Something new...

This person is trying to show the flawed reasoning of people who try to say that evolution is a statistical impossibility. He does a very good job of that. My question would be, very simply, where did the "salt" come from. If life started out a some random material and then evolved into what we are today, where did the random material come from? What was the random material? Evolution, though it claims to be absolutely scientific cannot answer these questions. Is it not much more logical, and does it not fill in more gaps to believe that there is an all-powerful GOD who created everything according to His design? Consider this. We do not and have not seen new animals due to evolution. If evolution were true then it would be perfectly normal to see new animals that had evolved very often. Even if these changes were slight we should still be seeing them. If christianity is true then we should not be seeing new creatures everyday because GOD already finished creating the universe. So my conclusion is that if your going to observe evidence, then there is more evidence for creationism.

"This person is trying to show ..."

Well he doesn't at all, he just poses the question. Question is do you know why it is flawed?

"My question would be, very simply, where did the "salt" come from..."

Ok, we'll start here. Evolution deals with living organisms and postulates nothing about the origin of life, the planet or cosmology at large. Salt then, composed of the elements sodium and chloride. As a compound it is a type of crystal, cubic, with atoms bounded together in a process called ionic bonding. When sodium and chlorine are combined, sodium atoms each lose an electron, forming a cation (Na+), and the chlorine atoms each gain an electron to form an anion (Cl-). These ions are then attracted to each other in a 1:1 ratio to form sodium chloride.

However I am assuming a basic chemistry lesson is not only what you were after so to borrow from a debate I have already completed:

Light, comes in discrete parcels (photons). When photons have enough energy, they spontaneously decay into a particle and an antiparticle. An antiparticle is the exact opposite of the corresponding particle. For example, a proton has charge +e, so an antiproton has charge -e. We observe this today. Gamma rays have enough energy to create measurable electron-anti-electron pairs (the anti-electron is a positron). The photon is just one of a class of particles, labelled bosons that decay in this manner. Many of the bosons from just after the big bang were energetic enough that they could decay into much more massive particles such as protons ( E=mc^2, so to make a particle with a large mass m, you need a boson with a high energy E). The mass in the universe came from such decays.

Protons and neutrons are particles called baryons. Baryogenesis is the creation of baryons. The current understanding of particle physics (called the standard model) , tells us that nowadays the number of baryons is nearly constant, with only a small variation due to quantum mechanical tunnelling. In the early universe, the temperatures were much higher, therefore this tunnelling was commonplace and a large number of baryons would have been created. Electroweak refers to the time period in question. When the electromagnetic and weak forces were decoupling from a single force into 2 separate forces between 10^-12 and 10^-6 seconds after the big bang, (matter -antimatter asymmetry probably would have formed towards the end). An additional source of baryons is due to leptons (another type of particle, including electrons) can be converted into baryons at this epoch.

In our universe, the first few minutes were hot and dense enough for protons and neutrons (baryons) to fuse to create deuterium, helium and lithium. These elements have density, density produces gravity, and gravity draws other elements together, which in turn increases density/gravity i.e. star making super factories. At later times, stars converted the gaseous products of the Big Bang into heavier elements and returned the processed elements back to the interstellar medium via stellar winds and supernova explosions. Subsequently, the metal-enriched interstellar gas was transported to the inter-galactic medium by galactic outflows, gravitational interactions, and mergers of galaxies. Heavier elements condense into heavier ones still and so on till we have the full gamut.

I am assuming the second half of the question refers to life from inorganic compounds. Forgive me if I assume too much, but at any rate, education is fun. :D

The process is called Abiogenesis, inorganic compounds transforming into organic compounds. Yes we have/do experiments that show that very process occurring - the Miller-Urey experiments being some of the most famous.

The pre-biotic environment was largely composed of basic fatty acids; under a range of pH they form vesicles which are permeable to small organic compounds (so we don't need protein carriers at all). A vesicle encountering any free fatty acids will incorporate these (growth is driven by thermodynamics). As vesicles grow their form changes - surface area exceeds volume, these forms are easily broken apart by weak mechanical forces (movement, collision e.g. waves). During mechanical division, no content of the vesicle is lost i.e. from simple fatty acids we have growth and division. Again we look to the pre-biotic environment and we have basic nucleotides (we don't need RNA or DNA ones) some such as Phosphoramidate spontaneously polymerise. Monomers will base pair with a single stranded template and self ligate (tie off). These too can polymerise to form new templates or expand existing ones. There are no special forces here, this is just basic chemistry. Once self polymerisation occurs within a vesicle, it becomes trapped. High temperatures such as from thermal vents, which would have been more frequent, separate polymer strands and stretch vesicle membranes (increasing permeability) allowing additional monomers to enter. The vesicles movement changes according to basic currents, cools, polymerisation can occur again and you have a repetitive cycle.

A polymer due to surrounding ions will increase ionic pressure, stretching the vesicle membrane, again through simple thermodynamics. An encountered vesicle with fewer polymers and can be absorbed. We now have the first basic competition for existence. A vesicle that contains a polymer that can self replicate faster, will grow and divide faster and become dominant. We have evolution.

Original genomes contained no information (they were random). Any mutation that advanced rate of polymer replication would be selected for i.e. mutation plus natural selection accounts for increased information. From there it is easy to follow that any production of a mutation that allowed for increased or easier replication became dominant - any polymer that showed basic enzyme activity would be favoured until we eventually arrive at basic nucleotides that can both store information and function as enzymes (like basic RNA does). Early polymer enzymes would synthesise lipids from other molecules in the environment. We now have vesicles that can eat, grow, replicate, mutate, contain information...and evolve.

http://www.pnas.org...
http://www.cosis.net...

"Evolution, though it claims to be absolutely scientific cannot answer these questions."

It never attempts to claim it does. They are separate theories.

" it not much more logical, and does it not fill in more gaps to believe that there is an all-powerful GOD who created everything according to His design?"

Contradiction - It cannot be both logical and require faith.

"Consider this. We do not and have not seen new animals due to evolution..."

The most basic example is mutations of bacteria that evolve. This is why your doctor instructs you to take the full course of antibiotics even if you feel better.

We have evidence of spontaneous mutation of traits as well, for example:

http://www.newscientist.com...

The links below provide a list of newly speciated organisms. These are not new species in the sense of discovery, but clearly speciated from existing organisms. Plants do it as a manner of reproduction normally, e.g. ploidy changes, chromosome shifts. Fish, birds, insects, lizards etc - there are many examples.

http://www.talkorigins.org...
http://biomed.brown.edu...
http://www.pbs.org...

On an amusing note, creationist websites quite clearly tell their adherents not to use the "no new species" argument.

"If christianity is true.."

My opponent has just conceded his faith. We must applaud because by his own reasoning his belief is ended. Ah I lark; this will change nothing.