“Note that in all this interaction between mutation and natural selection, no moth is making a conscious effort to adapt to a changed environment. The process is random and statistical.”

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 2, “Genes and Brains” (p. 28)

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Carl Sagan365

American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996

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“Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.”

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“For the record, natural selection is a highly nonrandom process that acts on the genetic variation produced by random mutation and genetic drift and results in those organisms with more adaptive traits differentially surviving and reproducing.”

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“Mutation may be random, but selection definitely is not.”

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“Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create… Neo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change [which] led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.”

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“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

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“Evolution does depend on mutations, and these do appear to be random. But each cumulative mutation may become significant factors for that organism once pitted against the dynamics of the environment in which they are introduced. Thus natural selection isn’t random; it’s deterministic. Many creationists will even admit this. And as some computer models have already shown, natural selection can actually even exceed the skills of human designers. In fact, natural selection can be so deterministic that it often leads to innovations which some perceive as evidence of intelligent design, and which even rationalists describe as though modified for intended benefit. Whether it is deliberately guided or not, there is definitely a system of design. But there doesn’t actually have to be any apparent intent or intelligence involved.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

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“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. […] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.”

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“Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement… Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.”

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“[The] Third (problem with Darwinism), which I think is overwhelming, and just sort of blows the whole theory of Random Mutation out of the water, is, at least, let me say, raises big questions, that is. Assuming it all did happen by Random Mutation and Natural Selection, where did the laws of gravity come from. Where did the laws of thermodynamics come from? Where did the laws of motion and, of heat come from? Where, I guess that's the same as thermodynamics. Where did all these laws, that make it possible for the universe to function, where did they all come from? Why isn't all just chaos and everything collapsing in on itself and killing everything?”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

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“Product of complex interactions within and between the organization’s social structure, leadership groups and environment. … They are never static but subject to continual pressure and changes over time.”

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Source: 1960s, Authority, Goals and Prestige in a General Hospital, 1960, p. 2

“Note that in all this interaction between mutation and natural selection, no moth is making a conscious effort to adapt to a changed environment. The process is random and statistical.”

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