Evolution in pieces.

Abiogenesis is treated separately because it is considered to be a non-evolving process in the biological sense. The Theory of Evolution starts with the first self replicating reaction/chemical so the first evolutionary product may have been less genetic than we hypothesise, we just don't know right now.

If there are 10 million cities in the world, then the chances of you being in any city is 1 in 10 million. Therefore, the probability that you were born is too low, you weren't born at all.

Have you ever heard of the Nylon Bug (found here). A flavobacterium acquired the ability to live on nylon derivatives alone due to a frameshift mutation on one of its plasmids. This allowed it to take over a niche that was previously devoid of life. This is exactly what random mutations plus natural selection predicts and it has been observed. It later lost the ability to live on sugars, which is quite amazing. This is another prediction of natural selection, those genes not needed for survival are more susceptible to negative mutations.

Another argument from an irreducibly complex system. This one seems to be making the rounds lately. You might ask yourself if you think that bacteria have always had this particular flagella, what proof do you have that the flagella has always been arranged in this particular way? You can't know, flagella are not fossilized so we have no history of them. Now, take the example of your middle ear. There are three bones lined up in a precise arrangement so that if any of those bones are out of place you will be deaf. Evolutionary theory states that mammals are descendents of reptiles. Reptiles only have one bone in their middle ear. So, since middle ear bones fossilize there should be a record of the transition between reptiles with one middle ear bone and mammals with three middle ear bones. Lo and behold, we do have those transitional fossils. You can reference these fossils here (jumps to another topic on this site, trying to keep bandwidth down).So, is it fair for you to demand a specific evolutionary pathway for the flagella which doesn't fossilize when pathways that do fossilize seem to be strongly evolutionary in nature? You will also notice that the ages for each fossil are given and they are placed in descending order chronologically from top to bottom. Another interesting fact is that during human embrylogical development, jawbones in the fetus move up and become middle ear bones, just as is seen with the fossil record.

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By what mechanism would a mutaion be directed? Design.

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You seem to be taking other people to task asking for evidence instead of bald assertion but feel it is adequate to do so yourself. Could you show the design mechanism that created the mutation giving flavobacterium the ability to digest nylon derivatives? See my post above for more information (post #37).

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Design IS the mechanism.

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Sorry, this is not enough. I could say that the snorts of an invisible unicorn keeps the stars in the sky, but that still isn't a mechanism. Is there an enzyme that causes specific mutations to specific stimuli, ie was there an enzyme that responded to nylon derivatives in the environment that caused the specific frame shift mutation in the bacteria? I would say no. If there was, then yes I would agree that it is by design.Design and design mechanism are not the same thing. Random mutations are simply mistakes made by enzymes in a non-directed manner, as well as transposon mutagenesis, DNA damage due to UV light and contaminants, and so forth. That is a mechanism. Design is not a mechanism unless you can show HOW design is occuring through MECHANICAL processes. You might as well say Fairy Dust is the mechanism, it has as much explanatory power.

You already did, you started as a single diploid cell. It is very simple embryology.