evolution discussion with faith

You do realise that your idea kills any chance of the Noah's Ark story being true ?Accordign to taht story most species - including all land vertebrates - suffered a serious genetic bottleneck around 4,000 years ago. Worse for you, the difficulty in fitting all the species involved into the Ark means that many creationists propose that the Ark carried only representatives of different "kinds" - where several modern species are descended from individual "kinds".Your views allow no way to recover from this bottleneck - when in fact there is no detectable bottleneck from the supposed event at all. Thus for the Noah's Ark story to be true there must be a more rapid recovery of diversity than current scientific views allow.

Firstly it is nonsense to say that evolutionary theory assumes that genetic bottlenecks don't happen. So the Toe does NOT operate from an "opposit presupposition". The ToE simply operates from the usual scientific view of taking the simplest explanation that fits the evidence rather than making radical assumptions to maintain a predetermined conclusion.Secondly what is this "genetic capacity" you are talking about. Do you claim that ancient "kinds" had hugely long DNA with multiple woking versions of each gene ? Or that instead of their DNA strands pairing up they had numerous linked strands ? What evidence do you have for your proposal, whatever it is ?

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The fossil record proves that a big flood happened once upon a time and wiped out an amazing variety of antediluvian creatures, including many never seen since. Something eventually has to explain the supposed gradations in the fossil record, but it certainly isn't descent over millions of years.

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How is this consistent with your claim to respect science ? How can you dismiss the scientific consensus so lightly if you really respect it ?

ToE does not operate from the presupposition that variation is open-ended. Rather it does not assume limits without evidence. So your objection here is that evolutionary theory does not accept assumptions made for the primary purpose of denying evolutionary theory.As for your comments on "genetic capacity" it appears that it is an ad hoc premise with no supporting evidence. It may be the most reasonable position IF you assume a YEC framework and your claims of ever-decreasing diversity but it is not a reasonable position. If we don't assume a YEC framework (against the evidence) we don't need to explain why the expected evidence is absent.For a start it is clear that the "original kinds" had no need for all this supposed capacity - so why would they be given it ? Moreover there is no sign of it in even the oldest DNA samples found. In a YEC chronology it has to survive ~2000 years leading up to the flood and then rapidly disappear leaving no identifiable trace. Not even in animals that YECs would say lived a relatively short time after the Flood (Mammoths).

And so long as the idea that life is winding down is a religiously-motivated assumption it will not be scientific.This genetic capacity you speak of ought to be around at the Creation and has to still be around at the end of the Flood (because it is meant to explain away the fact that we do not see any genetic bottleneck attributable to the Flood - which accordign to you should only have got worse in the time since). That is ~2000 years in YEC chronology. Thus it has to survive for that period but almost completely disappear after a significantly shorter period of time.And while the mammoth DNA may be degraded it does not show any sign of the major variations you are proposing.