It tries to claim that variation is proof of speciation.
But the problem remains, as you point out, that there is no good evidence of any new genetic material, which is a hard requirement for the entire thing to work.
Also, one big problem with the first cell, at least from what I've heard, is that it couldn't have happened with oxygen due to the chemical reactions that would occur. Even if life could exist in its primitive form without oxygen, at what point did oxygen appear for life that needed it to exist? If trees make oxygen, and humans make carbon dioxide, both would need to exist together. How could they simultaneously "evolve" without each other to make them work in the first place. This seems ridiculous and a big reach.
The only possibility I see is that at one point either animals or plants were able to output O2/CO2 without an input, which is ridiculous.
This is why the theory is not well established.
It tries to claim that variation is proof of speciation.
But the problem remains, as you point out, that there is no good evidence of any new genetic material, which is a hard requirement for the entire thing to work.
Also, one big problem with the first cell, at least from what I've heard, is that it couldn't have happened with oxygen due to the chemical reactions that would occur. Even if life could exist in its primitive form without oxygen, at what point did oxygen appear for life that needed it to exist? If trees make oxygen, and humans make carbon dioxide, both would need to exist together. How could they simultaneously "evolve" without each other to make them work in the first place. This seems ridiculous and a big reach.
The only possibility I see is that at one point either animals or plants were able to output O2/CO2 without an input, which is ridiculous.