Evolutionist,your belief is evolution doesnt need any reasons right?

Question

Meaning everything is random and just a lucky accident right?

If you say evolution does need and have reasons, then that doesnt make sense;becuase for someone or something to have a reason implies that someone or something is thinking&reasoning in their mind.And the only things that think are people,animals&insects that are alive&the rare semi-intelligent robot.So it would have to be just a straight lie to say evolution happens because it or life needed x,y or z.And life while alive,does not have the ability to conciously evolve itself.

A lot of times when I hear people talking about evolution,the words "had to or needed to evolve becuase" are always said;which doesnt make sense,becuase evolution is a concept in the mind not a living entity with the power and ability to do anything.

So yes or no;does evolution need reasons?Why or why not?

Answer 1

"Meaning everything is random and just a lucky accident right?"

Nope. Try again.

Answer 2

You are confusing a number of related concepts.

For starters, evolution is not a random process it is a stochastic process. There is a very important difference. A stochastic process is much like a "random," process and ideas of randomness are essential. Let me provide an example of a stochastic but deterministic process. Imagine you flip a coin under very controlled circumstances. This was in fact done recently by students at Harvard and found that the US Quarter has a statistically significant bias toward heads, though the bias is very very very small.

Imagine you completely controlled the environment to the point of being always able to get heads to come up. It is a purely deterministic process, or so it appears. Let us assume that you hold this process in a vacuum, that all the mechanics are contained within the vacuum, the system runs on a very long lived battery supply and the equipment and software running has been tested to .999999% accuracy.

Imagine you have already flipped heads 10,352 times in a row and the battery and parts should safely last for another 299,648 times and maybe 200,000 more on top of that. Every one has been heads. In the midst of the 10,353rd toss an airplane crashes and a piece of the falling plane shatters the container causing the coin to land tails.

What followed deterministic rules from start to finish, had an outcome not predicted because it is impossible to completely control for all events. So even though, with a remarkable degree of certainty, we can know it should turn up heads every time; it is still a stochastic process because the rest of the universe is not completely controlled. It is not a random process. The plane was following the rules of science --gravity, materials failures, etc and the coin tossing device was too.

So, evolution does not say this is a random process. It is not a lucky accident, it is a stochastic accident.

Second, evolution is purposeless. It simply follows the rules of chemistry and physics with outcomes determined by the environment. Because only the entire universe is a closed system, local events are modified by events from "outside" the local system.

Finally, a species could consciously evolve itself to a point. If it had sufficient mastery of dna, rna and proteomics, it is reasonable to believe it could control its subsequent evolution subject to the same stochastic problems open and unmanaged systems have. However, it is obvious on its surface that conscious evolution is simply better fitting of a species to its environment. Why would one want to evolve into a methane breathing species if there is insufficient methane to breath, for example.

So, it is not random but it acts much like a random system...it is stochastic. It is purposeless, but that does not mean an intelligent species could not alter either the environment or offspring to better fit the needs of the species.

The universe does not follow laws. If you release a rock from your hand four feet above the ground, it will not follow the laws of gravity and go to the ground. The rock does not care about the laws of gravity. The rock also cannot choose to disobey the laws of gravity. The rock (which is itself a social construction as it does not know what rockness is) accelerates in the direction of the center of mass of the local system. It does not choose to do this.

Answer 3

You only took one sentence to state something completely wrong. From there virtually everything else you said was wrong too.

Of all the many lies creationists tell about evolution the lie that
evolution is random is the one that bothers me the most.

This particularly bothers me because Natural Selection is the furthest thing from being random and because I am a Mathematician I actually know what random means.

Note Mutations are random but Natural Selection is absolutely NOT. It is the fact that Natural Selection is highly non-random which is the driving mechanism behind information increase in biological systems. Evolution is absolutely NOT random. Anyone who claims it is is either being moronic or lying or has absolutely no idea what the word random even means.

Definition of Random: A process is considered random if when operating on a sufficiently large sets, the distribution of the output of the process is roughly the same as the input of the process.

In a process all it takes is one non-random subprocess to make the entire process non-random. An example is the following process.

1. Start with six thousand rolled dice.
1. Roll the dice again ( this is random since the distribution will roughly be the same given enough tries )
2. Take the rolled dice and throw out all the dice which didn't turn up six. This is highly non-random since the distribution is radically different.

