Evolution is wrong

Greetings double_edged_words, and anyone else who is going to be reading this debate. This will be my first attempt at a debate on this website, but as science is my passion and future career I thought it would be fun. I'll get right into my points: the first half of my opponents post is based on a misunderstanding of evolution: that abiogenesis (the origin of life) is an ‘evolutionist' proposition, and that the Theory of Evolution somehow hinges upon it being correct. This is entirely incorrect: the Theory of Evolution never has been about the origin of life, and this is made clear even in Darwin's own writings, stating: "It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter." Darwin C.R., letter to J.D. Hooker, March 29, 1863 However, not to let points go unrefuted, I will go after these points as well. It would appear that my opponent has not kept up with modern research in abiogenesis, as life has not been proposed as being formed in a ‘warm little pond' for quite some time. It is in fact said to have formed deep underwater or underground. These places might seem quite inhospitable to life but we have found bacteria there nonetheless where no sunlight is to even be found. How is it that these life forms prosper without sunlight? The answer is chemical energy. Life only requires an energy source — the only reason people assume it has to be the sun is because 99.99% of all life we observe relies on the sun's energy. Bacteria and other miniscule creatures however, can utilize chemical energy given off by radioactive decay occurring within the Earth, which might be given off as heat in thermal vents deep underneath the oceans, far away from UV radiation which is deflected by an ozone layer. This, of course, negates the need for an ozone layer for life. Almost all life as we know it exists now because of the ozone layer, but the original lifeforms need not have existed up where the sun is at to get energy to exist. As far as bonding energy within an ocean being counterproductive to life formation; this argument, as I understand it, hinges upon my opponents misunderstanding of life necessarily forming near the surface, not deep underground near thermal vents. There is no chemical reason for these bonds to be harmful to the formation of life. Moving on, my opponent then brings up the Creationist's favorite argument on the origin of life: probability. The basic flaw with this argument is the assumption that DNA was the necessary product of ‘random' chemical interactions. That is, it is assumed there was no middle man. When Creationists cut out the middle man (PNA, RNA, simple amino acids, etc.) they make the origin of life seem obviously improbable as we are jumping from simple chemical interactions to a very complex chain of nucleic acids. This is of course, not what scientists have ever thought. Modern thought on DNA formation is a complex process, starting with simple chemicals but go to simple polymers, nucleotides, nucleic acid compounds (RNA, for instance) and finally to DNA. I have of course, simplified massively the steps in between, but this nullifies the probability argument. There are many stepping stones that make the evolution of DNA quite reasonable and well within the realm of probability. My opponents original figure was based off of the misunderstanding that chemicals spontaneously formed full-fledged DNA in one fell swoop. For more accurate calculations on probability (which verify my point), I recommend http://www.talkorigins.org... My opponent makes a similar mistake when talking about the cell. The cell was not fully formed but instead has a long evolutionary history. As I have already laid out this argument against probability for life, I will neglect to do so for the cell. If one is interested, they might check out "On the evolution of cells", a paper composed by Carl Woese, a member of the National Academy of Sciences on how the cell may have been formed and organized. Now, finally we arrive at some points regarding evolution. The fossil record. My opponent again makes a false assumption regarding evolution: that it is necessarily a slow, gradual process. Slow in terms of a human lifetime yes, but it's pace is not the same and there is nothing within evolutionary theory to suggest this is necessarily the case. With that pointed out, things like the Cambrian Explosion (which, though called an explosion, still took at least 20-40 million years to be complete) are perfectly understandable (if my opponent wishes I can take more time in another post to completely address this era in evolutionary history.) However, returning to fossils: how many have been found? Hundreds of thousands to millions is an appropriate figure. Take the whale for instance, or the evolution of the horse, or the evolution of human beings. These are all very well documented evolutionary lineages. Evidence of this is found within the fossil record in abundance. The reason most people don't hear about the abundance of fossils is because the evolution of the horse or whale is not big-time news. Human evolution is perhaps the one most people are familiar with, and it is perhaps one of the best documented examples of evolution we have. Over 30 different hominid species have been discovered (and more than one fossil of each has been discovered), tracing human evolution back millions of years. For more information I recommend http://www.talkorigins.org... As far as half-and-half creatures go —ï¿½there are examples in the fossil record. Take, for instance, a creature called Tiktaalik discovered recently near the Arctic Circle. It is essentially half fish, half tetrapod. It has gills and scales, like a fish, but rib bones, a neck, and lungs like a four-legged land animal. It also contains many features that show it ‘in between' both states. Darwin did not denounce his own theory upon his deathbed (what does this have to do with evolutionary theory being right or wrong?) His entire family denies such a claim made by an obscure newspaper 20-some years after his death. My next response will hopefully be briefer to allow me to go into the evidences for evolution that are, quite frankly, undeniable.