Evolution Simplified

Your post really seems to be an outline of natural selection. There are mountains of evidence for natural selection. And while natural selection is a key component of evolution, it doesn't address some key issues that the larger theory attempts to.For example: How did the first species come about? Your outline doesn't really answer this question at all. It only deals with species diverging and becoming more complex over time. Natural selection doesn't answer this question in general, since it too is about species diverging and filling in environmental niches. The ToE attempts to do so. In my estimation, that's a very important question and a very crucial part of the ToE.We have evidence that life existed on this planet more than 3.8+ billions years ago. Complex single-celled microbes no less! Prior to 3.9 billion years ago the earth was extremely harsh (according to the best evidence at any rate). It only after that that we really had oceans and a solid crust. Basically, as soon as earth could possibly support life as we know it, there it was! This raises a lot of very interesting questions. And I don't care what side of the argument you fall on, if this doesn't totally amaze and fascinate you then you need to find another topic of interest. (Sort of like the proof for the infinitude of primes... if you don't find it to be a thing of utter beauty then number theory may not be the right topic for you.)References:Minik T. Rosing and Robert Frei, “U-Rich Archaean Sea-Floor Sediments from Greenland”Indications of >3700 Ma Oxygenic Photosynthesis,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 6907 (2003): 1-8.J. William Schopf, Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earth’s Earliest Fossils (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3.There are also some real complexities that you leave out of your discussion that become quite irksome to explain when you know more about genetics. I guess I can't fault a one page summary with leaving out that level of detail.But I do think it would be more accurate to term your discussion as "natural selection simplified." (If you disagree, please point out which parts of your summary you would not include under natural selection.)Allow me to applaud you for providing actual content by the way.

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The larger theory does not attempt to explain this.

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- referring to the origin of life...I find this fascinating. Consider this quote from Menand:

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Darwin wanted to establish... that the species ” including human beings ” were created by, and evolve according to, processes that are entirely natural, chance-generated, and blind.

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To show this you have to show abiogenesis (I can't think of another option anyway). I've always assumed that was part of the ToE.At the very least the ToE has to include the first form of "life." And for the above statement to hold true, it should mesh with what we learn about abiogenesis. If life is that eager to start from bare chemicals then how hard can it be? (Ok, ok... I might be exaggerating a little.)

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it either means that life gets started quite easily, or that someone stepped in. considering that right now we cannot prove (or disprove the second), and that abiogenesis is looking like a real answer, then perhaps life does get started easily.

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Hmm, mayhaps we are not so unique after all.

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It seems to me that is one possiblity. I can think of three off the top of my head:1) Outside intervention at ~3.8 billions years ago. (This wraps a lot of possibilities into one.)
2) Life is "likely" and easily "erupts" given the "right" conditions. (Which raises the question why?)
3) Life is "unlikely," but developed in at least one case. (Which raises the question why?)(Ok, technically I can think of others but, IMO, they are exceedingly remote and I'm not going to list them.)I find #3 unlikely but definitely possible. What if we find that life needs conditions X to evolve. What if we find that, given much more knowledge than we have now, that the chance life to begin given those conditions during the life time of a sun is 1/Y. What if we find the # of planets in the universe that meets the conditions specified by X are Z and (1/Y)*Z is not so incredibly small? Not the most interesting possibility but I could buy it.

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There is a thrid possiblity. The way we knew it could 'support' life was that life happened. It could be that it could have supported life earlier, but none happened at that time.

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I grew up on science fiction novels so the idea that very different life forms could exist (like ones that could live in the clouds of jupiter or on the surface of a neutron star, etc.) is not foriegn to me. But it's one of those conjectures that has absolutely no evidence. And we all know that proving a negative is difficult. I'm going to make some assumptions about "life" until I have evidence to the contrary. First, that it's carbon based and, second, that it needs liquid water and oxygen. Yeah, yeah... I've become fairly skeptical in my old age. Provide evidence to the contrary or deal with it. (And I reserve the right to edit that list.)Also, it's not the first time such an argument has been used. Regardless of how unlikely something is (like someone with exactly my DNA make-up coming into existence) if the chances are not zero and it happens, maybe you shouldn't place too much significance on the occurance. But then there's the mathematician in me... if the chances of something happening is exceedingly remote then it's a good bet it won't. And if it did happen, there's probably other factors that increased it's probability that you don't understand (or your model is wrong in other ways).This is why if (1/Y)*Z ended up being < 10^-50 (to use a ridiculously low number) I just wouldn't buy it.

Thank you for that restatement. I believe I got it the first time. The quote from Menand is still interesting and why I assumed otherwise. Yes, yes, I know better now.