Myths and Misconceptions

While it is true that many mutations can cause problems for an organism, sometimes lethal, not all mutations are harmful.  Most mutations are caused by single-point errors in the copying of a strand of DNA.  For example, a strand of ATAGC may change to ATATC.  This can have three major effects: a deleterious effect, a positive effect, or no effect at all.  Deleterious effects, those which threaten the survival of the organism, will not accumulate, because they will kill the organism before it has a chance to reproduce.  Conversely, mutations which cause no effect or a positive effect will accumulate in a population's genome.  This is how Natural Selection works.  It "selects" for positive changes in the genome, because only the positive changes will accumulate.

Certain mutations can add new, large pieces of DNA at a time. See this question on Gene Duplication for more information.

Firstly, man did not evolve from modern apes. Man and modern apes share a common ancestor, which is extinct. However, the question comes from a flawed understanding of how evolution works. Evolution is not a straight line, where entire populations change into new species all at the same time. Often times, a small group breaks away from a population and begins to evolve independently of the source group. The source group does not need to go extinct, and is generally unaffected by the development of the smaller group.  This is called "Allopatric Speciation," and it is just one of many ways that new species can evolve. There is nothing in evolutionary theory which states a source population must go extinct in order for new species to evolve.

It is often argued that the eye is so complex that it could not have evolved naturally.  The idea being that an eye with only "half" the parts in place would not work, therefor evolution would have never favored it and the more complex human eye we have would never have evolved.

However, the evolution of the eye has been studied extensively, and its history is more-or-less well established.  First, there were light-sensitive cells which merely indicated which way was the Sun.  A slight indentation makes a sense of direction possible.  Mucus in the pit focuses the light.  If the mucus hardens, you have a proper lens, and so on.

In fact, every stage of the eye's development is still around on Earth today.  A snail's eye is less than "half" a human eye, yet it serves the snail well enough to help its survival.

Please watch this video which beautifully describes the evolution of the eye for a more visual example.

No. According to Newsweek magazine, 99.85% of American earth and life scientists accept biological evolution as a fact. Gallup polls also show that 95% of all scientists accept evolution, though it should be noted that this figure includes scientists who study in unrelated fields, like Computer Science, Engineering, etc. The vast majority of scientists accept evolution as fact.

The second law states that "In a closed system (one in which energy cannot enter), Entropy will not decrease." Since Entropy often refers to disorder, this law is often taken to mean that order cannot arise from disorder. How then would life, which is highly ordered, form naturally? The answer, simply, is that life is not a closed system. Energy is constantly being added to the Earth from the Sun, which fuels the plants, which in turn fuel other life. This is how plants, for example, can have more energy than the seeds they originally sprouted from. But life is not the only example of order from disorder. Snowflakes, crystals, lightning, and sand dunes are all examples of non-living matter organizing into complex structures.

This argument comes from a paper published in 1979 by astronomer John Eddy. After studying observations from 1836 through the 20th century, he found the sun had contracted 2 arc seconds. He had found proof of what atronomers had suspected and know for a fact today: that the sun's diameter oscillates in an 80 year cycle. It does not constantly shrink.

Within the sun, and every star, there are 2 opposing forces: the intense gravity of the star, trying to crush it, and the intense heat of nuclear fusion, trying to blow it apart. As the gravitational field causes the surface to shrink ever so slightly, it builds incredible pressure inside the star, which speeds up the fusion reactions (think of a pressure cooker). The increased fusion then pushes the surface back out again, and the cycle starts over. Because the sun is truly gigantic, about 1 million times the size of Earth, this cycle plays out on what we would consider a slow scale: every 80 years.