Yeah, you would waste of all about 2 minutes (actually, you could also just look at my own debate stream, as both posts are still on the first page). It probably would have taken less time than you cut-and-pasting your old response and typing new lines, especially since my response already gave you my answer to your questions. All that being said, I guess I don't mind re-posting in since that's just two more points for my side of the debate. Check back in 5 minutes...

Part II:

Right off the bat there’s a huge problem with this article: Its 86 years out-of-date. Unlike religion, science if a self-correcting and dynamic school of thought that changes in accordance with the evidence. In the time since this was written, we have gained considerable knowledge of the role of DNA, demonstrated and observed abiogenic formation of organic molecules, revised our “age of Earth” estimates from 200 million years to over 4.5 billion, discovered continental drift and much, much more. Many of his points are rendered obsolete by more recent and accurate observations.

That being said, I undertook the challenge of focusing my attacks primarily on the shear logic and validity of his points as pure arguments regardless of current knowledge. This was more difficult, but even here I found many of his points to be lacking. Because the new information is important I will reference it, but only briefly, in terms of theories or key words, and put those points in (parenthesis). I will spend a little more time with the more logic-based arguments, although everything will be relatively brief and concise. Feel free to request elaboration and citation (I will not be providing links at this time, but ask for any that you want when you respond).

Preamble to Part 1:

“Any scientific theory or hypothesis must be proved first possible, then probable, then certain. To be a possible theory, it must be reconcilable with many facts; to be a probable theory, it must be reconcilable with many more; to be a certain and proven theory, it must be reconcilable with all the facts.”

Before his first point he has already displayed a misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is. All theories are probable; none are meant to be facts or laws. They describe why facts and laws are the way they are, and are as strong as the supporting evidence. A theory can be disproved, to be sure. But proving it requires absolute knowledge of everything, and we don’t have that, so the work horse of the theory is the evidence.

1. Population of the World:

(The population of the world hit 3 billion in 1960, then 6 billion right around 2000. This 40-year doubling time is about 1/4 as long as his estimate suggests it should be.)

Population growth rates, and therefore doubling time, are reliant on multiple factors: carrying capacity, infant mortality and life expectancy being the 3 big ones. CC and LE were much lower in prehistoric times, while IM was much higher. These factors put us at subsistence level, massively hampering our growth rate. The development of agriculture helped raise CC massively, and the onset of civilization changed IM and LE in our favor. The idea that a specific group would line up with overall average isn’t too surprising since the 3 factors were roughly congruent throughout recorded history until the last century or two. However the math of prehistoric man would be quite different, (just as the math for the last century is also very different from the preceding 8000 or so years.)

2. Unity of Languages

Some languages are tonal some are not. Some have completely different sentence structures than most others. Some rely heavily on sounds that are completely absent in others. On average, it takes 7-10 years for a person to master a language. This is unity? More directly to his point, languages and dialects within languages “evolve” at different rates for in different locations and for a wide variety of reasons, completely nullifying his constant rate conjecture. Yes, there was probably a common language, but not any time recently.

3 & 4: Religion and Place of the Origin of Man

Both of these simply confirm a common origin of man. Evolution doesn’t refute that, in fact, it relies on that. He made the same point with languages, but at lest attempted to show how they couldn’t be so “unified” in such a long period of time. Here he doesn’t even try, so these points are irrelevant to his case and do nothing to dispute evolution.

5. Civilization

Civilization developed independently of the Fertile Crescent in Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and China, and nomads were almost everywhere else. There was more than one center of civilization. Besides, nothing about evolution requires that there were many, although that is how it played out by circumstance. Again he’s making the rather odd assumption that evolutionists don’t believe in common ancestry, but common ancestry is at the heart of evolution.

6. Mendellian Inheritance Laws

The pea plants in Mendel’s experiments didn’t change species, they simply expressed different alleles, and those varieties already existed in nature. He was doing artificial selection that helped him focus specific phenotypes into specific groups, which is pretty similar to why humans have different races but are all the same species. The idea that all of our recessive genes would kick in simultaneously and cause us to revert to a previous species demonstrates a big misunderstanding of Mendel’s experiment (and has since been proven to be impossible by genetics. We have also learned that some of the major evolutionary forces ((gene flow, genetic drift, mutation, random mating)) can extinguish some recessive genes, but this wasn’t known or widely believed by evolutionists in Rev. Williams’ time.)

