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When something can force "best suited change" as you point out, that means there is purpose and intelligence at hand as far as I'm concerned, which, goes directly against what the TOE implies.
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I honestly believe that, the odds of a single celled organism to, in a directionless process, without purpose, without power, modify through untold trillions of slight changes, into the human species, in the span of 3-5 billion years; are about the same odds as you choosing the correct numbers to win every drawing, of every lottery, in every country of the world, for every day, of the rest of your life....... go with mutuals!!
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We have seen in every day life that the processes required to build new, complex, and unique systems are always developed with great difficulty and many failures along the way, and most definately ONLY through intelligence, purpose, and power are these processes accomplished.
Good post, Paul. However....
The problem with much of this way of thinking is that it assumes that man was the goal of this kind of process. I've seen the "odds" calculated to arrive at man from "nothing," or from a starting material of "primordial soup". Smaller number than I can contemplate. However, ToE does not suggest that man was ever the ultimate result. Rather, the odds should be modified just to arrive at
something, not at man. Think of it this way--what are the odds that my parents were in the right place at the right time, fell in love, got married, and had me? What were the odds that the particular sperm and egg I resulted from met, and resulted in a fertilized egg? What were the odds that the pregnancy was carried to term, and I was born healthy? What were the odds that each of these things happened for each of my grandparents, and their parents, and their parents, etc.? Astronomical! Mathematically, I shouldn't be here! But that's only because we're calculating from a known point, backwards. What are the odds that
someone would have gotten married, and had
some child? Pretty good. Similarly, cards in a deck. What are the odds that I would draw a 2 of hearts, followed by a 3 of hearts, followed by a 4 of hearts, followed by a 5 of hearts, followed by a 6 of hearts? Pretty low. But what are the odds that I would draw any 5 cards from the deck? 100%. I understand your incredulity based on the "odds," but one has to keep in minds that in the engineering we do today (as described above), we have so many failures because we are looking for a particular, predetermined outcome. That was not the case with evolution--
any outcome would suffice.
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