Stu wrote:
Douglas Futuyma in his book Evolutionary Biology says:
Most Darwinian scientists think the evolutionary process is devoid of purpose. Here is a sample.Darwin for one exudes purpose . It's just a purpose which you don't want and so avoid and will even deceive in order to avoid.
Douglas Futuyma in his book Evolutionary Biology says:
Monroe W. Strickberger, of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, notes in his widely-used textbook Evolution:The profound, unsettling, implication of this purely mechanical, material explanation for the existence and characteristics of diverse organisms is that we need not invoke, nor can we find any evidence for, any design, goal, or purpose anywhere in the natural world, except in human behavior.
The book Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine and Kenneth R. Miller, says on page 152:The fear that Darwinism was an attempt to displace God in the sphere of creation was therefore quite justified. To the question, is there a special purpose for the creation of humans, evolution answered no. To the question, is there a special purpose for the creation of any living species, evolution answered no.
George Gaylord Simpson, the leading neo-Darwinist a generation ago, claimed:Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless--a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit.
According to the National Association of Biology Teachers, evolution has no direction or goal including the survival of a species:Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind.
Cambridge Paleontologist Simon Conway Morris says:The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.
Natural selection...has no specific direction or goal, including survival of a species.
Richard Dawkins says:Does evolution have a structure, an overall design, perhaps even a purpose? Orthodox opinion recoils from this prospect. Evolution, it is widely believed, is an effectively random process where almost any outcome is possible.
Natural selection has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.