Randomness shorn of people and books

[beaglelady]

Let us see what @benkirk actually asked:

If all mutation stopped tomorrow, leaving behind only the existing variation (which clearly exists and has been measured), would evolution still occur?

More specifically, would both natural selection (nonrandom) and drift (random) still occur, acting only on existing variation?

If one or both continued, which would be the first to stop or slow down?

He doesn’t claim that evolution would continue forever if new mutations stopped. And he certainly doesn’t claim that the transition from artiodactyl to whale would have taken place at nearly the nearly the same rate and with the same results had there been no new mutations after about 50 million years ago. (That’s about the time of Pakicetus attocki)