Evolution and Randomness

I've talked a lot of about evolution in this blog. Now I'm going to point to someone else.

William Standsfield has written a true tour de force on how evolution works using the the old monkey chestnut: How long would it take a team of monkeys and typewriters to come up with Shakespeare?

This fallacious reasoning behind this chestnut is a common mistake in understanding evolution deniers often trot out. It's phrased: "It would take [X years/Y % probability] for this [evolutionary item of the moment] to occur randomly. Therefore, evolution can't be true."

The fallacy is, of course, evolution is anything but random.

Go read the article here. It's very good.