There are two predominate schools of thought when it comes to the origins of life. Both are worth taking a second look.

One thought was pioneered by Charles Darwin who questioned the prevailing thought on the origins of life. Darwin produced a theory of natural selection. This line of thinking suggested that animals adapted to their environment through an extended period of time. The strongest and most fit of a species caused an inferior class of species to be rendered extinct through a process of superior mate selection. In essence, this belief suggests there will come a time when humans as we see them today will become something better or more highly evolved than we are right now.

This premise takes a variety of hominids as proof that there were stages that indicate an in-between creature from other life forms to humanity as we see it today. A hominid is believed to be proof that less advanced creatures developed into a more advanced animal. It is possible, in this belief structure, to suppose mankind is simply the next stage of superior development and our ancestors once roamed the earth as primates.

The second school of thought is that an intelligent designer crafted the world. This thought process is considered believable due to the advanced nature of human beings and a fossil record that indicates humans lived in coexistence with primates and other species of animal life. These would be the same animals we see in existence today. The fossil record also shows no evidence to support this link between humans and primates.

Consider a few quotes from Charles Darwin himself:

"But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" [1]

"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed." [2]

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." [3]

This origin group also acknowledged that nine of the twelve classified hominids were discovered to be extinct primates and not a supposed missing link. [4]

The remaining classified hominid skeletons have been linked to modern human populations. [5]

The difficulty in defining origins from a scientific point of view is that no one alive was there. We have no direct observations of the origins of our planet and the life it contains from which to draw irrefutable conclusions.

We do have the fossil record and it has consistently pointed to a co-existence of species. Nothing in our current observable science indicates that mankind has become something different, nor do we observe other creatures turning into something uniquely different than their parents.

Interestingly both thought processes have scientific supporters, but in the end it comes down to a matter of faith. Is it more reasonable to believe that life began from no life and matter from no matter? Is it more reasonable to believe that there was order to the development of the earth and that individual species were created fully functional with the ability to procreate their individual species?

Maybe the origins of life look
designed because they are designed.

References:

[1] Ibid., 144.
[2] Ibid., 149.
[3] Ibid., 230.
[4] http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid5.htm
[5] http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid6.htm