It is not hard to find articles on both sides of the evolution debate arguing that the evolutionary process is random. In 1995, the National Association of Biology Teachers raised eyebrows with this definition of evolution:

The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

This raised a firestorm in a field that already was rife with controversy. Many people, teachers and lay people alike, assailed the NABT for overreaching in its definition of evolution. Many anti-evolution evangelical Christians, already distrustful of the academic establishment, saw their worst fears and preconceptions realized. The renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has remarked:

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. (Dawkins, 1996)

On the other side, the “Dissent from Darwinism” List, which has been signed by over 100 scientists from a wide variety of disciplines (but very few biologists or geologists), has been touted by the Discovery Institute and other institutions critical of evolutionary thought. It reads:

We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

But, upon closer examination, how random is evolution? I contend that, when properly understood, whether or not evolution is random is entirely dependent on one’s worldview.

Mutation and Natural Selection

Whether or not it is explicitly stated, all sides of the debate agree that mutations are random in nature. Those that argue against evolution posit the idea that mutation, because it is random, cannot lead to new information and, therefore, cannot be the engine that drives evolution. Principle promoters of this idea are Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute, which describes mutation as a “an unpredictable and purposeless process.”

But even if mutation is random, does that make evolution random? As I mentioned in an earlier post, the synthetic theory of evolution, developed principally between the late 1920s and 1970s argues, in very broad terms, that evolution population genetics in groups changes through the result of three main processes: genetic drift, gene flow and mutation. Natural Selection then acts on each of these to produce the evolutionary patterns that we see in both the present diversity of life and the life reflected in the fossil record.

Natural selection does not act in a vacuum, however. It acts in accordance with what any given environment is. If a particular plant thrives in a tropical location and the climate cools, then the selective advantage that the plant had in that environment will be nullified and the plant will experience reduction in numbers and, quite possibly, extinction. Likewise, if a large population of an organism is split in two by a geological phenomenon such as a volcano or the diversion of a river course, they will diverge genetically to the point where, if rejoined, they may not be able to interbreed. This is classic allopatric speciation.

In these and all other instances, it is the environment that drives selection that leads to speciation. If evolution is random as these writers argue, then the environmental changes that drive evolution are also random. If one is willing to accept this proposition, then not only biological evolution, but the fundamental workings of the planet—from the recent earthquakes and volcanoes, to the phenomenon of global warming—are also random events.

While this viewpoint is certainly in keeping with the philosophies espoused by Dawkins and other vocal atheists, such a viewpoint is foreign in the Christian community. Jesus states in Luke 12:6-7 that:

⁶ Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. ⁷ Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

In Isaiah 45:12, the Lord God states:

¹² It is I who made the earth
   and created mankind on it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
  I marshaled their starry hosts.

These verses give the picture of a God that is deeply in tune with His creation and maintains it day by day. His creations are important to him. The God of the Hebrew Bible is not a deist or a blind watchmaker. He is intimately involved in our lives and the world around them.

If this is so, then it is this very same God who has created the vast world around us, and supervised its changes over the last four and a half billion years. If creation is not random, then evolution is not random either. It is part of God’s plan. That this plan is often inscrutable does not make it less His creation. From a Christian world view, the fact that the evolutionary record indicates a 90-plus percent extinction rate of all species that have ever lived is simply part of the plan that He has established. We do know that this plan has resulted in us, the creatures that can have communion with Him and worship Him.

Because it can be shown that evolution does not act in a vacuum but is directly affected by geological and meteorological processes above it, how one views these processes directly must affect how one views biological evolution. From an atheist perspective, the vicariousness and randomness of extinction in the fossil record is simply a record of a random process and that man is, in the words of evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson “the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind” (Simpson, 1967). From a Christian perspective, it is simply part of God’s providential plan.

This disagreement is, in a sense, no different than that concerning nuclear power and weapons. While one side argued that nuclear weapons were immoral at best and evil at worst, and the other side argued that they would enrich the world and keep the peace, nuclear power simply was, oblivious of the controversy that raged.

Evolution simply is. It is a process that is directly tied to the world around it and, as such, has been operating since the first forms of life appeared on this planet. Perhaps, trying to tie it to a world philosophy is not appropriate and will only do damage to the scientific enterprise.