7. Biometry

Truth is, I don’t know enough about biostatistics to properly refute this or analyze the validity of it. So I’ll let this one stand. Onward

8. No New Species Now

(Current estimate of age of life is about 3.8 billion years, not 60 million, massively altering calculations.)

Much like some of the previous arguments, his obsession with averages totally ignores reality. Different lines evolve in different amounts of time, (and different periods and geographical locales foster different rates of evolution) so his average and doubling times are useless in this application. Also the idea that not a single new species has been named is not supported. We are constantly finding new species of plants, animal and fungus, and this has always been the case. Although I grant that very few of these are brand new organisms, his premise is based on a huge fallacy. And even by his time there were a few recorded cases of speciation. (And many more since then.)

9. There is no 9.

10. Age of the Earth

(Geology couldn’t really do anything right until the Continental Drift Theory was incorporated. Almost every single theory he mentions, the ones he refutes and the ones he supports have all been proven wrong by modern geology. Same goes with the Sun’s age, which is supportable by modern astronomy.)

Even if his numbers were correct, the assumption that because the amount of time it takes to form a river is less than age of the Earth points to a younger Earth is invalid. Surface features, especially rivers, change over time and even the geologists of his time knew this.

11. Geology and History

This is a random collection of arguments. Some I have already responded to. As far as the others:

Piltdown man: we know and admit that this was a hoax. Christians have also manufactured some hoaxes of their own. If it Piltdown the only option we had, this would be damning. But there were a few others in his time .

(Pithecanthropus is now understood to be a population of homo erectus. Many more specimens of this population have been found. Likewise, many new specimens of Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis have been uncovered.)

The number of remains for “missing link” species was automatically lowered by his presumption that most of them were extinct apes, thus relying on bias. (Plus, many, many new ones have been uncovered.)

"In the year 1806, the French Institute enumerated not less than 80 geological theories which were hostile to the Scriptures; but not one of these theories is held today."

Irrelevant. In science, progress is attained through airing out all possibilities and discarding the incorrect ones. Failures of the past speak nothing of the present. Unless of course, one doesn’t adapt one’s theories in the face of new information, like religion. Also, this comment was taken completely out of context, as it was said as a preface to an argument supporting uniformitarianism.

“All the bacilli remain the same microscopic species, even those too microscopic to be seen or isolated.”

If you can’t see it, you can’t know this. (We now can see them changing, both genetically and morphologically.)

(There are plenty other archaeopteryx fossils now, as well as few other dino-bird transitionals. They have several skeletal features in common with birds, but also many that no birds have, but some dinosaurs do.)

12. Geographical distribution

(Continental drift.)

13. God not Absent or Inactive

It is funny how, after extolling that God is all-powerful, he seems to imply that God is not capable of using evolution as a process. Later, he confuses scientific law with the more colloquial usage of the word. The remainder of this section translates as “Life is complex and impressive; therefore God.” Which is only an answer to someone who is too lazy to investigate.

14. Chance or Design?

More of the same. (The eye argument is rendered useless in the face of the fact that many creatures get by just fine and dandy without eyes that are as complex as ours. Several engineering companies use evolutionary theory in computer programs to design, “by chance”, structures and systems that are more efficient than those that human designers have made. Just like in nature, they quickly discard the poor ones and watch the remaining ones improve gradually over generations, but with computer programs that we now have, we can sort through billions of years of evolution in a few days.)

15. “Evolution Atheistic”

More of his “God of the Gaps” drivel. But more to the point: evolution defies strict literal interpretations of the Bible, but so do many Christians. Many theologians have pointed out that many sections of the Bible, especially the OT, were obvious parables meant to give a description of somewhat abstract concepts. Further, many were borrowed from pre-existing beliefs. But aside from contradicting the Bible, evolution says absolutely nothing about God. All of naturalistic science says “no comment” when God comes up. If some Christians and atheists decide that evolution puts God out of the picture, than they are creating a false dichotomy that evolution itself is not related to.

16. Brute Descent Impossible

The brain growth math, once again ignores the fact that different species evolve at different rates. Numerous factors dictate the speed and nature of the evolutionary process, and each species responds to these factors in unique ways.

17. Eight Impassable Gulfs

Actually, he lists 9. This guy really doesn’t do well with the number 9 apparently.

(1: It has been proven repeatedly that organic molecules can be formed in numerous different ways an are abundant in space. Regardless, this isn’t evolution, its abiogenesis.)

(2-8: All documented to some extent or the other in the fossil record.) (We know now that there was MUCH more time available to pass these gulfs than he presumes.)

9: Existence of “soul” never proven.

18: Ancestral Monkeys and Apes

(Common ancestor now known.)

It is very clear in this passage that the author finds the idea of man being a primate to be highly unpleasant, and he makes no attempt to cover up his bias. But just because you don’t like what science is telling you, you don’t just toss it out the window. If a doctor tells you that you have an incurable disease, you wouldn’t like that either, but that dislike doesn’t make it untrue. He specifically asks “where is the comfort or gain?” But evolution is not about comfort, and the gain is in the attainment of learning, just like all science.

As far as why monkeys and their ilk are not currently becoming human, we shouldn’t expect them to. Each line ended up on its own path, with separate environmental factors and sets of DNA, and the sum total of adaptations aren’t expected to create the same result. It is like asking, “why haven’t all cats become tigers?” But a tiger wouldn’t do as well in a lion’s environment as it does in its own home, and has accrued numerous personal adaptations from which the others build. (We now know how this works genetically), but this was shown in the morphological changes already observed in his time.

Then he goes on to cherry-pick some external differences and completely ignores that we share numerous traits with primates that are only found in primates. Yes there are differences, but that’s like saying that because my cousin is a short red-head and I am a tall blonde, we can’t be related, even though most people who see us together see the familial resemblance with ease.

19: Staggering speculation.

Well religion has some pretty staggering speculations itself. But, I find it funny that the things he’s looking for (like a plant cross-breeding with an animal) are no less bizarre and speculative than what he’s fighting against, and show his apparent ignorance in what evolution actually is. He seems to have filled in the gaps in his research with far-fetched notions intended to point out how ludicrous he finds the concept to be, without realizing that the evolutionists do not support these notions anyway. This is common with creationists, but not exactly supportive of their points once one actually researches the premise.

20: Sex

Some of his information is actually correct, but he falls flat when he assumes that sexual reproduction occurred in one fell swoop, or that the animals just invented it. It happened in a process of refining, some of which was kept on by certain lines, others were altered and promoted within those lines, and still others failed and the line went extinct. Which is precisely what has been argued since Darwin’s day, our good Reverend simply willfully ignores this to justify his points of dispute.

21: Man hairless and tailless:

(Phrenology was heavily disputed in his time, and has since been totally discredited.) Further, he seems to be totally ignorant of the fact that some lines are more prone to baldness than others, that some men do indeed have disgustingly hairy backs, and that apes in general have declining tails compared to arboreal monkeys. Also, even in his time there was the known phenomena of people occasionally being born with tails.

Part III:

22. Hybrids

(Viable hybrids are indeed rare. Generally this actually helps promote speciation by forcing the species to go off in different directions. There are a few exceptions, especially in ring species, where new formation of species does occur, but this is one of the more rare methods of speciation and only works if the closely related species haven’t been fully separated.)

As far as the differentiation between Kingdom, genera, phyla, etc., these are all rather arbitrary terms created by man for the purpose of organization. There is no separate process for each one, the main delineations iare time and the concentration of factors molding the specific group. (If we needed to have separate methods for each level, we would also need separate sets of DNA for each level, but one singular set is all we get and ends up being all we need. As AronRa says, “If it is possible to walk 20 feet, it is possible to walk 20 miles.” The difference is in the time taken and the change in scenery.)

23. The instinct of Animals

His quoting of Darwin is not well carried out here. He basically just bulldozes past the points made by Darwin with the cry of “but it is so impressive what honeybees do,” a point which Darwin himself concedes. But once again, nature being impressive is not really relevant here. Life works, and evolution particularly favors the special traits that provide advantage, fine-tuning them over time. Also, he seems to supporting Lamarck’s view of adaptation, something which had already been thoroughly discredited by the 1920s.

(A fair amount of genetic research has not only shown how animal instincts evolve, but even the more complex variations of instinct displayed by humans.)

24. Special Creation: Genesis 1

Lots of problems here, but as you said, we are talking about evolution. We can come back to this if we want to debate the veracity of the Bible. For now, I will move on, but am happy to return to this later, or in a different debate.

25. Analogy; Mathematics, Laws

“There is no evolution in the science of mathematics. There is no change or growth or development.”

Apparently he has never heard of Calculus. That is EXACTLY what calculus demonstrates, and the reason why all scientific fields employ calculus is because they need to in order to make proper sense of the evidence. And those logarithms that he so loves turn up heavily in calculus.

