Evolution Is Simple -
The process of evolution,
as I have said, has two primary aspects to it, mutation, and
selection. Mutation is RANDOM. Selection is not. I will try to
elaborate on this as best I can,
however, I highly, highly recommend reading Richard Dawkins,
"The Blind Watchmaker" all of this is described in
complete detail in that work, and he is
much much more articulate than I...
Take for example the three letters...
"DNA"
Now, keep in mind that this is an analogy, imagine that each
letter in this word is a particular pair in an organisms DNA,
albeit a short strand of DNA (3
base-pairs) Now, for the base pairs to be "right" they
have to be "D" "N" & "A", and
in that order, now by right I mean "most efficiently adapted
to it's
environment" For each letter in the sequence, there is a
1/26 chance that it will be, by a sheer random process, the
correct letter. So for the first letter, if a
random mutation were applied to it, there would only be a 1/26
chance that it will be the "right" letter. Now this
1/26 chance applies to all three letters.
Giving us, overall, by a sheer random mutation, 1/26 * 1/26 *
1/26, or 1/17576. So, by a sheer random process, it might take up
to 17,576 generations to
come to the "right" sequence. This is an absurdly long
time. Luckily, however, this is NOT HOW EVOLUTION WORKS. THIS IS
WHAT I HAVE
BEEN TRYING TO SAY!. We have one of the two processes in
evolution, mutation. The other aspect is, and this is where
Darwin comes in, selection.
How does this change things, well, each time one of the three
letters by sheer random mutation happen to be the
"right" letter, it gets "locked in" by
selection. In other words, as far as organisms go, if a leg that
is a little longer is a beneficial mutation, and that organism
receives that beneficial mutation, by
sheer chance alone, it will be more likely to reproduce, and it's
offspring will again be more likely to reproduce, and their
offspring, and their offspring, If the
"D" in our "D" "N" "A"
Sequence is the mutation for a little bit longer leg, by sheer
selection alone, all organisms that follow will eventually have
that "D" as
the first letter in this analogous DNA sequence. This is how the
letter gets "locked in" and is why natural selection is
the opposite of random. The letters that
are locked in are not randomly locked in, as you seem to think,
they are only locked in if they are beneficial, and then ALL
subsequent offspring, within a
few generations, will more than likely have this same exact
mutation, and it will be common place. Since for this first
letter, it only took, on average, 26
generations to hit the right mutation, then it gets locked in, it
will take no more than 26 * 3 generations to get the
"right" sequence, this is also a conservative
estimate, since it is unlikely that each mutation will hit the
"right" letter on the 26th try. So instead of 17,576
generations, we only have 78 generations. Quite
a difference. So, you see, natural selection is the opposite of
random, it is CUMULATIVE. To say that a fully formed DNA molecule
arose from nothing is
absolutely preponderous, but DNA molecules do not arise, fully
functionally, from nothing, in one random leap. The are many many
millions of cumulative
small steps heading slowly over to the fully formed DNA molecule.
I hope I may have cleared some of your misconceptions, and
others, about evolution. I
highly suggest, yet again, to read "The Blind
Watchmaker"