Really?! Is that how you speak to all correspondents who disagree with you, or mention something inconvenient?
You like quotes? Well, here are quotes from Berkeley showing that their “Evolution 101” website accords special treatment to the origin of life. From the website: “However, within the field of evolutionary biology (emphasis mine), the origin of life is of special interest because it addresses the fundamental question of where we (and all living things) came from.” I don’t see where any other subject is described “within the field of evolutionary biology” as is the origin of life.
Within that website, under the heading from soup to cells – the origin of life, we see a whole array of topics for inspection: 1)When did life originate? 2) Where did life originate? 3) How did life originate? 4) Under Studying the origin of life (itself making reference to “the tree of life”), we have; Origins and DNA evidence, Origins and biochemical evidence, Origins and experimental evidence, then finally, 5) A knotty problem.
At this point from soup to cells – the origin of life continues with the following, “You've reached the end of this section, but if you'd like to continue reading about the relevance of evolution (emphasis mine), try these:” (and the site follows up by giving some links)
Whatever Darwin thought in the last half of the Nineteenth Century, some 150 years later Berkeley clearly believes that theories of the origin of life are fueled and directed by Darwin’s ToE in its various configurations.
Berkeley is not alone. A number of university websites and science association websites carry “Evolution 101” as a link on their own sites (why a majority of those links haven’t been ‘disappeared’ before now is beyond me – they’re embarrassing for anyone who argues no one in the Science Community is making a connection between Evolution and the Origin of Life). Moreover, the problem is not limited to institutions. There are any number of eminent scientists who see a connection between Evolution and the Origin of Life and, worse, use science generally and the ToE specifically as a basis to conclude, as William Provine argues: 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent (those being, among others, Dawkins, Hawking, Weinberg, Dennett, Pinker, Gould, Sanger, Tooley, Lewontin, Hauser, Stenger Provine, Rachels, et al).
Small wonder that you find it so exasperatingly difficult to convince any Christian on this forum that the ToE has no significance beyond its scientific implications when it is obvious that scientists like Dawkins now believe (see The God Delusion) and, in his day Marx then believed, that a naturalistic explanation for life to be sufficiently assured that they now feel, as Marx then felt, secure in declaring that there is no God. If Darwinians weren’t trying so hard to improperly preempt Christian philosophy with conclusions drawn from a scientific theory, then they and their god Darwin would not be under so much severe criticism. Instead of ragging Christians about their supposed scientific ignorance, if you went about getting your own ideological house in order you might find the headwinds you’ve been bucking to be considerably less fierce. But, if you instead prefer engaging in political shin kicking, then don’t complain when you find yourself in a shin-kicking contest.
“Small wonder that you find it so exasperatingly difficult to convince any Christian on this forum...”
No. Christians have no problem reconciling their faith with evolution. The members of this forum to whom you refer represent instead a small minority of weak-in-faith literalists. They close their mind to logic and science, and constitute little more than a source of entertainment.
Thank God they only teach science to their own education-deprived kids.
Sure, it's pretty much SOP for evos.
This is how I respond to correspondents who ask, get a very specific, unequivocal answer, and still pretend that I was "unresponsive". There was a very specific quote from the discussed source, stating that natural selection appears AFTER self-replication.