Hi PaulGL
It is absolutely vain babbling (spiritually speaking) to speculate about man's origins. Such speculation is totally from the wrong tree- the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and as such it is totally incapable of conveying spiritual nourishment and edification.
I have no motive whatsoever to attempt to validate 'Evolution'.
Curiously I disagree. One of the prime talents of the human race is curiosity, and curiosity about origins ranks high on the list of things to be curious about.
Sure we can agree that the oldest fossil bearing rocks that we have found to date had fossils of life already developed. so there is no record of that development that is yet known. We know that life began on earth at least 3 billion years ago. We know that the first life was simple single cellular organisms, prokaryotes, with no nucleus. We know that it took about a billion years for more complex single cellular organisms, eukaryotes, to develop, with a nucleus that may have been another single cell organism swallowed whole and forming a synergistic new type of organism, and that the formation of multicellular life forms occurred shortly after that.
We also know that prebiotic molecules abound in space, possibly formed by exploding stars as chunks of gases cooled. See
Panspermic Pre-Biotic Molecules - Life's Building Blocks (Part I).
We also know that chemical reactions can create self-replicating molecules and other elements of primal cells. See
Self-Replicating Molecules - Life's Building Blocks (Part II).
We know this because our curiosity has led us to find this information, and we are still finding out things, like the origin of chirality, that lead us further into knowledge of how life may have formed on earth, and possibly elsewhere in the universe.
We know that we will keep looking because we are curious. But when it comes down to whether life actually began this way 3.5 billion years ago or whether it was created, I would have to say that at this point in time that we don't know. Yet.
However, I am 100% against any and all persons (regardless of purity of motivation) who in any way make the disbelief in Evolution a tenet of the Christian Faith, a Faith given once to all whom God has chosen to be His people.
I challenge anyone to dispute the following assertion: "It is completely possible to believe in 'Evolution' and to receive Christ as one's personal Savior, becoming genuinely born again."
Well I agree with you here, and I find no challenge in so thinking. Where I do find challenge is in several specific beliefs of some specific sects or branches of thinking, such as that the earth is young or that a massive world altering flood occurred, that "special creation" was the source of each species of life (including man), or any belief that is at odds with objective empirical evidence.
The world is over 4.5 billion years old. There is no evidence of a global inundation of water simultaneously covering the whole earth. There is evidence of species evolving from prior species and that this process is observed in the ancestry of man.
The teachings of Jesus do not - imho - require such evidently mistaken beliefs.
Enjoy.
™ Version 4.2