Evolution, religion, and ignorance.

[RDK]

The ability for animals to change gradually was certainly designed into each working creature. What you see is an organ or animal feature which is already in use,altering itself slightly for the benefit of the creature. That new change is simply handed down through genetic transfer. This is a complicated feature that is integral to the function of the animal in the first place. I am not saying that changes don't take place. I am emphasizing that it is a feature of animals to enhance their life challenges.
You can change the shape and sizes of dogs over time, but they can still mate to make more variations of themselves. What I want to emphasize is that this capability is designed into the functions of the creature. This could not happen without some pre-creation planning. One change can amount to billions of cellular adjustments, and an almost uncountable number of (chance) atomic ones.

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The number of useful connections between these things would be truly astronomical, and this all happened by chance?

The evidence suggests that the astronomical chance did occur naturally.

The chances could always be against something happening, but that does not discount the fact that there is a chance of it happening.