[PittleyDunkin]

> an evolved response to an environmental change.

This is still a "by pure chance" event, yea? Otherwise we're just back to intelligent design. Surely the issue is that we have fundamentally few ways of analyzing how probable that single event is/was.

[sandworm101]

Mutations occur by chance. With trillions of bacteria, mutations are a constant. Each possibly mutation is happening somewhere. Natural selection then dictates which mutations thrive when the environment favors them to do so. Evolution is a system, not a lottery.

There is also a meta layer to evolution, that organisms can "evolve to evolve", that the rate of "random" mutations can itself be an evolved trait. An organism unable to evolve, say with locked-in genetic code, will not adapt. Sexual reproduction arguably is such a system: an evolved system that regulates future evolution. So even base mutations may not be totally random.

[PittleyDunkin]

> Evolution is a system, not a lottery.

Sure, if you chuck the concept of a lottery out the window. It's literally a genetic lottery. C'mon we can do better than this bullshit.

[sandworm101]

Evolution and genetic lotteries are different concepts, like ball bearings and automobiles.

[PittleyDunkin]

I don't follow. If chance or evolution doesn't imply the other, what's left?