Eugene,
if - as you contend - life never becomes more robust, which you state categorically in post#14, then are you asserting that life somehow arose with a high degree of complexity and robustness and has been devolving ever since?
That is correct.
In that case you appear to require the intervention of a creator to initiate that complex life.
I do not make that assumption. In fact, I believe it's wrong to presuppose God as an agent in the creation process. Furthermore, I'm sufficiently satisfied to explain that just as there is a theistic and non-theistic theory of evolution, there is also a theistic and non-theistic version of
molecular and quantum creationism.
High ranking cosmologists already teach that a highly ordered physical reality can spontaneously materialize out of nothingness and then become increasingly disordered and decay into inevitable extinction and non-existence. That's the view of all mainstream physicists. You can hear Sir Roger Penrose express that very orthodox belief at exactly 5:00 to 7:05 minutes into a Hard Talk interview with Stephen Sackur at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEIj9zcLzp0.
Moreover we would expect to see evidence in the fossil record for more advanced forms in the past.
I believe that the ancient Earth was full of extraordinarily robust forms of life. Have you ever been bitten by a parakeet? I ask because I think parakeets are surprisingly vicious. I remember being bitten by one when I was a child and it hurt a lot. Now consider the strong, compelling support for the theory that birds are genetically related to the meat-eating dinosaurs (theropods). There are many stunning similarities, including the evidence that at least some theropods had feathers.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/dinobird/story.htm
Please consider the following outlandish illustration:
Just from watching dinosaur movies, I believe that most reasonable persons would agree that the theropods were far more efficient killing machines than modern-day parakeets. And who would believe that you could take parakeet DNA, manipulate it somehow and create a super species of monster-sized theropods? Actually, I do believe it's possible theoretically but I also believe that the efficiency of modern bird DNA has decreased so greatly that any huge theropod a scientist could create today wouldn't even have the energy to stand up.
This argument is no proof. It is simply what I expect from the postulate that all biological machines are becoming less robust over time. As genetic code in all life forms continues to get corrupted and degrades through copying errors and other mutations, successive generations of machines, in all series, must plod along with increasing inefficiency and sometimes features are entirely lost.
You are aware, are you not, that you have either misunderstood, or deliberately misrepresented the New Scientist article about the myths of evolution.
I believe that you missed my point. I was simply expressing the commonsense idea—specious and heretical to Neo-Darwinists—that purported facts and snippets of theories are modular and that I am free to assemble what is reasonable and true and courageously repudiate what is irrational and unprovable.
