Re: design: purposeful or random?

Glenn Morton (GRMorton@gnn.com)
Mon, 07 Oct 1996 19:27:00

Gordon wrote:

>Glenn Morton wrote:
>
>"Christians should be aware that design via evolution is a coming field."
>
>And Bob Carling responded:
>
>"As you may already know, your posting, as below, is highly timely for
>folks in the UK who attended our annual day conference yesterday (or who
>got the papers but did not attend) - which was on the subject of Design in
>Nature!"
>
>Could either of you gentlemen explain in what sense "design via evolution"
>and "design in nature" are not "roses by a different name?" Is not
>natural design via natural selection the point that Darwin was getting at?
>
>I recall when I was a youngster (over 40 years ago) reading an article in
>_Scientific American_ which explained how it was possible via a simple
>random scheme to produce, in a few moves, a perfect tic-tac-toe game. As
>I recall, the subject of Darwinian evolution was on the author's mind. So
>what's new?
>
>Gordon Simons
>
>

"There is nothing new under the sun." Ecc. 1:9

The only thing different is that we have a concrete example of actual design
by means of random mutation plus natural selection. It appears to make a more
successful algorithm (not necessarily more efficient or beautifully coded)
than a human who tried to accomplish a given task.

glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm