I'll do my best to answer; it's definitely a subject I'm passionate about. Holes in evolution led me "outside of the box" and opened me up to the possibility of God. You seem to be looking more for clarification than answers, since you're on a Christian forum asking about obvious evolutionary flaws...I hope the ensuing wall o' text is somewhat helpful.
Q1: If the big bang created the universe, and that came from a singularity, what created the matter that said singularity came from? Also, I know you can ask "Well what created that?" an infinite amount of times, however would it not make sense that there would be an "eternal" force that everything came from? Something that always has, always was, and always will be?
This is what I mean by outside of the box. I'm not sure if the big bang happened, or even if it's a creationist vs. atheist argument. The thing that people need to understand about this is exactly what you stated in your question: the idea that things do not naturally pop out of nothing.
The aggregate question of, "well what created that?" can't go on forever within the confines of our known universe, because nothing can be created from nothing. We even have scientific laws (thermodynamics) describing this. This means at some point, people have to say there is something outside of "the box". It doesn't even need to be "God", per se, it could be some other natural something. Of course...what created that?
So whether we believe God is outside the box, or there is some other "scientific" explanation for it, there MUST be something beyond this universe. So I think you're right on here. Atheists (big bang-ists?) want to "have their cake and eat it too" when they say that A) nothing comes from nothing and B) there is nothing outside of the universe. This cake is a lie.
Q2: According to the theory of evolution, life was created by energy and matter combining, however why is it when I cook something, it doesn't spring to life?
Complexity. Life means "made of cells" and "able to grow". Even the most simple cells are
extremely complex networks of DNA, cellular machines, protiens, other acids, etc. DNA typically contains millions of nucleotides while cellular machines can have dozens of unique and required parts. This stuff just doesn't pop out of nothing.
Complexity also works against the argument for evolution, though. People try to play off any issue with complexity by saying, "hey, with enough time, anything can happen!". This is why any notion that the universe is less than a bijillion years old is met with fierce opposition and ridicule. Still, with enough time, simple things
could turn complex.
The bigger problem for complexity is irreducable complexity. This was identified by Darwin (though not coined) when he published The Origin of the Species:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case."
Say what you want about Darwin's motives, but he actually was a scientist, which is more than I can say about most of our "scientific" and "free" thinkers today. He recognized that due to the sheer complexity and factors involved with evolution, only the most "simple" changes could ever happen at once. He was also at a pretty big disadvantage - he did most of his work in the 1850s where they really had no concept of what is inside a cell, and had very little fossil records. Michael Behe called it "Darwin's Black Box" in his book of the same name.
The crux of evolution is that you have to go from zero to complex and EVERY step must be an improvement. So when you examine a cellular machine with over 40 unique and required working parts to do it's job, evolution says each of these parts must have come on their own. But how can that be if you take any ONE part out and the machine no longer functions? Add to this you're not talking just one machine. You're talking all the machines required for all the required parts of a cell. Without reproduction, a cell wall, replication, etc, etc, etc, cells would not exist. Or, you can look at complex organs that have many sub-systems. The eye has 11, each complex but doing nothing on their own. So either they popped from nothing, or slowly evolved over time over trillions of years providing absolutely no benefit until one day, someone got lucky and the lights came on. Blood is another good example. There really are hundreds.
The "scientific" answer to this? "Well, um, it just must have existed as a simpler piece, duh". And yet, no one ever offers any idea on any single piece these machines/organs could do without. So, they ironically buy it
on faith. Of course, show them a picture of Stonehenge, and they will
immediately recognize that it was designed - despite humans of the time having no known ability/equipment to do so. See: Paley's argument/watchmaker analogy. When you compare the complexity of a rock pile to the simplest cellular system, it really baffles the mind how stubborn people are.
Q3: The Leafy Sea Dragon. How can ANY creature form such a similarity to a plant without a designer? Its not like it looked at seaweed and was like "hmm, I want leaves....POWER OF EVOLUTION ACTIVATE" or something like that.
This also takes away from evolution a bit, but there are a few
somewhat feasible ways things like this could happen inside evolution. First, you could have primordial ancestors of the leafy sea dragon that was also a seaweed. Or, there could be a change that is somewhat more "likely" or "beneficial" to happen through evolution, so you end up seeing it more through multiple points of evolutionary origin. Still, pretty unlikely.
