One example would be the rate of beneficial mutations needed for just the difference between us and our nearest ancestors... from what I understand the rate of beneficial mutations currently measured cannot bring about the kind of changes we see between humans and apes in the time frame that paleontology suggests (no, I don't remember where I heard this).
Just for giggles, let's actually do the math with some rounded off figures. Scientists have actually sequenced the genomes of two parents and one of their children. From those experiments we know that each human is born with about 50 mutations. We also know that human generation times are 25 years or so. When we look at the chimp genome we see that there are 40 million mutations that separate our genomes. If we assume that half of those mutations happen in each lineage, that is 20 million mutations in the human lineage since common ancestry, which most scientists put at 5 million years before present.
If we go with a small human population of just 100,000 individuals through that 5 million year stretch, that is 5 million mutations per generation. In 5 million years, that is 200,000 generations. 5 million mutations per generation for 200,000 generations is 1 trillion mutations that did occur in the human lineage.
As stated before, we only kept 20 million of those mutations, or just 0.002% of the mutations that did occur. Again, these are just the mutations that were kept in the human lineage. Of the mutations that were kept, a large proportion are neutral mutation. If we double the portion of the genome that shows evidence of selectable function, we are still only talking about 20% of the genome where beneficial mutations could occur. Of the mutations that occur in the portion of the genome with selectable function, not even all of those need to be beneficial. So we are really talking about a tiny, tiny percentage of the mutations that did occur had to be beneficial, well below the number of mutations that did occur.
Looking at my math, I really don't understand how the needed mutations couldn't have occurred.
But for me it's not so much about the evidence that causes me to doubt macro-evolution as it is about the lack of evidence for abiogenesis...
Then why don't you doubt the rest of science? Using your logic, without abiogenesis we wouldn't have bacterial species like S. aureus or B. anthracis, so we can't have a Germ Theory of Disease without abiogenesis. Do you reject the scientific theory that explains infectious diseases?
if we cannot demonstrate how life could come from non-life, we are left with the need to account for it by some other way... aside from natural processes, that probably means a designer (I can't think of any other options).
How would that change our theory on how life changed once it did come about? The theory of evolution no more needs abiogenesis than the germ theory of disease.
If life in general requires a designer, then why do I need a theory, one that happens to cause problems with my understanding of my Scripture, to account for the diversity of life when I can account for it just fine with a designer?
Evolution deals with how life changes, not how life comes about.
Just to be clear, I do not doubt that life changes over time (even the bible recognizes that), but I do doubt that all the biodiversity we see today descended from one simple cell some 4 billion years ago.
The problem is that doubt has not scientific support. It seems to be founded entirely on misrepresentations that creationists have fed you.
