I'm adding this to my list of favorite quotes. It's about evolution.

Is evolution is a completely natural process, no gods required?

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As long as there is genetic variation and mutation, evolution will continue all on its own.
-- rodcom

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Yes, it does seem to be. So far, we haven't run across anything about it which requires a "watchmaker," as some might put it. The process seems to not only be self-guiding, but it seems to work better because there is no intelligence guiding it.

The reason is because when there's an intelligent agency looking at a problem-- so pretty much, when we're considering a problem-- we tend to consider what would be the next optimal step to solve the problem and discount other, less optimal immediate solutions as being less favorable.

As we do that, we lock ourselves into certain patterns of solving problems and fail to consider the idea that the ultimate optimal solution to a problem may lie at the end of a path where the intermediate solutions are sub-optimal.

Evolution does not restrict itself in that fashion. Any and all working solutions to a problem, no matter whether they are the solution which seems optimal on the surface or one that seems just barely functional, get tested by the system, leading to a much wider variety of outcomes that in turn provide greater opportunities for the organism to adapt along a path that an intentionally engineered solution might not allow for.

And evolution might provide physical adaptations which solve problems an organism didn't even really have, due to the fact evolution isn't restricting its adaptations to things which only have a single function.

A prime example would be the wing. Creationists often ask "what good is half a wing?"

It does a great deal of good if you remember birds use wings for multiple things, only one of which requires them to leave the ground.

Birds use their wings to help shelter their young. That's something they do on the ground, and half a wing would be of more help doing that than no wing at all.

They also use their wings in mating displays and threat displays. There again, they don't need to leave the ground to do either one, and half a wing is more functional than no wing at all.

Humans overlook such things, because they look at wings which enable birds to fly and assume that must be the problem they evolved to overcome because it's the problem which absolutely cannot be overcome without them.

However, there's no reason to assume the wing evolved to solve the problem of flight. It may have evolved for entirely different reasons, and given birds the ability to fly as a side-effect.

As much as our intelligence helps us in certain ways, it limits our ability to problem solve in others. Evolution doesn't suffer from that limitation.

So no, there doesn't seem to be any need for a God or other intellect to guide the process. It works just as well, if not better, without anything like that involved.

-- Andigravity