The real question is, Bill...do the genetic mutations occur in a random fashion...with the most favorable changes being perpetuated by survival....or do they occur as a result of an actual intention on some level of consciousness? In other words, is evolution an intelligent process or is it a random process?

That is the part that really interests me. In other words, are we the result of random changes in genes...some of which turned out to be beneficial...or are we the result of an indwelling intelligence and purpose which brought about the favorable gene changes seen in the process of the evolution of species?

If so, this intelligence could be attributed to a "God"...that's one way of looking at it. Or it could be attributed to the intelligence within the organisms themselves. Or those 2 factors could be one and the same, given the fact that an ifinitely existing intelligence would be found individualized in ALL living beings, and working through them.

I've always said that the essential difference between the materialist viewpoint and the spiritual viewpoint is this: materialists seem to prefer to believe that everything we see around us happened by natural law...but without conscious intention...meaning randomly (by accident)...whereas spiritually-minded people seem to prefer to believe that everything we see around us happened by natural law...but WITH conscious intention and intelligent purpose.

That is the real dividing line between the materialist and spiritual philosophies. Both of them respect natural law (that goes without even saying)...but only one of them thinks that natural law is working through an indwelling intelligence and purpose, rather than as an unthinking system of mere random, purposeless causes and effects.

And there's no way, I submit, of proving either proposition, as we have no way of observing the source or operation of the indwelling intelligence, assuming it's there.

Since the materialistic viewpoint wants to PROVE everything, this presents materialists with a proposition they don't like, and they tend to react with denial of even the possibility. Spiritually-minded people, likewise, don't like the idea of a system that is devoid of meaning, and driven only by blind causes and effects attributed to Natural Law.

Neither group are opposed to Natural Law, but they see it from differing perspectives.