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[Scape211]

This again may have been covered somewhere, but I thought I read about it and wanted to ask.

So we currently believe the Earth to be about 4.5 billion years old. Could evolution have gotten us to where we are on its own? This seems to be the method science would give for our existence and current state, but it almost seems like that wouldn't be enough time to go from a single cell organism to our level of complexity now right? To me, that always seems like a better direction to take as Christians - sure evolution is real, provable and possible. However the timeline doesn't entirely add up if we account everything to evolutionary means. Is that sound reasoning or am I missing something.

[jimwalton]

I've heard conflicting data, so I'm not sure what to believe at this point.

From J. Warner Wallace, Evidence for God from Design" pdf: "And if we do that, we quickly discover that there is not enough time in the history of the universe to form even a single protein! For this simple 100 amino acid protein to form, we’ve got to translate the odds into time. Scientists have estimated that on a planet covered with the waters of the “primordial soup” and filled with complete sets of all 20 types of amino acids, the time necessary to assemble a simple functioning protein would be roughly equivalent to their estimated age of the universe, 15 billion years multiplied by 10 to the 60th power. In essence, there simply isn’t enough time in the history of the universe to form a single protein by chance."

From Darwin's Dilemma DVD, Illustra Media: The Cambrian Explosion shows the sudden appearance of distinct body plans in a very small window of time. The pattern is radically at odds with the Darwinian picture. "How did these new forms of life come into existence? The Cambrian animals seem to have originated out of nowhere. It is a huge leap in complexity. From where does that genetic information come? Evolutionary theory says one small step at a time. In theory, each step corresponds to a small biological change. Since 1992, Doug Axe (molecular biologist) has examined this question, particularly at the single protein level. The probability is 1 in 10^74. (There are only 1065 atoms in the galaxy). It’s like asking a blind man to find one particular atom in the galaxy with tweezers on their first try. While anything is possible, it’s not plausible. ... The Cambrian explosion is fatal to the theory of descent through slow modification."

But secular evolutionists say there was easily enough time.

I'll admit it seems like a stretch to me that there was sufficient time for life to evolve the way secular naturalists claim it did. From everything I've read, evolution simply could not have happened by itself. But no one would consider me an authority on such matters.

[Scape211]

Yea I tend to fall in the same camp. While I do believe in evolution, its hard to find anything the lays out the timeline or give any indication for how long it takes things to evolve. I assume its a sliding scale based on complexity, but I don't see any proper indication of how it all could work plausibly yet to fit. Maybe I just need to dig more.