 Third, Creationists point out that modern evolutionary theory asserts that the raw building blocks of evolution, the genetic mutations, are random. But this means that there are minimal chances of evolution producing something that works as well and efficiently as an organism, with all of the functioning parts in place. A monkey typing letters does so randomly. It could never in a million years (in a billion, billion, billion… years) type the works of Shakespeare. The Creationists say that same is true of evolution and organisms, given the randomness of mutation. To which evolutionists reply that this may all be well and true of the monkey, but in the case of evolution things are rather different. If a mutation works, then it is kept and then built upon, until the next good mutation comes along. This shrinks considerably the odds of evolution producing organisms, even though the appearance of mutation is random. Suppose you take just one phrase from Shakespeare. ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.’ If you had to get every letter right straight off, you would be into a huge time-span. Twenty-six (the number of letters, more if you include capitals and gaps and punctuation) to the power of the number of spaces. But if you are allowed to keep the ‘F’ as soon as you get it, and then go on to try for a ‘r’, you are no longer going back to square one each time and suddenly the task becomes much more manageable. (Dawkins 1986 has a good discussion of these issues.) Incidentally, add evolutionists, one must take care in speaking of mutation as ‘random.’ There is no implication that mutation is uncaused or something else rather peculiar. Rather is meant that mutations do not occur according to need. Suppose a new disease appears. Evolutionary theory does not guarantee that a new, life-protecting mutation will occur to order.