[asa] Origins: Francis Collins and ID

Bernie wrote: I see one difference. I was kind of thinking of the eye, and how to get
there. Your analogy goes the other way... start with building blocks
and see what you get after a bunch of trials... evolution isn't really
trying to get anywhere, it simply keeps what it likes and throws away
bad things, correct?

Agreed. Evolution is passive. Darwin, reportedly, did not like the term "natural selection" to describe his view since it mildly suggests a selection process, which is normally associated with active behavior. There just wasn't a catchier phrase to replace it, apparently. [Einstein did not like the name "relativity theory" to describe his theory either. He preferred, originally, invariant theory. Sometimes even non-beggers can't be choosers. ]

Regardless, life has its own master program that advances that which has greater adaptability to the environment with superior reproductive results.

However, which your analogy of throwing software subroutines together,
seems like given enough time it could create something wonderful, but
most likely it would just create reams of crap... kind of like the
monkeys typing for infinity, trying to match Shakespeare... I just can't
grasp it, but maybe that's my fault.

No, the monkey analogy fails to capture the advantages of evolutionary power. A better analogy would be having monkeys type randomly, but every time they typed a word that contributed to Shakespeare, it was kept. Further, if the grouping of the words matched an entire sentence from Shakespeare, then this sentence would become reproduced for other words, phrases, and sentences to advance until Shakespeare is matched. [It is assumed, of course, that it is Shakespeare that is the more adaptable to the environment. That is debatable.]

So whichever analogy you like, monkeys typing words or subroutine insertions by the millions, natural selection builds on former sucesses. This involves the branching idea, which Darwin also proposed. Natural selection and branching are his two tenets to evolution, in addition to the prior two tenets known within evolution: transmutation (one species from another), naturalism (no supernatural effort required).

GeorgeA Cooper

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Received on Tue Dec 4 16:53:51 2007