PBS Offers Intelligent Design Documentary

CREATION - Evolution Headlines ^ | 04/28/2003 | Illustra Media/CREATION - Evolution Headlines

[Remedy]

According to Illustra Media, the Public Broadcasting System uploaded the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life to its satellite this past Sunday. For the next three years, it will be available for member stations to download and broadcast. In addition, PBS is offering the film on their Shop PBS website under Science/Biology videos (page 4).

The film, released a little over a year ago, has been called a definitive presentation of the Intelligent Design movement. With interviews and evidences from eight PhD scientists, it presents strictly scientific (not religious) arguments that challenge Darwinian evolution, and show instead that intelligent design is a superior explanation for the complexity of life, particularly of DNA and molecular machines. The film has been well received not only across America but in Russia and other countries. Many public school teachers are using the material in science classrooms without fear of controversies over creationism or religion in the science classroom, because the material is scientific, not religious, in all its arguments and evidences, and presents reputable scientists who are well qualified in their fields: Dean Kenyon, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Steven Meyer, William Dembski, Scott Minnich, Jed Macosko, and Paul Nelson, with a couple of brief appearances by Phillip E. Johnson, the "founder" of the Intelligent Design movement.

Check with your local PBS Station to find out when they plan to air it. If it is not on their schedule, call or write and encourage them to show the film. Why should television partly supported by public tax funds present only a one-sided view on this subject, so foundational to all people believe and think? We applaud PBS's move, but it is only partial penance for the Evolution series and decades of biased reporting on evolution.

This is a wonderful film, beautifully edited and shot on many locations, including the Galápagos Islands, and scored to original music by Mark Lewis. People are not only buying it for themselves, but buying extra copies to show to friends and co-workers. Unlocking the Mystery of Life available here on our Products page in VHS and DVD formats. The film is about an hour long and includes vivid computer graphics of DNA in action. The DVD version includes an extra half-hour of bonus features, including answers to 14 frequently-asked questions about intelligent design, answered by the scientists who appear in the film.

This is a must-see video. Get it, and get it around.

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Intelligent Design Gets a Powerful New Media Boost 03/09/2002
Exclusive Over 600 guests gave a standing ovation Saturday March 9 at the premiere of a new film by Illustra Media, Unlocking the Mystery of Life. This 67-minute documentary is in many ways a definitive portrayal of the Intelligent Design movement that is sweeping the country. Intelligent Design is a non-religious, non-sectarian, strictly scientific view of origins with both negative and positive arguments: negative, that Darwinism is insufficient to explain the complexity of life, and positive, that intelligent design, or information, is a fundamental entity that must be taken into consideration in explanations of the origin of complex, specified structures like DNA. The film features interviews with a Who's Who of the Intelligent Design movement: Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Paul Nelson, Stephen Meyer, Dean Kenyon, William Dembski, and others, who explain the issues and arguments for intelligent design as the key to unlocking the mystery of life. The film also features nearly 20 minutes of award-quality computer animation of molecular machines, manufacturing plants, and storage libraries of elaborate information - DNA and proteins at work in the cell, climaxing with a dazzling view of DNA transcription and translation.
In his keynote address, Dr. Paul Nelson (who appears in the film), gave reasons for optimism. He said that Time Magazine, usually solidly Darwinian, admitted just last week that these Intelligent Design scientists may be onto something. U.S. News and World Report is also coming out with a piece on I.D. And Stephen Meyer, who also appears in the film, could not be at the premiere because he was on his way to Ohio (see next headline), armed with copies of the film to give to the school board members. Nelson said that scientists should not arbitrarily rule design off the table. "Keeping science from discovering something that might be true is like having a pair of spectacles that distorts your vision," he said. "It does profound harm to science." He described how Ronald Numbers, evolutionist, once told him that design might be true, but science is a game, with the rule that scientists cannot even consider the possibility of design; "that's just the way it is," he said. (See this quote by Richard Lewontin for comparison.) Yet design is already commonly considered in archaeology, cryptography, forensics, and SETI, so why not in biology? Apparently this arbitrary rule has become a national controversy. Intelligent Design, says Nelson, is finally removing a "rule of the game" that is hindering science. If the reaction of the crowd at the premiere luncheon was any indication, Unlocking the Mystery of Life has launched a well-aimed smart weapon at the citadels of Darwinism.

We highly recommend this film. Copies are just now becoming available for $20. Visit IllustraMedia.com and order it. View it, and pass it around. Share it with your teachers, your co-workers, your church. You will have no embarrassment showing this high-quality, beautiful, amazing film to anyone, even the most ardent evolutionist.

