RE: Order from chaos - according to New Mexicans for Science and Reason

I have had that on my web page for about 7 years now. It doesn't make
an impact at all. Nothing does because evidence is not what they are
interested in. Years ago, on the old evolution reflector also hosted at
Calvin, I discussed this at some length with some YECs and
anti-evolutionists. They fall back to the position that one has to have
the computer and program. Thus an intelligence programmed the program.

I would point out that I discovered a variant of Sierpinski's program
by accident. I was bored one day at lunch so I decided to program
Sierpinski into my computer. Nothing appeared on my screen. I changed
the scale of the screen display and some interesting things appeared. I
saved the program so I could examine it at home. That night I was too
busy to look at the program so the next day at lunch I tried to
re-create the same program. I blew it again, made a mistake and another
interesting set of screen characters appeared.

What I had stumbled into was a system that if you mutate it, it displays
punctuated equilibrium. I talk about it at
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/nonlin.htm

and

http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showpost.php?p=376609&postcount=8

The program executables are so old now, I doubt they will actually run
on any modern computer, but I do have the code which can be translated.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Iain Strachan
> Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2005 8:27 AM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Order from chaos - according to New Mexicans for
> Science and Reason
>
>
> The skeptic website "New Mexicans for Science and Reason"
> give the following web page to debunk creationist claims that
> order cannot arise out of a random process:
>
http://www.nmsr.org/digdudle.htm

It describes how a complex fractal pattern, known as a *Sierpinski
gasket*, can arise from a random process plus a simple ordering rule.
A quickbasic program they give to produce the pattern is less than 400
keystrokes. They suggest you should send it to your creationist friends
and it will "drive them nuts", and furthermore that the Sierpinski
Gasket is the creationist's worst nightmare.

Without revealing what I think of the argument, I'd be interested to
hear from list members of different persuasions what they think of the
argument presented by NMSR.

If you're a creationist or ID person, how would you debunk this
argument? On the face of it, randomness and an ordering rule produce
order out of chaos, akin to random mutation plus natural selection.

If you're a TE, or otherwise, do you think this is a convincing argument
that can be used against creationism/ID?

If you're Vernon, you'll no doubt be amused to see that the N=1
Sierpinski gasket appears to be identical to your triangle-in-triangle
pattern from the Genesis 1:1 numerics!

[ Aside. A very cute way to produce Sierpinski Gasket patterns is from
Pascal's triangle, which can be found on the Java applet at this
page: http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~btk/Pascal/ . Unfortunately this
does not involve random processes so cannot be used to argue against
creationists].

Iain Strachan

-- 
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There are 3 types of people in the world.
Those who can count and those who can't.
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