Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun Jun 14, 2026 7:43 pm
Mutations are random, but natural selection is not.
Define what you mean by "random," then.
Nobody and nothing "chooses," so that's a definition of "random." But more, if there is any constraint on the "randomness," then the existence of this constraint would be non-random.
There is also the natural selection of only being able to modify.
This is called, "fixity of species" or "micro-evolution," as opposed to trans-species evolution or "macro-evolution." But the theory needs both.
Everybody recognizes that small variations
within a fixed species population are possible; we see it in the species "dog" or "cat" all the time. But what's the issue is the macro level...the idea, as you put it, "You can't get a bird from mutations in plants," to which we might add, "You can't get a cat from a dog," or "a frog from a fish," or "a human being from a chimp." And we have zero cases of macro-evolution, which Evolutionists assure us is only because we don't have the lofty timespans they demand for macro evolution.
Yes, that's kind of a lame excuse. We should have it super-abundantly in the fossil record. We don't.
Natural selection is precisely not random.
Again, it depends on what you mean by "random." It was thought, for example, that it was always the weakest that was killed first. That's not actually true. It's often merely the anomalous or distinct -- for any reason -- that ends up being eliminated from a population.
So there are reasons things are eliminated, but it's not the reasons Evolutionists demanded we believe. And if, by random, we mean, "varying unpredictably," or "associated with chance or circumstance rather than a particular trait," or any of several other meanings of "random," then, yes, it is random in those senses.
So you'll have to come back to the sense in which you insist it's "non-random" and explain what you're attempting to point out.