 

 

[general_re]

That program was an attempt to prove that blind chance can create something in tangile form.

I don't think so. You created that requirement, not someone else, and certainly not Richard Dawkins or the author of that app. You seem to think that evolution does the equivalent of generating random strings and then checking to see if they are somehow meaningful. I assure you, it does not, and any program that did so would be a grossly inaccurate representation thereof. For all your code-reading skills, you seem to have completely missed the point of the applet - that evolution is not a purely random process, nor is it claimed to be by anyone but you.

Call them what you want, they do not represent the evolutionary process, becuase an end result is known. Is the end result known in evolution? No.

No kidding. Didn't I say exactly that in my last post? It's not an attempt to perfectly model biological evolution, it's an analogy intended to illustrate a point that you've managed to miss completely. The point is that biological evolution is not a matter of "blind chance" because it is driven by a fitness function. In this app, the fitness function is represented by the distance from the goal - once again, strings closer to the goal are defined as "more fit" and a preferentially preserved and propagated, just as more fit organisms are more successful at preservation and propagation in the biological world. You're so hung up on what you think it ought to show that you've completely missed what it does show - that the iterative nature of evolution converges on well-adapted organisms, and does so relatively quickly, contrary to claims (such as yours) that evolution cannot produce anything meaningful because it is purely a matter of "blind chance". It is not an entirely random affair - specific selective pressures act to produce specific evolutionary responses.

[general_re]

Damn double posts...

[Aric2000]

But it was DAMN FINE double post!! ;)

[Ichneumon]

was busy but had to comment on this one.

[Consider yourself duly dismissed once and for all as a lightweight.]

not directed at me, but it certainly made me chuckle. Not because it is funny, but because it is sorry.

You are of course entitled to your opinion. As I am to the one I expressed above. And ironically, I note that both your opinion and mine are quite similar -- both express scorn at what we feel is the way that another poster hasn't held up their end of the conversation. So if my dismissal of someone's debate ability is "sorry" just by virtue of being a dismissal, isn't your dismissal of mine likewise?

There's an appropriate word here, and it starts with an "h"...

But let's do an instant replay, shall we? I didn't dismiss the person in question merely because I disagreed with them.

After prancing around the thread for a while, he made a post containing four specific contentious claims -- without a shred of supporting evidence or argument. Worse, two of them arrogantly contained implied accusations of dishonesty and/or incompetence towards his targets. (Hey, why didn't you call *his* attitude "sorry"?)

So, quite reasonably, I called on him to support his four claims. And because he has played these same games on many other threads, I put a challenge clause in my post:cl

Let's see if you've got anything better than empty accusations. Your reputation is riding on the quality of your responses.

This is always the case, of course, but I wanted it said explicitly. I also wanted him to take the time to make his reply a good one, *if he was capable of it*, one that actually supported his claims/accusations, *if he could*.

Knowing the usual cheap-trick debate tactics I'd seen before, I went on to say:

And to avoid the usual creationist tactic of posting a link to a scattershot list of 234,858 attempts to throw things at the wall in the hopes that 1 or 2 might stick, give us your single *best* example, in your own words, in response to each of the questions.

This was a specific challenge for the poster to a) do the best he was capable of, and b) don't try to muddle the answer by going off in a dozen different directions. If he had a case at all, one strong point would suffice to show it.

I wrapped up by saying:

That'll not only save everyone (including you) a lot of time, it'll let us dismiss you once and for all if your "best" examples are shown to be misfires.

I had *specifically* warned him that I, and most likely others, would judge him by the quality of his response. This wasn't a challnge out of the blue, on an arbitrary question -- this was a request that he do his best to back up his *own* claims and accusations, that he himself chose to make.

So, how good *was* his response? It: 1) Failed to even try to support three of his claims at all. 2) Despite being asked to give his *best* single example, he did a scattershot that went off in literally 19 different directions. 3) Despite being asked to do his best, his 19 "points" were so goofy and flawed that they appeared to be a troll -- at least I *hope* it was a troll.

He was asked to do his best on a test of his own claims so that his reputation in these debates could be assessed, and he rolled a gutter-ball.

Then, after telling him in advance that his answer was going to to be a test of his ability to support his own arguments, I followed through and announced to him that not only was his performance not stellar, it showed him to be "an intellectual lightweight". And indeed it did.

And you think this "sorry"? I gave him every chance and advanced warning. I told him it was "put up or shut up" time, so to speak. And he blew it. It's that simple.

I'm not going to apologize for then stating the obvious.

