Evolution is flawed

Several issues right of the bat: asking "where did the turtle come from" or "why would a snake lose its legs" is nothing more than an appeal to ignorance. In other words, simply because you can't imagine how or why something could have happened in a certain way doesn't mean that it couldn't have. Furthermore, there is new evidence regarding turtle evolution: http://news.nationalgeographic.com... And, as you can see, there is no lack in explanations for why snakes could have "lost their legs": http://arachnophiliac.info... The source for the chimp/human genome comparison in your article (http://www.icr.org...) giving a percentage of only 86% is from 2003. Since the sequencing of the chimp genome wasn't completed until 2005, that figure is completely outdated. This is the study that led to the 90% + figure: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... You also have to remember that according to evolutionary theory we did not evolve "from" chimpanzees as they now are. We and chimpanzees split from a common ancestor between 5 and 7 million years ago. [1] This also explains the apparent contradiction of genes being present in gorillas and humans but not in chimps: the common ancestor of all three had the gene, humans and gorillas retained it to the present time, and sometime after humans and chimps split the chimps lost it. Your article also has several major flaws in reference to molecular biology. They claim that non-coding regions are "essential" to the proper functioning of cells and yet were left out of the analysis. Unfortunately, the "essential" components they are referring to are actually known as promoters, which initiate the transcription of a gene into a protein, and make up only a small percentage of the "junk DNA" that was dismissed, and for good reason. [2][3] The functionality of non-coding DNA is generally inferred from high degrees of similarity between species for certain sequences, which implies selection pressure on those sequences.[4] They seem to imply that non-functional regions are crucial to the analysis and that vast differences in such regions would be evidence against evolution. However this is absolutely not the case. If a given stretch of DNA has no physical effects on the organism possessing it, natural selection cannot act on it; it follows that any mutations occurring in this region of DNA will be free to accumulate since none of them are harmful. A mutation in a crucial gene, such as the sickle cell mutation in genes coding for hemoglobin, reduce fitness and are unlikely to spread. The sickle cell mutation itself is a fascinating case however- it is prevalent in parts of Africa where malaria is common because having one copy of it protects against the disease. Evolution in action! To move on to your other contentions: 1. "no real backbone" This is equivalent to the statement "I will believe it when I see it"; however, no one really lives by such a maxim. To illustrate, imagine you came home one day and your house was in complete disarray, things thrown to the ground, broken, and some things missing. Naturally, you would come to the conclusion that you had been robbed, correct? But, just like scientists were not "there to see" evolution, you were not there to see the robbery. It does not follow that the robbery did not occur or that your conclusion that it did occur is unwarranted. You also attempt to draw a line between small changes and large changes. I assume this is the classic "microevolution" vs "macroevolution" argument. Unfortunately, this is a classic misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. There is no fundamental difference between the two. Again, let me illustrate with an analogy. Imagine you are in New York; you are certain that a man cannot walk from New York to Canada. Observe this man take a single step towards the north. Frustrated, you admit that yes, he can take single steps, but it doesn't follow that he can walk to Canada. I ask you: what is a walk to Canada other than a very long series of northward steps? If you add several million of those small steps together, the man will eventually get to Canada. In the same way, if you add millions of small mutations together (ie millions of instances of microevolution) you get macroevolution- from a bacteria to a human. (note that there are many more mutations between a bacteria and a human than there are steps between New York and Canada). 2. "ancestor/descendant" This is essentially the same argument as above. Because we cannot watch evolution occur step by step it doesn't occur. However, its obvious that we don't need to watch a process occurring step by step to extrapolate from the end result to the likely cause. I have already addressed this above. 3. "basic types show stasis" Of course they do! Basic types are static by definition. A "type" is a grouping of certain characteristics that are similar. If you trace these groupings of characteristics through the fossil record you cannot find anything but "stasis"- because you are looking for things that stay the same over time. 4. "most fossils" Indeed, most fossils found are of shelled marine invertebrates. The reasons for this are manifold. First of all, the majority of the earth's surface is water, so you would expect more life adapted to that environment. Second, these marine invertebrates are most often in the ideal conditions for fossilization. Being subject to the motions of the waves, they are deposited in layers of forming sedimentary rock. Being quickly buried, they are protected from the ravages of oxygen and decay. Their hard protein shells are easily mineralized and preserved, unlike soft tissue.[5][6] Land dwelling animals encounter such conditions much more rarely and are thus much less likely to fossilize. The fact that they are emphasized in school courses and such is because they tell us more than those other fossils. 50 fossils of organism X and 3 of organism Y garner the same attention from non-experts because they give the same information about 2 different evolutionary passages- the transition from pre-X to post-X and the transition from pre-Y to post-Y. Given the larger number of fossils, the X transition might be better understood than the Y one is, but except to the scientists that specifically study X or Y, that is no issue to the subject of evolution as a whole. What would be an issue is if we discovered a fossil of excessive complexity at a time when such complexity could not yet have evolved. As JBS Haldane reportedly said when asked what would disprove evolution: "rabbits in the precambrian". [7] Up to this point my opponent has evidenced nothing but a mangled understanding of what evolution claims and what the evidence actually is. Evolution is an extremely well researched scientific theory with multiple lines of research to support it. Incredulity is an inadequate ground to claim that one thing could not have evolved from another. 1. http://www.physorg.com... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. http://www.sciencedirect.com... 5. http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk... 6. http://www.fossilmuseum.net... 7. http://en.wikipedia.org...