Science Forums 2

[Boerseun]

Hi there. Sorry about the last post, it was supposed to be in tab form, but came out linear instead.

What I did was take a random set of letters,
AFGTIFPTKINW
Then, I wrote a spreadsheet to randomly generate a new set.
This came out:
SERTUBPOGJRD
Working as evolution does, to keep what works (those that don't, simply die off) and our requirement to fit this imaginary 'niche' is the sentence "DARWIN RULES", it seems as if the third letter fits the bill. So now, we keep the 'R' and randomly generate the rest. And after only 39 "Generations", the full sentence appeared. I suppose I should run the experiment a few million times to get the average for generating the sentence that'll fit the 'niche', but this serves to illustrate.

Intelligent Design buffs will, of course, say that the outcome was pre-determined, and therefore 'designed' via 'intelligence'. That is not so. The only 'design' that could be inferred here, is the ability for the organism to suit that which is dictated by the environment, in this case, fitting the proper sentence.

Intelligent Design guys suffer from the fallacy of the enumeration of favourable circumstances. They look at nature and say that everything is as it should be because it was designed. The unfavourable examples they tend to ignore. Such as anaerobic bacteria that harkens back to a oxygen-free atmosphere. These little buggers are old, and predate even plants, those pesky bastards that poisoned the atmosphere with oxygen. The only reason they are still around is because there are indeed still niches left for them to invade, like certain human bodyparts that might suffer from such unmentionable and uncomfortable conditions like yeast infections.
Other examples is rabbits which were so stupidly designed that they have to eat their own feces in order to get any nourishment. Their guts are too short.

Nature is not perfect, not by any means. And organisms continuously evolve to better fit into the environment, while the environment itself keeps on changing. Long-lived animals like sharks, which have been around for hundreds of milions of years, doesn't point to a good design - it simply points to a very constant environment.
Dinosaurs, again, points to an environment that changed faster than evolution could keep up.

These guys trying to use information theory to prove intelligent design simply don't understand the issue at hand.

They are wrong.

Thus Boerseun spake.