So, Ichneuman, what is it, a masters or Ph.D. in Biology? Or closely related?

Nope. Not even warm. I have a BS in Computer Science, from one of the top-ranked engineering colleges in the country. And let me tell you, a Comp-Sci degree from an engineering school is a lot different than one from a non-engineering school. Also, for what it's worth, I was just one credit away from getting an official "Minor in Philosophy" on my diploma.

I consider MS and PhD degrees to too often be a waste of life, unless one is going into pure academia or a career where they won't even let you in the door without extra initials after your name.

If advanced learning is your true goal, it's better done other places than locked up in a classroom for another 2-6 years. And I've been voraciously learning ever since I got out of school. It's my one true hobby.

You are hiding something.

Hardly -- I'm perfectly upfront with my scorn for people whose arrogance exceeds their abilities. The poster to whom I was responding has spent months on these forums dismissively putting down others while holding himself up as Mr. Logical-Who-Sadly-Must-Waste-His-Time-Correcting-The-Lesser-Beings. So when he repeatedly fails to rise to his own opinion of himself, it's hardly a sin to point out the obvious. And I'm hardly the only one who has been doing so.

Seriously. You have a hatred towards Christians, don't you? Its not just creationists, oh no, I think it goes a bit further.

You, truly, haven't a clue here. I've no animosity at all towards Christians. There are even a number of Creationists I have no issue with.

What *am* I cranky about? Willful, belligerent, obstinate, arrogant ignorance. I have no problem with the merely uninformed. It's the people who really go out of their way to *prevent* themselves from learning anything that annoy the heck out of me. Some people leave it at that and are merely irritating. But couple that sort of don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts behavior with a know-it-all attitude, and it really gets maddening.

The following was once said of writer Harlan Ellison, but the older I get the more I can identify with it myself: "it is said of some people that they don't suffer fools gladly -- Harlan doesn't suffer them at all."

And no, being a Christian or a Creationist hardly makes anyone a "fool" in my view. In order to qualify for that assessment, someone has to earn it.

One thing is for sure, you are not a college professor. At least I don't think so. How do I know that? Well, if you were, your attitude and dismissal of others opinions would have gotten you evaluations fine enough to get you fired by now.

I don't dismiss other's opinions. I do, however, dismiss people who think they know it all when they manifestly do not.

I'm not a professor, it's true, but I have taught one-day classes on certain subjects, and informally taught many things to many people over the years on a one-on-one basis. And no one's complained yet. I'm very patient with those who don't know something, or want to learn. Nor do I mind disagreement or opposing opinions -- I often learn from them myself.

That's different, however, from someone with either a passing knowledge in something (or worse, no knowledge at all and/or a gross misunderstanding of a field) trying to lecture me on something I've spent a lifetime learning about, while mangling it themselves.

I'm now old enough to not only remember, but to fully appreciate, the old saying, "don't presume to teach your grandpa to suck eggs, sonny".

Or to use a classic line from the "Red Skelton" show (which I watched when it first aired, hint hint) "Little do you know how little you know".

And everytime a student would have asked you to fill in a hole, you probably would have bitten their head off, unless, of course they agree with your view.

See above. I enjoy opposing views, actually. My officemate and I disagree on a great many things, but we have a blast arguing them back and forth on almost a daily basis. And I haven't bitten his head off yet.

Grad student maybe? I am just guessing.

Wrong again. I have gray hairs old enough to be grad students...

[PatrickHenry]

Damn double posts ...

Placemarker. Placemarker.

[milan]

Please respond to this. You are a geologist, correct? I would like your take if you have time.

[Right Wing Professor]

I was asked to reply to this. I'm not a geologist. I've done some amateur poking around very recent strata in Western Nebraska. It is true you don't find complete geologic columns, but you do find lots of partial columns that overlap and can be aligned, in our case, by layers of volcanic ash. I see no reason why that is not an adequate substitute.

After all, history is very much the same way; we don't have a complete account of Europe since, say 200 BC, from primary or even secondary sources, but we have lots of partial accounts for periods of a few decades and centuries (with a few rather sparse periods) and we construct a full history by aligning these sources.

[plusone]

Actually, blind luck, random chance, and huge dollops of time are the only ingredients that pure non-Divine Evolution can offer as driving forces.

[Aric2000]

And those are the only things it needs, why do you have such a problem with this.

Blind luck, I suppose you could say that, because the creature that is lucky enough to have the right mutations will survive and reproduce, random chance, OK, same same, and huge dollops of time.

Do you know how long 3 1/2 BILLION years is?

