem: the Australopithecine fossils. I shall not burden you with details of each and every study that we have made, but ... the conventional wisdom is that the Australopithecine fragments are generally rather similar to humans and when different deviate somewhat towards the condition in the African apes, the new studies point to different conclusions. The new investigations suggest that the fossil fragments are usually uniquely different from any living form ...” Charles E. Oxnard (Dean of the Graduate School, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and from 1973 to 1978 a Dean at the University of Chicago), “Human Fossils: New Views of Old Bones,” The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 41, May 1979“At present we have no grounds for thinking that there was anything distinctively human about australopithecine ecology and behavior. ... [T]hey were surprisingly apelike in skull form, premolar dentition, limb proportions, and morphology of some joint surfaces, and they may still have been spending a significant amount of time in the trees.” Matt Cartmill et al., “One Hundred Years of Paleoanthropology,” American Scientist, Vol. 74, July–August 1986Since we brought up apemen, can we appreciate the fact that we find bones of present-day man out of place in the fossil record, before they are supposed to be around? George F. Becker, “Antiquities from under Tuolumne Table Mountain in California,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. 2, 20 February 1891 Frank W. Cousins, Fossil Man (Emsworth, England: A. E. Norris & Sons Ltd., 1971) When I used the word complex, I was referring to species with more complexity than what we would expect to find so low. This includes finds which are found much lower than the species they elegedly evolved from. The record isn't just incomplete, it's chaotic.My opponent pointed out that I use creationist sources. This is only partically true. If you read the sources presented, the vast majority of quotes are from hostile witnesses, who would rather do nothing more than disagree with the point I'm presenting. Also, making a statement like "all creationist sources are garbage" is both fallacious and ignorant. This also doesn't take into account the fact that many of my own sources do the very same thing. I put this topic together using only secular research. If I were to bring in christian science, which may be more bias towards evolution, it would be much easier for me to tear evolution apart. For the sake of fairness and anti-bias, however, I have chosen to use secular studies, near exclusively.