Possumburg said:
Just a few questions I have always wondered about. If evolution is true (and I do NOT believe it is)...
First off Where did the first life come from? Even simple single-celled organisms are pretty complex to have just accidentally formed from whatever they are made of.
What you're talking about is "abiogenesis" not "evolution". "Darwin's theory itself is only for the evolution of life from other life. It has been hypothesized that similar mechanisms worked in the development of the first life from chemicals. This is an area where the science is necessarily very speculative. Some scientists argue that the odds against this make it a practical impossibility, which others believe they are taking steps toward a viable explanation. I am not qualified to judge these arguments; I will simply point out that the disagreement among qualified scientists is a good indication that the answer is not clear-cut either way." (Harvey)
Where did sexual reproduction come from? How did the first animals with this ability know how to use it?
This questions is completely different and requires a lot of time, but if you have an understanding of "Genetic recombination", "Increasing the rate of evolution", and a bit of background knowledge in the evolution of sexual organs you will see that even bacteria exchanges genetic material with other bacteria. So "sex" as we know it now, between humans, is just a more complex process designed to minimize harmful mutations (which most are) and maximize the survival of the species.
If a fish had a mutation that caused it to have lungs, how did it know to get out of the water and breath air? How did it miraculously come to have the muscles to expand and contract those lungs for that matter?
Nobody said that one day a fish just walked out of the water, although for the sake of easier understanding that is how it's often depicted in common "evolution" presentations. The more likely scenario is that the process involved many more steps:
1. The fish had either food and/or shelter just near the edge of the water, the water often recedes and the fish is often left out in the dry without oxygen from the water, so they are forced to go with the water.
2. Over time some fish evolved enabling them to stay out of the water for longer periods of time (through natural selection and/or mutation).
3. Those fish reproduced passing on their genes.
4. As more time passes the organism specializes in out-of-water breathing and develops better breathing mechanism such as lungs.
5. Lungs themselves are type of muscles (thus no need to develop muscles to contract and expand the lungs).
6. Again all of the changes occur due to natural selection and/or mutation and get passed on to the offspring, thus carrying the change.
7. Eventually the fish starts pushing itself around on the rocky/sandy shallows with it's fins, and the fins get more specialized for that purpose.
8. Fish with longer fins get better chances of finding food and/or shelter, natural selection and or mutation speeds up this cycle.
9. Eventually these "fish" have changed enough to have fins which can push them onto the shore and lungs which allow them to breathe air (outside of the water).
10. The "fish" is out of the water and it doesn't need to "know" anything about its lungs and/or fins.
When did animals start eating food instead of living off of gases? What came first the mouth used to eat the food, or the stomach used to digest the food?
What came first the heart or the blood? Where did the blood vessels come from?
I'm starting to suspect that you have very little knowledge in the subjects of evolution, reproduction, biology, etc. I think it would be safe to say that gases were never the primary food source for animals, so your question is wrong by definition. As far as your question about the mouth/stomach, this is pretty simple to explain: some bacteria must obtain food by consuming other substances. These substances can include autotrophic or heterotrophic organisms, milk, meat, and decaying materials. The process of breaking down food to obtain energy is called respiration (see
http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/146/3/551). The combination of cells brought about specialization, some specialized in breaking down food, others specialized in delivering it to the cells which broke down food to feed to organism, etc.
The heart or the blood? Oh, my... I hope that by now you see a patter here, you lack some basic knowledge and further enlightenment on this would require that I write several more pages. I'm starting to see why people don't want to believe in science now: "It' too darn hard to learn that much stuff, it's just easier to say: "God made it!".
These are just a few of the many questions I have. Can ANY of them be answered? If not how can evolution be a "Fact"?
Your questions, again, are incorrectly stated:
Part 1: Can any of them be answered? Yes
Part 2: How can evolution be fact? It can for two reasons:
a. because we answered yes to Part 1 of your question.
b. because evolution is not abiogenesis and evolution does exist no matter how misinformed you are about it.
I believe God created us all the way we are. Just like the Bible tells us.
Again remember that there is no contradiction between abiogenesis and evolution, since both of these ideas describe different topics. If God has involvement with abiogenesis- made the first living cell and designed it to evolve, then evolution takes care of the rest. These ideas don't exclude God, but they do exclude the Biblical accounts of the creation of life. Unless God himself wrote the Bible (which he didn't), then I don't understand how you can have solid convictions in regards to the credibility of the Bible. To further support my claim the Bible as a whole makes no claim for divine authorship. Although many passages are quoted in God's name, the five books of Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy) never assert that their entire content is divine. So the slippery slope wreaks havoc with arguments about biblical authorship. If one word, just one word, of the Bible is in fact of human origin, then how can one defend the divinity of any of it? If one word, why not two, or 10, or the whole book?
Again, all of this does not mean that God and/or abiogenesis/evolution do not exist, but that the Bible's accounts of creation are questionable.
, see my response below.