That's a VERY long time, if I say that the average human lives to be 100 years old, how many generations would that be. Hint, take 2 zeros off 3,500,000,000, or 35 million generations. Now, bring that life down to 20 years, that's still long, and you are talking a huge amount of generations, plenty to mutate and change.

Lots of time, lots of chances.

[longshadow]

spasmodic placemarker

[Theophilus]

that evolution is not a purely random process

Anything this is random must also be purely random because there is no such thing as less or more random. For instance: Take a non-random number "A" (your age) multiply it by a random number "B" (try to choose a purely random number, it's hard to do and just as hard to prove) the result, "C", can only be as random, unplanned, haphazard, unpredictable, improbable and meaningless as "B" is.

Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare

Fri May 9,12:39 PM ET

Add AP - Feature Stories to My Yahoo!

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment, faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques.

Then, they waited.

At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in.

The notion that monkeys typing at random will eventually produce literature is often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century scientist who supported Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. Mathematicians have also used it to illustrate concepts of chance.

The Plymouth experiment was funded by England's Arts Council and part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.

Phillips said the results showed that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that.

"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there."

___

On the Net:

The monkeys' output: www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publication/

They should have told those anti-evolutionist monkeys to take a shot at: "The Origin of Species"

[general_re]

Anything this is random must also be purely random because there is no such thing as less or more random. For instance: Take a non-random number "A" (your age) multiply it by a random number "B" (try to choose a purely random number, it's hard to do and just as hard to prove) the result, "C", can only be as random, unplanned, haphazard, unpredictable, improbable and meaningless as "B" is.

Oh? Let's play a game. Here's how it works - you roll a set of three ordinary six-sided dice to determine if you win or lose, but the only winning roll is to roll eighteen. How "random" is the set of winning rolls going to be?

Evolution is like that - there's a random element to it, but the final product is not completely random, because the losers get thrown out, just like our dice game. Unlike our dice game, evolution is much more powerful, because it's not a random attempt every time - it's an additive process, whereby the best parts of prior attempts are preserved in the future attempts and used as a foundation to build on. If our dice game was more like evolution, you'd be able to roll three dice, keep any sixes that turned up, and roll the remaining dice until they also showed sixes - you'll get eighteen pretty quickly that way, much faster than if you roll all three every time. That's why evolution is not a purely random process - it doesn't start from scratch for every new organism. There's always an extant organism that's the starting point for the new one.

[general_re]

Do you agree that evolutionary and genetic programming which use Darwinian principles create things which lend theirselve to somehow proving evolution?

They prove that iterative, additive processes - a set of processes which includes evolution via natural selection - can produce complex constructs in a relatively short amount of time. As for proving evolution, we're past all that now.

[Theophilus]

you roll a set of three ordinary six-sided dice

There is nothing "random" about rolling dice. The outcome is determined by factors such as the position of the dice in my hand, the force I apply to dice as I accelerate them into the air, the symmetry of the dice as they tumble in the air and the elasticity of the surface on which they bounce and come to rest. While these factors may be beyond my control or even my awareness, I am intuitively confident that they are a finite and therefore a nonrandom set.

[general_re]

"Intuitively confident", are you? Isn't that nice? My four year old is "intuitively confident" that Santa brings her presents every Christmas. In both cases, I have a feeling that the two of you are operating on approximately the same amount of provable or demonstrable factual information. Why don't you take a set of ordinary dice and test this theory by generating output and measuring its entropy? That way, you'll be able to bring something more to the table than "intuitive confidence" in the notion that the output is somehow non-random...

[Theophilus]

Every man uses intuition all the time. Since you took your first step, your intuition has told you that the force gravity will remain constant and that you won't be slammed into the ground and you won't fly off into space. Sure, our intuition can be fooled and sometimes it's not enough. That's why a pilot uses an artificial horizon. But your daughter is not a fool for believing her father loves her and tells her the truth. Most of the time, I'm sure you do! Evolution sprang from Darwin's creative intuition, but he was deceived. Do you disbelieve that there are a finite number of factors determining the outcome of a die roll? I think it's obvious that there is a relatively small number of significant proximate factors in a die roll. Someone has probably already build a robot that can gently and precisely roll a die with fairly good accuracy at predicting the outcome. Do you think that there is an infinite amount of matter in the universe? Or are you willfully agnostic about these concepts?

Dice - A simulated movie

[general_re]

This is easily testable. Take a set of ordinary (fair and unmodified) dice, roll them in the usual manner a million times or so, and record the output - if the output is not random in a statistically significant manner, there are many statistical tests that can reveal that.

