re: #184 Drudge Potato Al

It would be so much easier to comprehend this stuff if we didn’t need to use a human brain to grasp it. Since we’re wired toward task-based and result-oriented thinking, it’s natural for some folks to conclude that the natural world has some type of deliberate guidance. Note that I said “some type” and not “God” as we know it.

The standard, pro forma, insincere ID disclaimer.

The true answer to this is that it’s very likely to be a combination of the two positions. I like to think that since we can absolutely observe mutations in a species over time that aspects of the evolutionary theory are absolutely correct. What cannot be proven (or disproven) is that environmental forces are the guiding roulette wheel for this process. What also cannot be proven (or disproven) is that we may be getting a peek inside “the toolbox” as to how species evolve. Any entity that has the capability of altering a species is not going to build one from scratch like assembling a steam engine.

You apparently don’t understand the scientific method. Nor do you seem to grasp precisely how much empirical evidence has been accumulated for both random genetic mutation and nonrandom environmental selection in the past 150 years.

Empirical science doesn’t do absolute proof; it is a statistically probable process, proceeding by logical induction from a preponderance of empirical evidence to abstracted explanatory principles, and it must always remain open to being modified by subsequent evidence produced in the future (that is how scientific knowledge advances, and how scientific theories evolve). However, the empirical evidence for both random genetic mutation and nonrandom environmental selection is so massive and vast as to render vanishingly small the odds that either of these mechanisms are incorrect.

When the environment changes, either mutations that allow their hosts to survive and reproduce in the new environment occur, or they don’t. If such beneficial mutations do occur, they become the new baseline, and the species evolves. If they don’t occur, the species goes extinct.