Three Logical Objections to Evolution

I recently heard an excellent presentation by a colleague that included a slide on the evolution of the nitrogen cycle that he used to illustrate the role of archaea and anammox bacteria in the cycle. Whilst I deeply respect this colleague, his presentation highlighted one of my three intellectual reasons for considering Macro Evolution to be illogical and fundamentally flawed. He first showed an early nitrogen cycle, devoid of life, with purely chemical reactions driving the cycle. Next he showed a slightly more advanced cycle in which some basic life forms (archaea) take part in the cycle. Here's my problem... Where did these life forms come from? In his presentation they magically appear from nowhere. This is one of my main intellectual stumbling blocks for evolutionary theory. Every example seems to require a starting point that's way more advanced than evolution can explain. In other words, they need seed material.

So, here are my three intellectual objections to Evolution:

1. No seed material. In almost all descriptions I hear of evolution, the seed material magically appears with no adequate description of where it comes from.
2. Ecosystem complexity. Ecosystems are complex and require multiple interactions between living organisms. Take one organism out of the loop and the system breaks down. So we need more than just one seed. We need multiple and diverse seeds, right?
3. Evolution is a strong destructive force but weak creative force. "Survival of the fittest" is an excellent mechanism for wiping out species i.e. for describing extinction, and adaptation seems a reasonable description for how species survive and thrive (though somehow they must have this resilience already built in). But the reliance on random mutations to describe the creation of new species (macro evolution) seems illogical and inadequate. I've never heard a good example given for this. All the examples I've seen were for micro-evolution and then imaginatively extrapolated to explain major intra-species changes that ultimately produce a new species. That sounds OK in a sentence but requires a lot of creative thinking to get the pieces to fit for real examples. Somehow that seems counter to the assertion that evolution is scientific. If we have to imagine so much and get artists to creatively draw stuff, that's stepping away from observation and true scientific methods too much. That is too subjective.

 

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