Chance: Science or Philosophy?

[Tomdstone]

This new essay is relevant: Randomness in Theological Perspective

I don’t think that natural selection comes about entirely randomly or entirely by chance.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I don’t think that natural selection comes about entirely randomly or entirely by chance.

How else would it come about?

 

[buffalo]

I don’t think that natural selection comes about entirely randomly or entirely by chance.

No, it doesn’t. NS is a conservative process acting that environmental pressures select. It is not a creative process and does not produce novel features. It is more of an adaptive survival mechanism.

 

[Tomdstone]

How else would it come about?

It comes about when organisms better adapt to their environment and therefore are more likely to survive and produce more offspring.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It comes about when organisms better adapt to their environment and therefore are more likely to survive and produce more offspring.

Yes, this is true.

Yet the conditions that lead to adaptation, that make adaptation possible, are by chance.

For example, the comet that hit the earth and destroyed most living organisms 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, made significant room for the later evolution of the mammal kingdom. Had that chance event not occurred, would man have likely evolved?
Would he necessarily have won the biological lottery?

If a similar comet hit the earth today, would we be wiped out, only to make room for entirely unknown species to later evolve?

 

[Tomdstone]

Yes, this is true.

Yet the conditions that lead to adaptation, that make adaptation possible, are by chance.

For example, the comet that hit the earth and destroyed most living organisms 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, made significant room for the later evolution of the mammal kingdom. Had that chance event not occurred, would man have likely evolved?
Would he necessarily have won the biological lottery?

If a similar comet hit the earth today, would we be wiped out, only to make room for entirely unknown species to later evolve?

The event was not a chance event because if a scientist were observing the celestial heavens, he would have seen it coming. If you say that it was a chance event, then that means that everything is a chance event. Hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, fires, etc.