What "Darwinists" really say

In another thread Haraite made this comment:

Yet, the Darwinist will claim that the world did take billions of years to 'become' what it is now, and that evolution took place, BUT that it was not guided by any supernatural power. Instead, that it was randomly created, that it was by chance that species survived, not because they were supposed to survive, but because natural-selection allowed them to do so.

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He wanted the topic discussed in a separate thread, so here we are.

1. Age. Yes, all the data indicate that the earth is very old. The data certainly falsifies that the earth is young. This data was gathered and the conclusion reached by 1831, while Darwin was on the Beagle and evolution by natural selection had not yet even occurred to him.

2. Evolution is "random". At this point we should let that arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins speak:
"Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. One stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process -- mutation. Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss that they do about the "randomness" of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection, the other side of the process. It is not necessary that mutation should be random in order for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation can be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance. ...
One could imagine a theoretical world in which mutations were biased toward improvement. Mutations in this hypothetical world would be non-random not just in the sense that mutations induced by X-rays are non-random: these hypothetical mutations would be systematically biased to keep one jump ahead of selection and anticipate the needs of the organism ...
Darwinians wouldn't mind if such providential mutations were provided. It wouldn't undermine Darwinism, though it would put paid to its claims for exclusivity: a tailwind on a transatlantic flight can speed up your arrival in an agreeable way, and this doesn't undermine your belief that the primary force that got you home is the jet engine." R Dawkins, Climbing Mt. Improbable, pp 80- 82.

Now, notice the last 2 paragraphs. Dawkins is admitting that mutations (all or some) could be non-random. As in provided by a deity.

Also notice that natural selection is not chance. Contrary to the claim by Haraite. So, species don't survive by the "chance" of natural selection.

Finally, we should note that it is individuals that survive. Species are collections of interbreeding individuals. So, although it is convenient shorthand to say "species survive", what is meant is that the individuals survive and reproduce, and which individuals do so is not by chance, but by that deterministic, non-chance process called natural selection.

The implication in Haraite's comment is, of course, that Darwinists are also atheists. Let's let another famous Darwinist -- Steven Jay Gould -- commment on that one.

"Johnson encapsulates his major insistence by writing: 'In the broadest sense, a 'creationist' is simply a person who believes the world (and especially mankind) was *designed* and exists for a *purpose*." Darwinism, Johnson claims, inherently and explicitly denies such a belief and therefore constitutes a naturalistic philosophy intrinsically opposed to religion.
"But this is the oldest canard and non sequitor in the debater's book. To say it for all my colleageues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists. ...
"Forget philosophy for a moment; the simple empirics of the past hundred years should suffice. Darwin himself was agnostic (having lost his beliefs upon the tragic death of his favorite daughter), but the great American botanist Asa Gray, who favored natural selection and wrote a book entitled Darwiniana, was a devout Christian. Move forward 50 years: Charles D. Walcott, discoverer of the Burgess Shale fossils, was a convinced Darwinian and an equally firm Christian, who believed that God had ordained natural selection to construct a history of life according to His plans and purposes. Move on another 50 years to the two greatest evolutionists of our generation: G.G. Simpson was a humanist agnostic, Theodosius Dobzhansky a believing Russian Orthodox. Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism, "
SJ Gould, Impeaching a self-appointed judge. Scientific American, 267:79-80, July 1992.

Trying to scare people into thinking that Darwinists are atheists is good debate tactics, but it is not the truth. One of the obligations in obeying the 9th Commandment is to accurately report the position of the other side.