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To: js1138
The same point the author of the article was making. The world as we observe it today whether it be the design of crystals or the design of life cannot be logically explained as an accident. The presupposition that matter is all there is and matter (including crystals) and life arrived by accident doesn't fit observed world.

Whether or not some of the crystals in the picture where chiseled by a human, and some where merely mined with a chisel by a human is irrelevant to the point the author makes in the article:



"If a billion engineers were to type at the rate of one random character per second, there is virtually no chance that any one of them would, given the 4.5 billion year age of the Earth to work on it, accidentally duplicate a given 20-character improvement. Thus our engineer cannot count on making any major improvements through chance alone. But could he not perhaps make progress through the accumulation of very small improvements? The Darwinist would presumably say, yes, but to anyone who has had minimal programming experience this idea is equally implausible.

Major improvements to a computer program often require the addition or modification of hundreds of interdependent lines, no one of which makes any sense, or results in any improvement, when added by itself. Even the smallest improvements usually require adding several new lines. It is conceivable that a programmer unable to look ahead more than 5 or 6 characters at a time might be able to make some very slight improvements to a computer program, but it is inconceivable that he could design anything sophisticated without the ability to plan far ahead and to guide his changes toward that plan."
119 posted on 09/20/2006 2:21:40 PM PDT by FreedomProtector
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To: FreedomProtector
Assumption: We go swoop! from here to there without going through the middle. Not true, small changes and selection for beneficial ones allows us to get very far relatively rapidly.
The researchers set up an experiment to document how one particularly complex operation evolved. The operation, known as equals, consists of comparing pairs of binary numbers, bit by bit, and recording whether each pair of digits is the same. It's a standard operation found in software, but it's not a simple one. The shortest equals program Ofria could write is 19 lines long. The chances that random mutations alone could produce it are about one in a thousand trillion trillion.

To test Darwin's idea that complex systems evolve from simpler precursors, the Avida team set up rewards for simpler operations and bigger rewards for more complex ones. The researchers set up an experiment in which organisms replicate for 16,000generations. They then repeated the experiment 50 times.

Avida beat the odds. In 23 of the 50 trials, evolution produced organisms that could carry out the equals operation. And when the researchers took away rewards for simpler operations, the organisms never evolved an equals program. “When we looked at the 23 tests, they were all done in completely different ways,” adds Ofria. He was reminded of how Darwin pointed out that many evolutionary paths can produce the same complex organ. A fly and an octopus can both produce an image with their eyes, but their eyes are dramatically different from ours. “Darwin was right on that-there are many different ways of evolving the same function,” says Ofria.

Check out the story of Avida artificial life here.

Artificial evolution is actually a happening area in programming and circuit design because it can sample many variations very rapidly and end up constructing a system that looks really weird to us, but often works better than what we can manage through "intelligent design."

124 posted on 09/20/2006 2:34:09 PM PDT by ahayes (My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.)
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To: FreedomProtector

So which crystal is the result of natural causes and which one is the result of intervention by a designer?


126 posted on 09/20/2006 2:42:37 PM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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