Kansas and Evolution
Creationists hiding under the guise of a philosophy called "intelligent design."
I wonder how Avida will impact this whole aspect of trying to destroy valid Scientific theories with philosophical ideas.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Avida Evolving
When Walking into your local grocery store you don't usually ask, How did i get here? or Why am i here? Unless of course you're as scatterbrain as i am--but even then it doesnt usually connote the existential weight it did when i walked into my local grocery store, and sprinted ritualistically to the magazine stand. It was there that i saw staring back at me, over the image of a primate, in bold yellow letters, the words "Testing Darwin, scientists prove evolution works." So i bought the magazine and read through the article as fast as i could. I, being an open-minded creationist, who by the way doesn't believe in the divine monarchy of christianity; nor the idea that the bible is the word or mind of god, was stunned and intrigued.
It seems that Michigan state researchers developed a computer program in the late 1990's called Avida. The program allowed them "to watch the random mutation and natural selection of digital organisms unfold over millions of generations." Now if you think of DNA as a set of instructions that tell cells how to assemble protiens, then it's easy to think of a computer program, or line of code, as virtually the same thing. These lines of code carry information on how to build a new line of code, or a new digital organism--just like DNA does in the physical world.The purpose of this program being to determine if a simple organism or line of computer code could evolve into a complex one. According to the article it has done just that.
The program was even shown to produce results similar to Richard Lenski's "longest continuously running experiment in evolution." Which profoundly demonstrated the idea of natural selection. Not only that but it also argued--with evidence to back up the aruments--against creationist ideas about intelligent design. Ideas such as "just how could they eye have evolved?" And destroyed the argument that mutations in an organism are unwelcomed and usually breeded out of a species after a few generations, and that one was based on a scientific experiment.
Though--even with the obvious breakthrougs achieved with the program--I believe that the crux of creationism was lost upon these men. The crux being that someone or something created us. Doesn't Avida in fact prove that without someone bothering to take the time to create us we would have never evolved into the "complex" organisms we've now become? After all Avida was created by these scientists right?
So why are we here? i mean, if something did create us, as those scientists created Avida, then it could be plausible that whatever did it may have done so to ponder how and why it was created. Though, that could just be nonsensical thinking. The only thing that steered me away from creationism is energy. The whole concept that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It lead me to think that if something can exist without having to be created then just maybe there was no "intelligent design" involved in our creation or evolution into being. Maybe some physiological programs won't allow themselves to compute that there was no grandiose purpose to thier existense. Maybe they need to believe that they were created for a purpose.
But,After all, in the end, people will just believe what they want to believe. Creationists will be hell bent on promoting thier beliefs and arguments. And evolutionists will do the same, albiet with much more proof than the creationists.
------
For more info on Avida go to: dllab.caltech.edu/avida
Or visit discover.com
It seems that Michigan state researchers developed a computer program in the late 1990's called Avida. The program allowed them "to watch the random mutation and natural selection of digital organisms unfold over millions of generations." Now if you think of DNA as a set of instructions that tell cells how to assemble protiens, then it's easy to think of a computer program, or line of code, as virtually the same thing. These lines of code carry information on how to build a new line of code, or a new digital organism--just like DNA does in the physical world.The purpose of this program being to determine if a simple organism or line of computer code could evolve into a complex one. According to the article it has done just that.
The program was even shown to produce results similar to Richard Lenski's "longest continuously running experiment in evolution." Which profoundly demonstrated the idea of natural selection. Not only that but it also argued--with evidence to back up the aruments--against creationist ideas about intelligent design. Ideas such as "just how could they eye have evolved?" And destroyed the argument that mutations in an organism are unwelcomed and usually breeded out of a species after a few generations, and that one was based on a scientific experiment.
Though--even with the obvious breakthrougs achieved with the program--I believe that the crux of creationism was lost upon these men. The crux being that someone or something created us. Doesn't Avida in fact prove that without someone bothering to take the time to create us we would have never evolved into the "complex" organisms we've now become? After all Avida was created by these scientists right?
So why are we here? i mean, if something did create us, as those scientists created Avida, then it could be plausible that whatever did it may have done so to ponder how and why it was created. Though, that could just be nonsensical thinking. The only thing that steered me away from creationism is energy. The whole concept that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It lead me to think that if something can exist without having to be created then just maybe there was no "intelligent design" involved in our creation or evolution into being. Maybe some physiological programs won't allow themselves to compute that there was no grandiose purpose to thier existense. Maybe they need to believe that they were created for a purpose.
But,After all, in the end, people will just believe what they want to believe. Creationists will be hell bent on promoting thier beliefs and arguments. And evolutionists will do the same, albiet with much more proof than the creationists.
------
For more info on Avida go to: dllab.caltech.edu/avida
Or visit discover.com
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