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Of course. Once an environment is somewhat in equilibrium, chances are low that a new trait will evolve. Or the trait evolves and the population carrying it is wiped out by accident. It's a statistical process, not a directed one.
"Statistical process' doesn't mean anything. I think you mean 'random' which too doesn't mean much (we can discuss this further).
But it's clear something is directing it. Darwin called it the organism's environment (and he used the term 'force' of natural selection), but for example another is sexual selection.
What we observe is a fact. How we choose to interpret what we see is not a fact. Much of 'evolution' is geared to explaining the variation of different species and hypothesizing that we all evolved out of common origins. However none of that science, or more stricter put: scientific theory.
How is not a scientific theory? We observe cellular mutation, we observe fossil records, we observe drug-resistant microbes.
If anything not readily observable is not science, then neither are plate tectonics, photons, or black holes.
For example, we don't observe black holes directly either, they're more of a theory that logically follows from the mathematics of Einstein's general relativity. But the mathematics lead to specific testable predictions which we can observe. So we say good enough.
The hypothesis we evolved from a common ancestor doesn't really give many testable predictions and when results come back they can be easily explained away (like gaps in the fossil records as just incomplete or punctuated equilibrium) or for depending on how you twist it.
Not at all, explain to me what piece of evidence and why it's exclusive to one ancestor and not the other.
Exclusive to a specific ancestor? That is not what I wrote. I wrote "common ancestry." If common ancestry between two distinct species is true, we can make predictions of observations that we would find. That is not saying anything about which common ancestor that would be specifically.
Do you mean life as a whole? Or just homo sapiens sapiens?
Regarding the latter, theres a large gap in fossil records, granted, but theres still ample evidence.
There is not ample evidence but rather observations that both sides have used to support their points. The specific theory of evolution had to be revised many times to accord with these observations. The problem with much of it is it's not grounded in mathematics so precision is not the name of the game and results can be explained numerous ways.
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