Author and design theorist, Eric Anderson, clarifies the limitations of randomness in producing biological novelty.
Randomness is an important topic, true. But not because it has, in and of itself, some deep substantive value or because it is going to help explain biological form and function. It is important to the evolution-ID debate, primarily because it has been historically offered by evolutionary proponents as the fodder for change, the grist of the mill from which Darwin’s theory can operate, and we need to point out in the debate that this is a fool’s errand.
What does “random” mean in terms of mutations within evolutionary theory?
Despite the exciting headlines of several recent papers, it has nothing to do with whether there is some non-equal distribution across the genome, whether there are hot spots, or even what the actual cause of these mutations is behind the scenes. That is not what we are talking about in terms of evaluating “random” mutations for evolutionary theory.
More critically, for purposes of intelligent design, we needn’t get into deep and esoteric discussions or hand wringing about what randomness actually means in some esoteric sense, whether anything in the universe is ever truly random, or even whether there is some underlying order that allows the randomness to be manifest. And we needn’t all go back to get our PhD’s in mathematics or study number theory in depth in order to understand the issues.
For purposes of ID, the two corollary issues we need to appreciate are very simple:
First, randomness (specifically, random mutations for purposes of evolutionary theory), simply does not have the creative power to generate the biological novelty required to explain living organisms. This has been discussed extensively in the ID literature….
Second, and more focused on the current discussion, we need to recognize that even if randomness isn’t truly random in some mathematical definitional sense, even if what appears random to us is governed by some underlying larger principles or follows discernible patterns, it still has no ability to generate the biological novelty required to explain living organisms.
Law-like processes, by their very nature, are too general and generic to ever provide the specificity required to produce something like, say, the bacterial flagellum. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the four fundamental forces or some underlying “order” to the universe that governs things. It doesn’t matter how far under the hood you look–law-like forces or processes simply cannot ever provide the creative purchase required for the functional, coherent, information-rich systems we see in biology.
Therefore, in terms of explaining biological systems, any proposed underlying order or principle or force or process that either produces what we perceive as randomness or that acts as a backdrop against which randomness is manifest, simply cannot explain what needs to be explained. It is the wrong tool for the job.
—– Lastly, if what someone is really talking about is a guided process, then they are talking about purposeful activity–intelligent design. Occasionally confusing terminology is put forth, such as guided evolution, or guided randomness, or God working behind the scenes to influence quantum interactions, and so on. Let’s be clear. If it is guided, then it isn’t evolution as proposed by Darwin, as accepted within the modern academy, or as defined in the biology textbooks. If it is guided, then we are talking about design.