Anyway, it's really neither here nor there - if the most substantive critique of evolution that can be mustered is to essentially deny the concept of randomness and entropy, then I think the theory is on pretty solid ground.

[general_re]

Perhaps you would like to render your opinion on the nature of randomness and entropy? ;)

[PatrickHenry]

Perhaps you would like to render your opinion on the nature of randomness and entropy?

You didn't ask me, but whenever I think of those two things I get very lazy and my thoughts become scattered and incoherent.

[general_re]

I believe that my desk here is some sort of entropy "sink" for the entire house - over time, it gradually becomes more and more random, while the rest of the house stays relatively ordered, or even gets more ordered. So I fight the gradient and organize things on my desk, but then it starts slowly getting more and more random. It's very odd, but I'm trying to figure out if there are any practical uses for it. Maybe I can rent out my desk to people with messy houses, and they can use it to "soak up" the randomness in their houses.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I rarely use the term "random" except in terms such as "random variable." I prefer to use terms such as "independent identically distributed" for selections. This concept is easily defined (one may consult any text on probability.)

What's important is that there are laws that do tell us about the behavior of iid variables. For example, for iid variables with finite variance, the sums of sets of these vairables tends to a normal distribution. Other things are know, for example, the empirical distribution function of an iid sample will converge (with probability one) to the actual distribution from whence the sample is taken.

Theo's statement: Anything this is random must also be purely random because there is no such thing as less or more random. exhibits a large lacuna in understanding the entire concept. Trivially one could generate normally distributed random samples and only keep those with values bigger than zero. The resulting sample would be the result of both a "random" choice and a deterministic outcome. A random walk with an absorbing barrier is another example. (Think: an ensemble of drunks walking near a cliff.)

In probability theory, entropy is just the average of the logarithm of the distribution. It's a useful quantity but seemingly misused by Creationists. In thermodynamics, entropy is a state function of a system. This is but loosely connected with the probability version. Again, the concept of entropy is seemingly misused by Creationists.

[general_re]

Trivially one could generate normally distributed random samples and only keep those with values bigger than zero. The resulting sample would be the result of both a "random" choice and a deterministic outcome. A random walk with an absorbing barrier is another example. (Think: an ensemble of drunks walking near a cliff.)

This is more or less what I wanted to get at here - although the nature of mutations in an environment may be purely random in their effect, the selective pressures serve to drive the organisms in a particular direction or set of directions. You don't see jellyfish flitting about in deserts because the environment is such that it rewards organisms that can survive hot, dry conditions, and punishes those organisms that cannot. And given time, what are essentially random mutations will conspire to produce an entire set of organisms that can survive hot, dry conditions - this is not an accident, even if the mutations that produce such organisms are, because of the selective pressures operant in that environment. It's not a matter of pure blind chance that all the organisms in the desert are adapted for desert environments.

[Theophilus]

Why use "random" when the eminently more verbose: "independent identically distributed" will do?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Do you agree that "random" is equivalent to "independent identically distributed"? If not, please explain what the difference is.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Much of evolutionary theory (and lots of other things) act a bit like stochastic differential equations. One could visualize these as a deterministic system with small random perturbations at each step. Sort of like following a particle moving according to Newton's laws but getting a kick at each small time step (this can be described in a continuous setting.) It's like Brownian motion and F=ma at the same time. (Keywords for GOOGLErs: Îto, Stratanovich, stochastic© differential equations.)

[TaxRelief]

You didn't ask me, but whenever I think of those two things [randomness and entropy] I get very lazy and my thoughts become scattered and incoherent.

ROFLOL! Thank you, I needed a good guffaw!

[nmh]

THANK YOU, THANK YOU and THANK YOU again. I ordered this video because of your thread. I was not aware of it. I'll have to wait 4-8 weeks for delivery because it is in high demand but it is worth it.

I find evolution to be humoerous beyond words. This will be VERY refreshing to see something that is objetive science giving God the credit due to Him.

Also if you have a ping list, please add my name to it.

[nmh]

Name calling only makes you more pitiful. Evolution is the farce that others are laughing at. Only the blind and godless endorse the absurd - evilultion.

[nmh]

Bumo for truth even if if offends the godless, evolutionists.

[PatrickHenry]

Name calling only makes you more pitiful. Evolution is the farce that others are laughing at. Only the blind and godless endorse the absurd - evilultion.

Looks like a truly pitiful performance.

[Ichneumon]

Wow. Okay, I take back what I said...it was not "sorry". I did not read all posts, but rather just saw your response, which I thought was a little condescending. My apologies.