As far as physical laws, yes those themselves don’t change. But their presence creates a very wide range of possibility depending on what they are being applied to, while simultaneously setting certain boundaries for every object. The rule of cause and affect determine which of the finite realm of possibilities is expressed within a certain object in certain conditions. The interactions between various cause-effect relationships change the range of possibilities continuously, and frequently in a temporal fashion. Everything that we have ever examined, even the universe itself, has shown signs of change, and ripples of change radiate out from all events, influencing the nature of anything in contact. There is not a single field of science that would work if this principle wasn’t true, and even religions employ this concept to varying degrees. EXISTENCE IS CHANGE.

26. Desperate arguments

Every field has people in it that say ludicrous things that are not supportable by evidence. These statements can be ridiculed and put to bed, while our attention focuses on the more sensible and supported arguments made. One form of “desperate argument” is to imply that the lunatic fringe speaks for the whole, which is all that Rev. Williams is trying to do here.

27. 20 Objections Admitted

So many of these are not linked to their specific sources, most our out-of-date, and at least of few are heavily out of context. This is called quote mining, and is a devious ploy used to attempt to add credibility to one’s claims. I have already invested too much time in this, and am barely more than half-way done, to respond to each of these, especially since I don’t know the context in which most were said.

Part II: Evidence answered

29: Paleontology, 30: Confessed collapse of “Proof.”

I already mentioned the updates in research concerning these species, and admitted that Piltdown was a fraud. No need to go back into this for now. (Much has changed in this field over the last 8+ decades.)

31: Pictures in Caverns

It is true that these pictures are crude, that exact dating in some places is almost impossible, and that speculation is required to interpret what they mean. I don’t have any denial of that. But it is very weak and rarely used supporting evidence at best, so I don’t have any problems letting it stand.

32: Vestigial organs.

He once again ignores the possibility of change that is so intrinsic in evolution. If he didn’t so adamantly refuse this notion, he would see the answer right there in the theory. Basically, part of the quality of an organ is related to the environmental factors involved. People and animals that descend from Himalayan stock have slightly different (more efficient) lungs than those whose ancestry has always been at or near sea level. In this case, the specific organ itself changed, and that’s pretty much the end of the story. But this isn’t always how it works. Significant changes over time and geography can affect the functionality of certain organs, particularly as full speciation occurs. Its basically a change in allocation of chores, some systems take over the roles of others, while others get more specialized. It can get complex, and I’m not sure I’m really trained enough in biology to fully explain it. But I can try to muster up the time to do more research and give a more thorough explanation later, if you desire.

33. Serology, or Blood Tests

This is a pretty interesting subject, and another one for which I am not really knowledgeable enough to make much a comment. But, if I properly understand the point he is trying to make, he is implying that this line of inquiry is inconclusive. If that is true, than fine, we can dump it as supporting evidence for evolution. Considering how conclusive thousands of other lines of evidence supporting evolution, I don’t mind letting go of a few. He can have this point.

34. Embryology

(It is true that at this time, embryology was pretty much at a dead end. The big reason was that we needed to understand and map DNA code first, which was still a few decades away from happening. While it is true that some lines of morphological evidence heavily supported evolution (and still do), there were too many gaps in the understanding that were unbridgeable at the time. But this is no longer the case. Now that we have an idea how genetics works and have developed very sophisticated tools to observe and measure embryonic development processes, embryology has become one of the fastest growing and most sophisticated fields of biology. It has provided a goldmine of evolutionary proof, but has also helped us understand a great variety of diseases and birth defects. The fact that we have used evolutionary principles to find ways to successfully cure or mitigate these conditions shows that evolution corresponds very nicely with reality. This is all new though, so I don’t blame him for not knowing about it. But it works and is being very heavily investigated as we speak. Most of the primary scientific supporters of evolution these days come from this field.)

Part III: The Soul

35: The Origin of the Soul

Not a shred of evidence here that the soul even exists, just contempt for those who believe that the vague concepts ascribed to the vague notion have physical components instead of spiritual ones (and to this date, psychology, neurology and biology have failed to find much, if anything, that cannot be ascribed to the chemical, hormonal and energetic processes observed in each field.) Further, religions have conflicting and sometimes mutually exclusive notions of what a soul really is and how it functions. None can draw from any authority except their holy books and esoteric philosophy.

36: Personality

Personality is a very complex concept, one that is formed both by nature and nurture. (Quite a bit can now be explained by neurology.) Even in his time it should have been obvious that personalities change within a person over their lifetime, and that different people have different responses to certain kind of events. This indicates that at least part of it is not hardwired, thus not necessarily reliant on evolution. And if he thinks that animals are devoid of personality, I argue that he never had cats or dogs. And his closing comments on this section are just tedious reiterations of his obvious inability to grasp how evolution is proposed. Its rather sad to see him so passionately argue against a concept that he simply can’t grasp. Which is rather common in this debate.

37: Intellect, Emotions and Will

Pretty much a combination of my responses to the above two points. By identifying these things as spiritual, he isn’t even allowing room for physical origins (although, to be fair, physical evidence for such things didn’t really exist in his time. Now we have bushels of it.) Further he ignores that some animals do display intellect, emotion and even willpower. He clearly hasn’t worked closely with animals.

38. Abstract reason

(Now that we are successfully establishing lines of communication with primates and cetaceans, we are aware that they do have the capacity for reason. Higher species of birds are also apparently capable of it. The sophistication is somewhat less, but then so are their brains. Also, the developmental capacity of reason is molded by how the animal lives and the situations it has to deal with. Cetaceans don’t really have the ability to develop ways of building things, but since their power to manipulate the environment is so limited, this is hardly surprising. They can, however, solve puzzles and make intuitive assessments of the environment. Crows and their relatives can too.)

But there is more to it than pure physiology. The basic capacity for reason is inherent within us, but the amount of fine-tuning we give it advances through the generations. And mostly, it happens in states of incremental development. Just as a child has to learn basic math to understand algebra, so too does a society have to learn how to harness fire before building an internal combustion engine. It took us a while to get the ball rolling, but the development of society spend it up immensely. And it continues to.

39: Conscience

Sigh, here we go again. (Once again, explained by neurology, with new evidence being gathered almost daily.) And some animals do display signs of a conscience. He just ignores it flatly because he can’t let himself realize that almost everything that man does has an equivelent in the animal kingdom. And all of his questions about “why don’t animals have this trait”, even if they were true, could be reversed by asking “Why doesn’t man have wings?” Different creatures went on different paths, and adapted accordingly due to numerous factors, the gestalt of which were mostly personal.

40: Spirituality

The short and quick explanation goes like this: Man has always been curious and clever, more so than most other animals. We also have an apparently distinctive trait: We don’t like letting questions go unanswered. In the childhood of humanity, few things were understood, and our ancestors could not abide that. Investigations were made, but we simply didn’t have the tools to answer all of our questions. So we started making them up. Religion served to comfort us, and allowed us to focus on the task at hand. It provided answers that made sense at the time, but generally only dealt with questions that didn’t actually NEED to be answered in order to guarantee survival of the species. It was an intellectual placeholder that made us more comfortable in our ignorance. But as we emerge into a less ignorant species, we come to realize just how incorrect some spiritual answers are, while others are inconclusive or can be dealt with just as easily in secular philosophy. Non-religious spirituality is pretty much just a warm fuzzy, but religion is frequently used to establish control over a population, and as support for power from religious leaders. It is a result of certain activities intrinsic to our species existence (although we now have some evidence that Neanderthals may have had religion as well!)

41: Hope for Immortality

A sad weakness in our species that has nothing to do with evolution.

42: Sin, 43: Redemption

Tools used to keep society in check. Fairly valuable concepts that actually have secular counterparts in law and personal interactions. But treated purely as religion, they do a better job of keeping religious leaders in power than in actually solving any of humanities problems.

44: Evolution aids infidelity and sin

“Many evolutionists frankly declare that the purpose of evolution is to destroy belief in God, or his active control of his creation.” And if I were to meet such a person I would have to give them a stern talking to. Evolution is not a moral code nor an attack on moral codes. (The basis for morality is now known to be physical, but that still doesn’t mean that evolution discourages moral behavior. Indeed, quite the opposite, as morality is beneficial to the survival of social species, and so it is actually good to have it around. But we don’t need religion to implement it.) As far as his attacks on atheist societies, these would be just as relevant as attacks on theist societies who have gone to war over deities. Evil exists on both sides of the theistic fence. But evolutionary theory has little to say about it, as it is based on a specific realm of observation. It is a wholly different subject, and if the religious want to believe in evolution, they are more than welcome to.

