How does the complexity of life come from a primordial ooze? Impossible. I don't care how much time passes, its never going to happen.
@jim555 , it's really an interesting question and I don't blame you for being incredulous.
I'm an active Christian with a degree in evolutionary biology. I don't use the bio degree much, but I have found that the more I learn about Christianity, biology, and statistics, the more I am able to reconcile a divine creation with science.
I'll try to explain how I understand things. I'm not a good chemist, so my understanding is simplistic. But maybe it will help you or others reading this.
Let's start with some simple things that we can believe in... oil droplets in water. Round shapes that are just a consequence of oil being "hydrophobic"... oil and water don't mix.
Oils and fats are examples of molecules called lipids. Lipids are hydrophobic; they will avoid water. If you stick a phosphate on a lipid, you get what's called a phospholipid. Mix phospholipids in an aqueous solution and they will self-assemble into
lipid bilayers... which are kind of like hollow balls. So provided that you have a source of phospholipids (see link below for theories about how concentrations of those could be formed), you will end up with a bunch of tiny little hollow balls (vesicles)... essentially empty cell membranes.
Once you have these little empty cells, they are very special because they have an inside, that can be a mini-environment that contains different things (like nucleic acids). They may even replicate themselves... one theory is that the first life was a simple lipid vesicle which could only make more vesicles. Once you have something that can vary and that can replicate itself, though, then you have something that natural selection can act on... and natural selection is a powerful engine of change.
It's much better described here.
http://exploringorigins.org/fattyacids.htmlBut where is room for the hand of God in all of these mechanistic explanations? Well, in every event large and small, there seems to be room for random events... mutations, weather, etc. as Indexer said. It's possible that nothing is truly random, and that everything was predestined like a vast Rube Goldberg machine. That's quite impressive, actually, and perhaps that is God's plan.
But perhaps randomness truly exists at the quantum level. In which case, although events will occur according to a probability distribution, amongst equally probable events, why does one occur and not the other? Divine intervention?
I disagree with OP's contention that the fact of existence at all proves that the existence of a divine hand. Strangely, the concept of finitude seems to be more difficult than infinitude. Why must everything go on and on in time and space? Why a "before" before the beginning and an "after" after the end?
But neither can we disprove the existence of a divine Creator. Hence we have room for faith.
At any rate, I don't find the belief in abiogenesis or evolution inconsistent with a belief in God, an acceptance of Christ as Savior, or a life of service to the common good of all humankind.