The evidence that I find most compelling for the hypothesis that all higher life forms are evolved from simpler life forms is the commonality of the genetic code. Every form of life shares the same DNA encoding mechanisms and that mechanism itself evolved as a more stable molecule from its RNA ancestor. The same five nucleotides, the same 20 amino acids, the same drift statistics in the mitochondrial DNA, the same cellular machinery of ribosomes generating proteins from mRNA copied from the nuclear DNA, every species shares the same evolutionary history at the cellular level. An intelligent designer would not constrain every species this way because it would be redundant and inefficient and subject to massive failures due to disease and decay over time. It also is optimized for the survival of populations at the expense of individual members. The most important design feature of life is that it dies hopefully after it reproduces. Is this sacrifice of the individual for the survival of the population something a loving intelligence would design in?
You make a plausible argument, but your inferences are much too sweeping. There are millions of organisms on Earth. A designer that made each one a completely different, molecularly unique type of organism would have created an essentially magical world. It is at least equally plausible that a designer would prefer a universe that was rules based and logically ordered. And-- a big leap here -- if such a designer were actually concerned with us, he might particularly value a universe that is, at least in principle, somewhat predictable and comprehensible to human beings. It's getting too late to develop the argument now, but the idea of directed evolution is a step in that direction. There is nothing implausible about a designer reusing effective tools. If you were writing computer code, you would not deliberately set out to create bloatware. You would probably value parsimony in design. (Or whatever term the computer people use for lean, mean, efficient coding.)
None of this is evidence for a designer. But it does suggest that biological continuities are perfectly consistent with a design hypothesis. They should certainly not be taken as evidence against design.
“Every form of life shares the same DNA encoding mechanisms and that mechanism itself evolved as a more stable molecule from its RNA ancestor. The same five nucleotides, the same 20 amino acids, the same drift statistics in the mitochondrial DNA, the same cellular machinery of ribosomes generating proteins from mRNA copied from the nuclear DNA”
These observations also can be construed as evidence for design.
I see the commonality of biological molecules among life as being due to physics.
These molecules have the physical properties necessary for life.
If there were life elsewhere it would also have the same commonalities because physics and chemistry are the same though out the universe.
“Is this sacrifice of the individual for the survival of the population something a loving intelligence would design in?”
Well - according to the Bible, that is exactly what happened in one particular instance!
Not bashing you - just found it striking!
An intelligent designer would not constrain every species this way because it would be redundant and inefficient and subject to massive failures due to disease and decay over time.
Hmm, come to think of it, also like Microsoft.
It's called "reusable code". Intelligent designers do it all the time.
Is this sacrifice of the individual for the survival of the population something a loving intelligence would design in?
Apparently, He did. Perhaps He is aware that there's more to Man than biology. Perhaps He wishes to relate to Man spiritually, rather than just biologically. Or perhaps some people have forgotten that (according to Genesis) death only entered into creation after Man sinned. It wasn't part of the original design.
“Is this [...] something a loving intelligence would design in?”
By the way. You’ve moved in to theology not biology. The above us theology.
It’s funny, in these “arguments” evolutionists end up trying to argue theology and creationists try to argue science.
Apparently you have never seen programmers work. Copy-paste engineering is a real thing. No one is going to pay you to write a new thing from scratch when you can just slightly modify what is already there and working.
Besides, if there were truly random mutations, it should produce more variation, not less. You can’t claim random mutation produces macro scale changes but not micro scale changes when the mutations are fundamentally working at the micro scale. Unless the biochemistry just doesn’t work otherwise — in which case you can’t draw any conclusions either way. I would love to see if that topic has actually been researched as opposed to the usual handwaving.
And producing a functioning ecosystem and programming DNA is so laughably beyond anything we are capable of doing that passing a moral judgment on individual elements is done in absolute ignorance.