Hey Bex,

Just one point:

Quote
I will repeat - Where did evolution arise from, if it does not teach our origins as arising from simplicity? and becoming gradually more complex over long periods of time. If all organisms do not require the dramatic changes that we would have expected from this belief....where did they arise from in the first place?
Evolution - the theory - comes from the observation of evolution - the process - in life around us. It does not start with the origins of life -- that is one of the predictions of the theory, not a founding principle.

Darwin noticed several things from his travels, of the varieties that abounded, but also the differences from place to place. He compared variations to what happens with animal husbandry, and found them similar. He noticed that more young were produced than were needed for a static population, sometimes by vast numbers, and thus that some would have to perish without breeding: there just weren't enough resources for all to live. Thus he saw natural selection as an inevitable result, his "struggle for existence" that pitted organisms against each other as well as against other species.

His insight was that this was sufficient to produce variation & diversity in the same way that artificial selection by humans has done, his "descent with modification" is his formulation of this process. His further insight was that this was enough to explain modern diversity of life from common ancestors.

Evolution starts with today and predicts what the past would be like if it were true: this can then be tested against the fossil record and the genetic record, a process that has been now going on for over 100 years, matching theory wherever information is complete enough, leaving questions unanswered where there are gaps, but in no cases finding contradiction to the theory.

Evolution is simple - the process of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, and the diversification of life after populations have divided into non-gene mixing daughter populations. How much diversification depends on a number of variables, some of them random (weather, climate changes, cataclysmic volcano, earthquake or meteor impacts, etc) and some are due to opportunity -- the ability of an organism to move into a different habitat and the subsequent effect of that ecology on the descendants.

The big question for you though, is what you mean by "dramatic changes" -- as without some real input on this it becomes a game of moving goalposts and backing away from arguments that are advanced.

Is a fin that can be perched on a "dramatic change"?

Is the relocation of the reptilian jaw joint in one set of creatures to a mammilian jaw joint and ear bones in another set of descendant creatures a "dramatic change"?

Is the evolution of something like a dog in size, posture and diet to something like a horse a "dramatic change"?

Is the evolution from a dinosaur to archeopterix to bird a "dramatic change"?

Each of these changes are evident in the fossil record as occurring over extended periods of time and by small individual changes no different than what we see in organisms around us today.

The only thing that is "dramatic" is comparing start to finish. And even that is not much more dramatic than comparing a mature oak tree with an acorn while ignoring any steps of growth in between.

Enjoy.