Professional scientists aren’t the only ones who can experiment with evolution.
The researchers at Michigan State University’s Digital Evolution Lab have designed a version of the lab’s Avida software for use in undergraduate biology courses. It’s being tested this year at MSU’s Lyman Briggs School and is due for national release in the spring.
“It’s going to let them observe evolution happening,” said lab researcher Robert Pennock, who served as an expert witness in the 2005 Dover trial that stopped a Pennsylvania school board from teaching intelligent design....
I have seen this line of thought before in computer science - genetic algorithms - people design a system from scratch and also design mechanisms for evolution. Then they turn it on and it works and they have "proven" evolution is correct ... although the entire system required vast amounts of creativity. Evolution in the biological definition happens at random - meaningful information emerges from noise - so this isn't biological evolution at all by the definition.
Amazing. Assemble some brilliant scientists to design an extreemly sophisticated computer program to prove that evolution has no need of a designer. Only a scientist would be foolish enough not to see how self defeating this is.
"The researchers at Michigan State University’s Digital Evolution Lab have designed a version of the lab’s Avida software for use in undergraduate biology courses"
Researchers designed?
"It’s going to let them observe evolution happening,” said lab researcher Robert Pennock, who served as an expert witness in the 2005 Dover trial that stopped a Pennsylvania school board from teaching intelligent design"
"Students run this, and they say ‘Wow, evolution works. You can see it happen.’ That’s the thing that before they couldn’t see directly."
So intelligent researchers designed a program to enable students to see evolution happening. Oh.
"Hod Lipson has built a robot that designs and builds other robots, using evolution to drive the design process.
He has built robots that can self-replicate."
He has built? You mean the original "robots" didn't originate in a slime pit, and evolve into more complex robots? Yes, I can see evolution happening here.
"Though, in the case of the self-replicators, what he’s done is bring a biological process, one of the processes that allows evolution to work, to the mechanical world."
He brought? So an intelligent person chose to introduce a process into the system?
Dr. Terry Mortenson | 1/16/2009
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