Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-28826152-20161221223809/@comment-27388204-20170105022648

@Greyhound, tbh, I went the other way. My parents were atheists all along, but they played on with the beliefs I held from attending a religious school until I was about 9. The reason they broke it to me was because my fear of hell was driving them crazy. Tbh, I was practically the opposite then than I am now. Scared of bugs, with a particular hate for centipedes, religious, and very short for my age. I learned about evolution first, and found it very plausible, and imagined that it could indeed happen without an intelligent creator pulling the strings. Natural selection is a phenomena that is actually quite easy to explain. In the wild, organisms would breed. They would produce offspring, which would take their place in the ecosystem and try to stay alive. Because of genetic variation through sexual reproduction, a method of reproduction devisied in the Edicaran period, first seen in a worm like creature called  Funisia, there was difference present between offspring of an individual brood. The swapping of genes that happened through sexual reproduction ensured that the next generation had some variation in it. For example, let's look at ccolour variants. The centipede Ethmostigmus rubripes has many colour variations, ranging from orange with black bands, through solid green, to brown with blue/yellow legs. Centipedes reproduce through sexual reproduction, and lay broods of up to 40 eggs. Due to diversity in the gene pool, variations among those offspring are present, so you might get some that are more green, some that are more yellow (I know from personal experience breeding this species). A desert environment better suits the yellower variants, and the darker ones are better adapted for forest environments. In addition, the harsh climate of the desert means that natural selection will favour hardier individuals. As such, even though they are still not different enough to be considered seperate species, the orange/yellow banded desert centipedes are larger and hardier than the green/brown/black forest variants. That doesn't need a creator. All it needs is genetic diversity, and different habitats/microhabitats.

Now, one event that questioned the evolutionary theory through natural selection was the Cambrian explosion. Then, a massive amount of new species appeared on the scene, and people were sure of intelligent design being the only possibility for the sudden increase in biodiversity. Here's the scientific explanation. Before the Cambrian, some ancestral arthropods took up a predatory lifestyle. Among those, the Anomalocarids were the most formidable predators, preying on the other aquatic fauna with ease. As a result, the presence of a new apex predator triggered an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey. Animals that survived the predator purge were likely better equipped, and so passed on those effective genes to the next generation. Sight was a huge advantage, so eyes became more and more complex. One creature, Opabinia, had five of them. Then there was defense such as armour plating and spines. Hallucigenia and Wiwaxia were both well defended creatures. Today, some individuals/subspecies of a certain species have slightly distinct quirks which may or may not assist them in the evolutionary game. Over time (don't underestimate how much time there was), defenses became more elaborate and effective.

So independent evolution is explained, now I'll go to how Earth and the first life was formed. Gravity pulls objects together, and always into a spherical shape around the centre of gravity. That explains planets. Earth was lucky in that it was the right size and distance form the Sun to harbour life in the future. Then, our future moon, another proto-planet Theia, collided with the Earth, causing it to spin, and on an axis (the reason for the season) .When water appeared on Earth, transported as ice by comets, it remained liquid due to the cooling caused by the Earth's new spin, and cooled the Earth further. There, life could form. Amino acids, the building blocks of life, can be created in a simulation of the conditions of the early Earth today. Now, I've got to go get some lunch for myself, but here's a link detailing the formation of the first cells. After that, evolution would have given birth to biodiversity. As a side note, regarding your point about a plane forming out of a hurricane, there is one key difference. Throw two plane components together at high velocity and all they'll do is crash. But throw two chemicals together at the correct velocity and high temperature (and temperature was very high back then), and you get a compound.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/