The result of this will will be somewhere around one thousand dice with six turned up ( clearly non random since we have selected only sixes. While the original distribution has roughly equal numbers of each result.)

This is a lot like evolution. Mutation is random but Natural Selection takes the result and non-randomly selects only winners. So the total process is very non-random.

Answer 4

Evolution is not a conscious decision or choice of an individual (unless we are using it in a modern social context). It is the process of change over time and the forces involved. No individual organism animal has made the choice to evolve, rather certain traits in a population become more favorable over time and as these traits become more favorable, the less "fit" traits (meaning the reproductive potential of individuals who do not carry the more beneficial trait for the environment) slowly die out or become dormant to more dominant genes. Evolution is not random, rather it is based off of logic that when there is population pressure (ie not everyone can live and be happy as is) the individuals who are more suited to the environment will be more likely to survive and produce viable offspring. It is not a question of reasons - it is a scientific theory (much like the theory of gravity) that is composed of conclusions drawn from studying the patterns that naturally exist. I reccommend you open a book (darwin's preferably) or even an elementary physical biology book, because you don't seem to understand the theory.

Answer 5

Evolution has a reason: the replication of life is not a letter perfect process.

Although some aspects of evolution are random, natural selection is the filter that favors order. A person can go for a walk with no destination in mind. He will get somewhere and will have walked.

Some people do anthropomorphize the evolutionary process. As we look backwards through time we see the effects before the cause and don't always reverse them in our heads. The fact that some things are occasionally misstated in no way implies that they are wrong.

Answer 6

The process of evolution doesn't have a reason it is random chance.
The theory of evolution is based on evidence.
Survival of the fittest baby!

EDIT: When I say evolution is random chance I mean there's no specific intention causing the results. If a species is separated by a new geological event and both populations are in very similar environments then as random mutations take place they can still eventually become two very different species. By saying it's not random chance you imply that the two populations would evolve in the same way. Hence the process is Random Chance filtered by survival of the fittest.

Evolution is a subset of Emergence Theory.

Blessed Be!

Answer 7

Evolution is a process that involves a level of chance but is not based entirely on it. It's more trial and error.

Basically, no, there doesn't need to be a reason but there can be. The main driving factor for evolution is natural selection: if a genetic mutation gives a child an advantage over others, when it grows up it has more chance of reproducing and passing on this advantage. Enough of these advantages or simple changes leads to bigger changes.

What you're saying about something "needing to" evolve, something cannot decide to evolve but, speaking historically, species needed to evolve to survive - they didn't influence the process their selves but they did survive by evolving. It's the context that's important here.

Answer 8

Boy do you not understand evolution.

Evolution has reasons, and very few of them are random.

Reasons have nothing to do with sentience. The reason a rock falls down is gravity. No thinking, reasoning mind needed.

Many of your problems seem to be along the lines of "aspect X of evolution doesn't make sense". But just because you don't understand a concept it doesn't mean it isn't true.

So yes, evolution needs reasons why it works. Everything does. Whether you're asking "How do bee stings that kill the stinging bee help the hive survive?" (answer: because those bees are no involved in breeding, so are disposable to the defense of those who do) or "Why does God eternally torture those who fail to believe in him when he won't give clear evidence of his existence?" (answer: because he's either a myth or a sadist), you should have a reason.

Answer 9

I'm not sure you completely understand evolution. Evolution is in no way a random process. With that said, it can do this non-random process without any reasoned direction. The environment influences evolution which keeps it from being random. But the mechanisms that drive evolution happen to the gene pool randomly.

Answer 10

1. Nowhere in science does it say that evolution is random or an accident. Not once. You've just proven that you know nothing about the subject at all.

2. It DOES have reasons. You not understanding them, and not being willing to actually get educated on the subject, does not mean "god did it". It means you're lazy.

3. Go back to school. You invalidated everything you said with your own ill educated arrogance.

Answer 11

Evolution is not random, this seems to be a common misconception that people who haven't been educated about evolutionary theory have. Natural selection is not a process of chance or luck.

"Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they don't interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating. " Link provided below with much more information for you.


You need to study evolution more before you think you can poke holes in it. I'll post some links. I also recommend you read a few books written by evolutionary scientists not creationists.