The question of whether evolution is “random” is a perennial. Darwinists respond to the challenge, often delivered casually, by exasperatedly pointing out that the natural-selection component of evolution is hardly a matter of chance. Actually, though, as geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig explains in an ID the Future podcast interview with Discovery Institute’s Paul Nelson, this is not quite true:
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Everyone understands, or should understand, that the evolutionary component of random genetic variation is just that — random. But, Dr. Lönnig clarifies, citing the American oyster and other examples, “selection” also incorporates a high degree of old-fashioned luck. The folk objection to Darwinian theory is, then, not as naïve at it might at first seem.
Photo: Bed of American oysters, Cockspur Island, Georgia, by JohnCub [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
