@J.E.S
Regarding common descent: A few questions: How could all of the vastly different life forms we see today have evolved from mutations (when we see that mutations lose genetic information, not create it, or at least cause detriments to the survival of the mutant organism (especially in bacteria)?
1.You forget that the BioLogos model is Not atheistic. With God, All things are possible. Your definition that Evolution cannot exist if information is lost is, basically, a crank theory. If a fish becomes an amphibian with lungs while losing its fills, how do you quantify information? Are lungs more or less information than gills are? When a proto-whale population loses its hind limbs, does that mean it hasn’t evolved? There are no real answers for such “information” questions so your objection is impossible to quantify or validate.
Part 2 of the answer is that the question of speciation doesnt rest on gain or loss of information. It depends upon loss of reproductive compatibility. (Is that loss of information? Or a gain in information that the original population doesnt have? Or both?)
Once one sub-population is cut off from further genetic exchanges, the drift towards other sides, shapes and mechanisms for adaptation become inevitable if millions of years are available.
You ask:
Why don’t we find any (or at least way way more) credible transitional forms in the fossil record?
This is another crank refutation. The discovery of any newer fossil, sharing traits with an older fossil form, automatically makes the older fossil transitional - - except if it has been determined by other means that the older fossil represents a population that went extinct without propagating some subsequent population with a new phenotype.
You write:
If the Earth is billions of years old, why isn’t there WAY more sediment in the oceans?
What do we have under vast hectares of ocean sediment? We have hectares of sedimentary rock! The continent’s, except for some exceptional areas, are piled high with sedimentary rock. And these continents and ocean bottoms ride crustal plates that slowly but inevitably shuffle along - - either to destruction (!) as they dive deep into The Earth’s mantle… or to elevation (!) as massive mountain ridges of sedimentary rock. Of course, surely there are also pockets of volcanic rock scattered throughout. This is the first I’ve heard this particular attempt at refutation. I suspect it is rarely used because the answer is so obvious.