I'd really like to commend you for that -- I know how hard it is to publicly retract something, and most people's first reaction is to just quietly drop the issue or keep trying to support their initial statement. I give you big points for being able to change your mind and clearly say so. And I really appreciate it.

Now could you do me a favor (little quick to ask for a favor?) if you have time?

I have been short on time, so I apologize for the slow response, but I'm here now, and better late than never. :-)

I had posted a link to the programming code for the weasel program (the Java is downloadable from the site). Not sure if you have ever checked it out, but the program is the WORST representation of what I would consider simulating blind chance.

Well, part of the point is that evolution actually *isn't* just "blind chance". Because there is reproduction and selection involved, it can actually accomplish things that "blind chance" alone couldn't do in a billion years (literally).

It literraly took me about 5 minutes to see that the "blind" portion of the program does not exist.

Again, evolution itself isn't "blind" -- the selection process "looks" with a sharp eye on various candidates and (often harshly) selects among them.

In biological evolution, the selection process is due to what Darwin called the "struggle of life": living creatures use the results of their genetic inheritance (if any -- fatal mutations usually don't even get beyond the embryonic stage) in an attempt to survive long enough to reproduce successfully (and repeatedly, if possible). And generally, the ones which are better equipped (again, genetically) tend to be more successful at doing so than the ones which are less well adapted (or genuinely handicapped) to eat, live, and reproduce.

Mother nature is hardly "blind" -- unfit creatures die or fail to reproduce, more fit (i.e. faster, smarter, more efficient, more able to exploit an unused resource, etc. etc.) creatures will more often jump the hurdles and pitfalls of nature (which includes competition with or dangers from other creatures) and pass on their own genetic code.

In short, nature isn't "blind", it actually casts a very cold, sharp eye on all who live in it, and the cost of not measuring up is often death.

It uses simple random characters empiracally to get the end result. It actually goes through and checks individual characters, not the entire sequence, which would be more a little bit more realistic. I have taken simulation courses, as have you if you have a CS degree, and I gotta tell you, this is a poor, poor simulation.

It's not as poor as you think, but it is indeed *simplistic*. It was intended to be an educational tool, purposely simple so as to make a few points, not a grand simulation of biological evlolution in all its more subtle aspects.

One thing to keep in mind was that Dawkins' program was a *response* to certain creationist arguments. There's a broad range of creationist alleged "disproofs" of evolution which fall into the category best summed up in Hoyle's term, the "tornado in a junkyard".

These are the arguments which try to claim that it would take some insanely long time for [pick some biological structure/process] to come together "by chance". Hoyle's technique, for example, was to picture a tornado going through a junkyard, randomly rearranging the junk there over and over again, and then ask the reader to ponder how long it would take the tornado to randomly assemble a 747. Admittedly, it would most likely never happen at all.

The creationists then claim to have shown how ridiculous it is to believe that evolution could "randomly" produce anything complex, either.

The problem with such analogies, however, is that this is *not* an accurate picture of how evolution works. Yes, evolution does include a component of random change. But that's not the *only* process at work. Random variation (and not-so-random variation) is only one factor at work -- the other two are reproduction and selection. Without all three present, evolution goes nowhere (see below). *With* all three present, evolution can take off and do some very surprising things.

Some of the creationist "tornado in a junkyard" arguments involved the difficulty of randomly producing a particular string of text. This is the "monkeys on typewriters" variation, named after the famous old saying that if you had enough monkeys randomly smacking away on typewriters long enough, you could produce all the works of Shakespeare. True enough, but as the creationists rightly point out, for even a relatively short phrase the amount of time you'd have to wait for the monkeys to get lucky would likely exceed the expected lifespan of the universe itself.

And again, creationists use this to argue that evolutionary formation of something even more complex, say, a housecat is more unlikely than infinity squared.

But again, evolution is *not* just one random rearrangement after another, as are the tornado and the monkey examples.

So Dawkins decided to use an old creationist standby, the "monkeys on typewriters" example, as a starting point to put together a counterdemonstration that showed that using not just randomness, but all three of the processes at work in evolution, you could actually produce a desired text string not in mega-trillions of years, but in a few seconds! His point was to demonstrate that the three processs of evolution make for *enormously* more efficient results than the "pure chance" methods the creationists had been using in their arguments.

Dawkins' choice of phrase was indeed from Shakespeare:

Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that ’s almost in shape of a camel?
Pol. By the mass, and ’t is like a camel, indeed.
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale?
Pol. Very like a whale.

-- Hamlet. Act iii. Scene 2.