45. Evolution Wars with Religion

His heavily biased tirades and rhetoric are wearing thin. Once again, evolution doesn’t directly comment on religion. It simply makes observations. It doesn’t refute God, it simply says that if God does happen to exist, evolution is the tool he used to create the variety of life on Earth. Almost all of the earliest researchers in the subject were Christian, and most of them stayed that way. They didn’t see a conflict. Sure, it does seem to refute a literal interpretation of the Bible, but many Christians don’t take the Bible literally. They can get what they need out of it even if it is “merely” a collection of parables. This “war” we are seeing is waged by Creationists who are empowered only by emotion and fear that if the Bible is untrue, than so is God. The evolutionists don’t operate on fear, simply observation.

46: Camouflage of Terms:

Evolution: As a basic English word, evolution simply means “change of time.” In the scientific usage, it is further refined to mean change in a specific direction. The Biological definition of evolution refers to change in species over time. And finally the Biological Theory of Evolution is the theory that attempts to explain how it happens. It is rather unfortunate that the English language has so many words with multiple definitions, but that is just how our language developed. And indeed, most creationists themselves can’t distinguish between all the words. Not our fault.

Science in this context is basically short hand for Modern Naturalistic Science. And he still doesn’t know what a scientific theory is. No wonder he is so confused.

Religion: (I don’t know what evolutionists in his time were saying, but the modern evolutionist is quick to point out that evolution is most certainly NOT religion. Indeed, we have to tell that to creationists themselves, repeatedly.)

Laws and Nature: He’s the one giving credit to God for these things, not the evolutionist.

Modernism and Liberal: Not really relevant to the subject

Rationalist: Simply a person who relies on evidence and logic for their assertions, instead of faith.

47: What are We to Believe?

That is up to the individual. Evolution provides evidence. It doesn’t have any direct comment on anything outside of that evidence.

48-50:

A bunch of rhetoric and reiterations. 49 was just a wrap-up of the rest of the paper, 48 and 50 are just tactics for keeping people in line with Christianity. Not particularly relevant to this conversation.

Appendix: Beating the Piltdown Man horse to death.

I didn’t read the next article, as it is even older and appears to be fairly rhetorical.

Yes I went through all of this very quickly and not in great detail. I am not interested in writing a book. But I will happily zoom in on specific subjects contained herein (but not every one please. That could take years!) Feel free to mention any specifics to focus our discussion :)

First of all, stop down-voting my arguments you dipshit. I have far more points than you and I can afford to down-vote every argument you ever make, so grow up and fuck off. I have struck against five of your arguments and, upon discovering that you have consistently down-voted other people's arguments as fast as you can across multiple debates, I have reported you to the site authorities, who have the power to ban your account for such behaviour. I think I've made my point abundantly clear.

1. Occam's razor.

That concept has no pertinence to this discussion. It deals with the number of assumptions required for a model or hypothesis to work. I'm not making assumptions, I am merely detailing a theory which explains observed natural phenomena, and is supported almost universally by scientists in the relevant field.

I have explained that it is impossible for this stage-by-stage development to occur

I have already explained that your assertions are pure nonsense. The refinement of an already existing feature such as the tongue, foot or beak is not impossible. And redundant systems are not always removed, as seen in the human appendix.

yet I see no attempt to describe this process

You are refuting evolution. If you need me to explain it to you, why on Earth do you consider your knowledge of it sufficient to refute it?

explain how it does not violate natural selection from your perspective.

Your assertion that it does has already been dealt with. I have shown you that redundant systems are not always removed. Beyond that, you've made no mention of natural selection.

It is an irrefutable fact that the processes observed in laboratories contain numerous errors

Experimental error is accounted for, which is why scientists run series of experiments. You're an idiot if you think that experimental error makes experimentation useless.

before you consider speaking about diseases ability to adapt to medications, that it easily explained as an adaptation

Right, I see the problem here. You don't understand what evolution is. It's a process by which organisms change over time by making adaptations (you only seem to take notice if I embolden the text) which allow them to survive and propagate in a particular environment.

Indeed, viruses such as the flu strains that circulate each year easily mutate and, in that process, can produce beneficial protection for themselves.

That's called evolution.

So a question inevitably arises: how did life originate on Earth?

Life is, at a fundamental level, a self-replicating molecule. There are numerous hypotheses on what the first molecule was (phospholipids, or two fatty acids, a glycerol and a phosphate being one of the most popular), but none have been substantiated.

Bottom line is, the answer is a work in progress. That doesn't immediately sunstantiate your "MAGIC" answer, however.