Atheists, do you believe that human beings evolved by random chance?

No. Not entirely, anyway.

What your brethren remain willfully ignorant to is the fact that evolution is a TWO-step process: mutation, and natural selection.

Mutation IS random -- yes, it's true.

But natural selection -- the winnowing process whereby the survivability of those mutations is tested in the natural world -- is the exact OPPOSITE of random.

It's like lightning following the path of least resistance between earth and sky, or water flowing to seek the lowest part of the terrain -- if a puddle of water were alive, it wouldn't be rational for it to insist that it was "intelligently designed" to exactly fit the ditch it finds itself at the bottom of...would it?

And to even suggest that mutations are somehow being "guided" by some "higher power" is to miss the point entirely -- the reason evolutionary theory works so elegantly to explain the diversity of life is that it would create exactly the sort of biosphere we observe in the world around us, WITHOUT requiring intervention or a "guiding intelligence".

Hi there. Very glad you're thinking about this as your understanding is clearly far more than that of most people who ask questions about this.

The quality of answers you've gotten is in direct relation to the quality of the question.

In addition to what others have posted, I wish to offer you this...

As you mentioned, mutations succeed or fail depending on natural selection which is not random.

Like others have mentioned, the mutations themselves are only partially random since some are more likely than others.

But one last thing to realize is THAT there are mutations is not random.

Mutations are the result of a gene's less-than-perfect fidelity. What do I mean by this and why is it important? If our genes copied themselves with perfect fidelity, there would be no mutations to speak of. Thus, there would be no variation and without variation there would be no natural selection and no speciation. In short, there would be no evolution... it would be impossible.

So is this an opening for a creator to explain this "essential infidelity?" Not at all. Imagine billions of years ago with two separate replicators hanging out in the primordial ooze. One replicates itself perfectly each time while the other replicates itself perfectly 99.9% of the time. Which one is going to have more adaptable "offspring" capable of surviving in varied environments? I should hope the answer is clear. And why? Natural selection. It's the *imperfection* of the system that makes it work.

The final thing I'd like to leave you with is some numbers to back up what someone else was saying about sexual reproduction. Scientists estimate that each human is capable of producing 2^23 (8,388,608) unique sex cells. This means that during sexual reproduction one couple alone has the potential to make 2^23 * 2^23 = 2^46 unique children. That is 70,368,804,177,664 possible combinations representing that many possible offspring from two people.

See, even if there is an element of randomness, it's not that big of a deal because it is still biology. The odds were 1:70,368,804,177,664 of you being you -- and look, there you are. And had it been any of the 70,368,804,177,663 other possibilities, they would have been blown away by the odds too.

Actually, which mutations arise are not purely random*, but let's leave the technical aspects aside and declare mutations as "something like random", or a process with 'distinctly random aspects'.

* for example in the sense that some mutations are more likely than others

But randomness there doesn't necessarily mean random results.

[For example, if I roll ten dice, and retain the highest, roll ten more dice and retain the highest, and so on, until I have ten "winners", and then choose the highest (and so on, for several rounds, perhaps starting with ten thousand rolls), even though the raw material (the first round of rolls) was random, the outcome of the process is not random. The randomness there is largely irrelevant to the outcome.]

That said, if we were to rerun the history of life from some intermediate stage, we wouldn't expect to see humans now. We would probably see /some/ familiar things (eyes have evolved fairly independently many times, flight has evolved a number of times, and so on, so we might perhaps end up with things that can fly, and things that can see). But in that sense, the presence of homo sapiens is the result of chance.

But then again, what's the chance that the particular set of genes that makes the *you* that exists would be the result of a mating between your parents? It's vanishingly, vanishingly small - and it's demonstrably random in several respects. Does that bother you? It's not evolution (it's just sexual reproduction), but randomness is certainly there.

[If the random aspect of evolution is the thing that bothers creationists, why don't we see them railing against sexual reproduction?]

Well, the mutations themselves are random, but they can't benefit the individual by just popping up out of nowhere. Natural selection means that particular mutations are 'chosen' (for want of a better word) because they are useful in the current habitat and give that individual some sort of advantage over others. So although the process needs some random mutations, the process of natural selection itself is not random. That's why we say that evolution is not down to chance.

Also, evolution is not atheistic. It's a concept, not a person. Remember, evolution doesn't have gods in it because it doesn't answer any questions that need to have a god. In fact, many people believe that natural selection is a tool God(s) used to create.

No. Saying evolution is random is a typical creationist lie.

Mutation is random, natural selection is not random.

"But didn't the mutation itself come about as a result of random coincidence under atheistic evolutionary theory."

I challenge you to show that evolutionary theory is atheistic.

I challenge you to show that mutations are not random.

I challenge your assertion that you are "just trying to understand".

Mutations are errors in copying the genetic code. They just happen, randomly, despite the many mechanisms we have in order to avoid and correct them. When it happens with a regular cell, it generally doesn't matter much. When it happens with a reproductive cell, the offspring will have a mutation.

Natural selection takes it from there.

<But didn't the mutation itself come about as a result of random coincidence under atheistic evolutionary theory>

Mutations are random, but mutations do not drive evolution. they don't 'steer' it, so to speak. They give it fuel to keep running.

do you know the phrase that if you sat a monkey in front of a typewriter and gave it long enough it would type the complete works of shakespeare (simply by random pressing of keys)

in the known universe there are billions of stars most with planets, it is impossible to believe that there are not life forms out there and as they develop and become more complex and intelligent i suspect they will develop in similar ways to life on this planet. remember humans are just animals we are nothing special

The Higher Power is Nature.

Who are we to question it's plan?

We're just another organism among billions and billions of others.

Causality, that's a question at the centre of philosophy, you could spend the rest of your life considering it.

I look forward to the answers. But there are no simple, correct answers.