The Dawkins program to produce the string "Methinks it is like a weasel" involves three processes:

1. Random variation -- on each "generation", 1/8th of the character strings in the "population" (size selected by user) have one of their text characters completely randomized to some other character.

2. Selection -- the character string which has the most "correct" characters (or if more than one such string exists, the most recent such) is flagged, and a) will be "bred", and b) won't itself be mutated or replaced by one of its own "offspring".

3. Reproduction -- the current "most fit" character string undergoes "sexual reproduction' with randomly chosen other strings, and the resulting offspring replace the "mates". (This is actually more akin to biological lateral gene transfer.)

So all three of the processes necessary for evolution to take place are in the Dawkins program. And, as predicted by "evolutionists", the results are swift and sure -- the mutating, reproducing, subject-to-selection population very quickly (within seconds) produces a Shakespeare text string which the creationist "pure random" methods would not have produced before the Earth permanently froze over.

Things to note: While the selection function "tells" the population which character string among the population is "closest" to the target, it gives no hint whatsoever as to *which* characters in that string are right and which are wrong, nor how close the wrong ones might be, nor what/how to change the string to get closer or farther from the target. The population itself doesn't even "know" what the target string is (or technically, that there even *is* a target). All it "knows" is that certain members among its population are more favored (i.e. fit) for reproduction than others. But the population has no way to "know" or predict what changes might increase or decrease the reproductive fitness of any member of its population. Indeed, the result of each new mating and/or mutation is more likely to *decrease* the amount of match than to increase it.

This is why it's not incorrect to call the process "blind evolution" -- the population itself, and the "individuals" in it, as well as the mutation process and the reproduction process, have no "goal" in sight, have no "preferred" direction, have no knowledge of the selection function's existence nor what type of change would increase/decrease fitness. They just keep on mixing and matching and mutating, living or dying, while being totally blind to any aspect of the force (selection) at work shaping things. The individuals in the population (nor the population as a whole) is not "trying" to reach any particular result. Mutation in the model is purely blindly random (and actually is much more likely to take an individual farther from the desired result than closer to it). The mating "genetic" crossover is similarly blindly random and more likely to produce an offspring which matches less than its best parent. The only non-random component is that which lets the most "fit" individual in the population do more of the mating, but even then that individual is blind to the reasons why it was more successful than its kin.

It's also instructive to note what happens if you remove any of the three required processes:

1. Without a selection process which gives the "more fit" individuals greater reproductive success than the less fit, the population will simply randomly mate and recombine and mutate forever, always consisting of just randomly shuffled gobbledegook.

2. Without reproduction which multiplies the "good" genes, the population just stagnates in place and randomly mutates forever, in a result almost identical to the original "monkeys on typewriters" scenario. (Actually, in the Java program under discussion, the selection process causes the current "best" match to cease mutating, until some other individual gets astronomically lucky and just happens to roll the dice into a better match, at which point *it* stops mutating and the previous "best" begins to just degrade into randomness again -- end result is pretty much the same as the "pure monkeys" case).

3. Without mutation, the few letter sequences in the initial population will just get reshuffled endless (by reproduction), shaped by the selection process. But without any new "information" available, it may well be that the goal result can never be reached. For example, if no character string in the initial population has an "M" in the first character slot, no amount of reshuffling by sexual reproduction will ever cause one to be there, and the final string will always remain impossible. Worse, genetic drift and reproductive amplification of "partially fit" individuals with many "wrong genes" will quickly remove the initial random variation from the population, and cause many "right" letters to be shuffled out of the gene pool entirely, further increasing the odds of reaching an impossible situation where certain letters are completely unavailable at certain letter positions.

All in all, the Dawkins program is a very simple, but very instructive, evolutionary mini-experiment. It's meant to show the creationists what's wrong with their "monkeys on typewriters" analogies, show them what's much more powerful about evolutionary processes, and to give a quick introduction to what those processes are and how they work.

However, there are a few ways that the "weasel" program is somewhat misleading.

The primary way is that in the program, "genotype" and "phenotype" are identical. In biological evolution, and in most useful genetic algorithms used for solving real-world problems, they are not.

Definitions: "Genotype" is the particular "coding sequence" which defines an individual in organisms or genetic problem-solving algorithms -- for living creatures the genotype is its actual DNA sequence. "Phenotype" is the actual unique individual which results from the genotype, i.e. the actual plant or animal in biology, or the specific problem solution defined by the mathematical encoding used as genetic material in genetic algorithms.

The Dawkins program trivializes this distinction by making the "DNA" of the individuals the actual character string itself. But in biological systems, for example, there's not a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype. For example, there may be more than one gene sequence which happen to produce blue eyes. Furthermore, there's a richness and unpredictability in the way that small genotype changes may produce large results in the phenotype.

