"No, nobody has proven that abiogenesis happened and that's where life came from."

"the fact that a few decades of research have not yet been able to show what is theorized to have happened over the course of hundreds of millions of years [vertical speciation] is not terribly surprising. We obviously haven't figured it out yet."

"there are lots of things that we have theories about that we've never observed."

"Maybe we'll find them, or maybe we'll end up with new theories."

"The point is that just because it hasn't been seen or figured out yet doesn't mean it won't be"

"[Me:] There's as much empirical evidence for a giant bunny hatching the universe as Darwin's Creation Myth . . . [You:] Or for the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the giant turtle or for Zeus or any other god. Not a shred for any of them."

"Again, we know that abiogenesis happened. It had to have happened. At one time there was no life on earth. Now there is. We just don't know how it happened"

"since we haven't yet observed this process in its entirety"

"What science is attempting to do is determine how life can form from non-life. Assuming it finds some way that this can happen, and assuming that the conditions are similar to what we believe they were like around the time life formed on earth, that would be a solid theory."

"because we haven't yet figured it out"

"So, no, science isn't going to provide absolute proof that a specific method of creating life from non-life is how life began on earth. Rest easy knowing that."

"I suspect they'll eventually be able to lay out, in excruciating detail, exactly how life can arise from non-life, or possibly more than one way. This won't prove that that's how it originally happened, because you can't prove something like that"

"that's why they're working on experiments to get them closer and closer to being able to figure out the kind of scenario that could bring about life, at which time they'll be able to observe it. We'll never be able to observe the original origin of life"

"nobody is asserting anything as "true", and specifically science is not addressing the origin of man, just a possible way for life to arise from non-life. This would support a theory of how life may have arisen on earth. It doesn't prove that it actually happened that way."

"That's how science works though. They don't pretend to have all the answers [to abiogenesis by only random, natural processes] from the start . . . So, while they don't have all the answers"

"Are you talking about abiogenesis here again? I've already explained that . . . There's no real consensus on which hypothesis for how life began is correct"

[You:] How is suggesting that you may (note that the statement is conditional) hold a belief held by many Christians considered an ad-hominem attack?

{Me:] It's not addressing my argument, but me.

[You:] Simply addressing the possibility that you may hold a certain belief common to Christians is certainly not an attack. I'm not sure why you'd perceive it that way.

On the one hand there is the question of whether or not modern organisms have evolved from older ancestral organisms or whether modern species are continuing to change over time. On the other hand there are questions about the mechanism of the observed changes... how did evolution occur? Biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact.