Author, you are doing a massive disservice to science by publishing this. Evolution is NOT a chance process – as any biologist will tell you. Chance is not an explanation – complex things are not “automatic” as you put it, and do NOT come about by chance. Whether it is natural selection (environmental requirement) or artificial selection (human requirement), selection is not random, by definition.

Neither, of course, is God an explanation, especially if a person proposes an infinitely intelligent, infinitely complex God. A designer is always more complex than the thing designed (a tiny fraction of creationist, in their desperation, try to argue against this). I, just like the creationist folk, am allergic to complex things. They are highly improbable! And above all, whether it is God, shellfish, or people who can type a comment, complex things never come about by chance.

Are you trying to ruin people’s ability to understand evolution? There are already a lot of confused people around, which is exactly why one of the favourite creationist arguments is “things are too complex to come about by chance”. The irony is they are right, although they should not receive credit for their ignorance about how natural selection really works. You share in this ignorance.

In summary: Chance is not an explanation (and never was). God is not an explanation (and never was). Natural selection is the only known mechanism by which complex things can arise. If this explanation is ever supplanted, it will not be by a reversal of simple -> complex, since that is not an explanation at all.

While the original poster poorly attempts to phrase the old question of first cause, it’s obvious they have an open, questioning mind. The lone comment I found is what amazes me. Aint Punk spews fourth an unreadable mess of words that I had to attempt to translate. Since it took so much effort, I thought I would give the translation for future readers.

“Dude you are wrong as wrong as it could get you see all your argument is based on the ego that your fat brain has what I would recommend is to cut your baseless crap and admit your argument is wrong and the argument about something coming to existence by chance is stupid go to your school again and start learning from the scratch because you know nothing about science”

means:

Dude, you are as wrong as wrong can get. You see, all your arguments are based on the ego of your fat brain. I would recommend you cut your baseless crap, admit your argument is wrong and start again from scratch. The idea of existence by chance is stupid. Go back to school and learn science, since it is obvious you know nothing about it now.

I would suggest that Aint Punk consider going back to school and learn English, grammar and punctuation. Afterwards he might want to take some science courses himself. Until that happens, anything he says will only make him look the fool.

First cause is not something that we are going to settle any time soon. What we do know is that the universe is immensely large and old, so much so that most people cannot grasp this. We know that complex things often arise from simple things all by themselves. A snowflake is unique and complex, yet it is the result of some very basic laws of physics. Man created the idea of god because he wants the answers to “why” and we lacked the tools to learn the answers to those questions. As time goes by mankind, through science, slowly answers these questions, filling in the blanks as we can. It’s easy, lazy and comforting to give the answer “God did it”, but not to fulfilling unless this God decides to show up and say hi. So far this has not happened. Until it does, I shall remain agnostic and try to help my fellow human rise above the muck we are all born in.

Oh, and I will try not to call anyone “Dude”.

“aint punk”, perhaps you should learn English before criticizing others.

I see here a well thought out article, and a comment from someone who cannot master basic punctuation. Guess who wins?

Hey Aint Punk – (lern 2 spel dilhole or aint u herd that aint aint a werd?) I doubt you’ll ever read this, as my comment is a month late – but it still needs to be said… See if you can wrap your fat ego around this:

Since any number divided by zero equals infinity then (reversing the equation) infinity times zero equals any number – so – in the end – the probability that zero times infinity would equal zero is next to near impossible (a virtual inevitability within an infinite number of possibilities – even negative numbers would apply here)… So yes – nothing exists – LITERALLY. You could even substitute apple pies for “any number” as zero is not a number and neither is infinity for that matter…….. and that’s the werd.

Well of course, you are absolutely right, mutation is a random process (with some exceptions, as biologists will tell you). My claim was simply as you say: the selection is not random. In fact, the word selection is defined so that something or someone influences the preference of one item (gene in this case) over another.

I must say, it doesn’t really matter how the mutations arise. Generally speaking they are randomly generated and usually very harmful – but only the genes which are beneficial survive, and this makes the whole process, evolution by natural selection, emphatically not random. My bone to pick with you was simply how you are presenting this to the public – to declare the randomness of it all is to give bullets to fire to those who do not understand evolution.

Your final statement (“But since evolution is a product of mutation, for the sake of simplicity we can say that evolution is a random process”) I’m sorry to say is absurd. Evolution is absolutely NOT a product of a random set of mutations. Evolution is the product of only a very tiny number of mutations which make it – the rest were disgarded and do not contribute to evolution in any way. In your search for simplicity, you oversimplified.

If I shuffled a pack of cards, taking a selection each time of black cards which are less visible to card-eating predators, and then reshuffling, my end product in not a product of the initial randomness – it is a product of the selection. The source of the inital variation is irrelevant, except in the sense that it provides us with our options for selection, nothing more. Chance never results in increasing complexity (note that complexity is not the same as ‘order’ – entropy can decrease locally).

If I seem to be coming on strong it is because this is of paramount importance. I take issue with your final sentence in particular, and I hope you can see where I am coming from.

Great article. I’d like to take it one step further.

Everything changes and evolves. Our existing universe is in a constant state of flux.

Why does their have to be a beginning?