Another way that the Dawkins program can be misleading is that uses a distinct, specified "goal" as its fitness function. Biological evolution is much more complex in its workings because there's no single "match" that is "best". In fact, in biological evolution, the way that different living things compete against each other (not just within their own species, but predator/prey dynamics, etc.) causes an ever-shifting "arms race" which means that what might be "best" (i.e. "most fit") this generation may not be what's most likely to ensure survival 20 generations from now (not to mention changing climates, landscapes, etc.) Biological evolution is a constantly shifting game of "whatever works today, in the current place and situation".

Additionally, in real-world applications of genetic algorithms for problem solving, you don't know in advance what "solution" you want to pop out of the "evolution box". This is another way the Dawkins program is misleading -- it makes it look as if you have to pre-program the solution you want (in which case, why bother, right?) Actually, though, what's usually done is that you only know *what* you want solved (e.g., you want an electronic circuit that does cubic function generation better than human-designed circuits), but you don't know *how* to best solve it (i.e., what circuit would actually do the job well). So you set up computerized evolution such that a "match" is defined only by how well each computer-evolved "individual" (i.e., electronic circuit) performs on the "fitness test" (in this case, how well it produces cubic functions as output), without *any* predefined specification of how the circuit should actually be configured internally -- *that's* what you let evolution discover *for* you. This works because you're asking only for a particular *property* of the evolved result, not the entire specification of the result as was the (purposely simplistic) case in the Dawkins program. Evolution does the rest, coming up with often surprising results which (because of the fitness function) do the thing you wanted it to do without having to know how to do it yourself in advance.

And similarly, this is how nature can produce biological creatures which "solve" the problem of how to survive and reproduce ever more effectively, without nature having to "know" how to "design" a wing, or a placenta, or a clotting mechanism. Evolution "blindly" stumbles upon those solutions as mutation/variation randomly explore the almost infinite variations possible with DNA, selection filters the results to keep those which work better and discard those which don't, and reproduction amplifies the best ones to repeat the process in the next generation, millions of times over and over again.

My point with this program was that...well honestly, you would have to look at the posts. Evolutionary and genetic programming were brought up. I would love to hear your thoughts on my comments about the programming issues...no one else seemed to be interested or did not have a tech background which would include programming.

If the above doesn't address all your questions, let me know.

Now, I haven't read Dawkin's book, so I don't know if what is represented is modeled accurately.

Actually, neither have I, although I've read parts. I don't know whether he addresses some or all of the points I made above, but it's likely he did. That makes it all the more unforgiveable when his critics misrepresent him (for example, see below).

But I did find links later from a Biochemist, who also has a CS degree, who basically called it "nonsense". If you are interested, I can run down all the links.

I found the link you posted. The "Answers in Genesis" rebuttal gets a number of things flat wrong, like when it writes, "The experiment is repeated for only the positions where a match did not occur". This is very, very wrong, as a quick glance at the Java program will verify. What's interesting is that as I mentioned above, the "population" of character strings *doesn't know* which character positions have stumbled upon the "right" answer and which positions are wrong. Furthermore, both mating recombination and mutation have a greater chance of *messing up* correct letters than they have of "correcting" wrong letters. And yet, *the system still converges on the answer* nonetheless, because of the way that mating selection tends to multiply the percentage of "right" characters in the gene pool.

The rest of the lengthy "analysis" on that page is based on the same flawed misunderstanding of how Dawkin's process works and is therefore invalid as a critique of Dawkin's process (and thus evolution itself).

Furthermore, the section "Exposing the implied assumptions with another analogy" has problems of its own, apparently designed to make the notion of evolution seem as absurd as possible -- by among other things removing a necessary part of the evolutionary process, reproduction. The "another analogy" the author sets up, earthquakes in a pile of house pieces (hmm, "tornado in a junkyard", anyone?) is set up *without* replication of partial results, which both makes the process non-evolutionary (and impossible to proceed as evolution does), and ludicrously unlikely, as the author correctly points out. Now the only question is, did he *intend* to make a straw-man invalid analogy in order to falsely ridicule the notion of evolution, or does he actually misunderstand evolution badly enough that he *thinks* this is a good comparison? Neither option inspires confidence.

[Theophilus]

uh, it's more verbose

[Doctor Stochastic]

Again, non-responsive? Is there some reason that Creationists refuese to answer simple questions?

I'll repeat: Do you agree that "random" is equivalent to "independent, identically distributed"?

If not, what do you mean by "random"?