"Digital organisms", breeding much faster than live bacteria, have been developed in the hope of shedding light on, and providing proof of, Darwin-Evolution theory - the collective belief of the educated world. Major US universities such as MichiganState, have been devoting time, money, space, equipment and technology, not to mention professors and graduate students (now with PhDs) in this pursuit. "Avida", a software program at the Digital Evolution Laboratory of the Engineering Department of Michigan State University, had its genesis a dozen years ago when Cal Tech physicist, Chris Adami, developed an approach to evolving different methods of numerical additions. Charles Ofria, lab director, explains, "Computer programs tell how to process information, like DNA tells a cell how to assemble proteins",
Carl Zimmer, a widely-read science writer, author of five books on science, writes on Evolution for Natural History and regularly for many other major magazines, wrote about digital organisms in Discover Magazine, Feb. 2005. The article was titled "Testing Darwin", and describes the Avida software program, whichappears to be a type of artificial intelligence. The operational program is instruction-coding, aiming for fast, mathematical variations - comparing results to a selected objective. Papers on Digital Organisms are presented at seminars and conventions, even at the Royal Academie, articles are published in scientific periodicals - the subject treatment has all the trappings of a significant scientific field of investigation.
On a trip to MichiganState, Adami met microbiologist Richard Lenski, who had been studying the evolution of bacteria. The similarities between mathematical and living organisms evoked excitement. "All the core parts of the Darwinian process are there" says Robert Pennock, philosopher, MichiganState, member of the Avida team. "These things replicate, mutate - the very process of natural selection is happening." And the viewers and researchers can "track the birth, life and death of the digital organisms, generation after generation, by scanning columns of numbers." Pennock adds, "Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it!"
"Digital organisms are strings of commands, akin to computer viruses", says a team member, "The viewers watch the monitor screens and see the evolution of bizarre new life forms. Each organism can produce tens of thousands of copies of itself within a matter of minutes. They even 'mutate' in much the same way that DNA mutates." (The words are from Zimmer and the Avida team - a compelling description.) "The ultimate goal of DNA is to make new organisms with the same genetic coding. You can consider a living organism as nothing more than an information channel, transmitting its genome to its offspring."
{Comment: While ingenious in showing how mutational-changes from a pre-programmed selection process can achieve some desired objective, the analogy to nature seems far-fetched. Avida certainly does not appear to be "random-chance mutations", and, really seems to progress in accordance with "intelligent design" stimulus - for example, "rewarding" instructions and "monitored developments toward a pre-selected objective" would seem to be "non-random mutations" and "unnatural selection".}
In both the bacterial and digital evolution processes, the team reports that progress comes in spurts, not steady and smooth. To the motivated researchers, however, Avida does make it possible to study "random mutation" and "natural selection", the objective being to shed light on some specific questions of evolution, such as:
- What good is half an Eye?
- Why does a forest have more than one kind of plant?
- Why be nice?
- Why sex?
- What does life on other planets look like?
- What will life on Earth look like in the future?
"Incentives and Rewards" for improved processing are regularly incorporated. In developing the program (likening it to a living organism), Adami kept modifying instructions by changing codes, e.g.: minimizing computer time to achieve selected goals; reading two numbers at the same time; additions of numbers; etc. Of great interest was the observation that some of the computer-developed methods for addition of numbers were unpredicted.
Regarding the "eye" question, a team member comments, "The eye is made up of many different parts: lens, iris, jelly, retina, optic nerve - and will not work if even one part is missing. But, if the eye evolved - piecemeal - how was it of any use to our ancestors?" (The above quotes are really challenges to Darwinian theory - but used by the team to stimulate the research.) Writes Zimmer, "To test Darwin's idea that complex systems [can] evolve from simpler precursors [like mammalian eyes], the Avida team set up rewards for simplified operations, bigger rewards for more complex ones." A program called "equals" is explained, "comparing pairs of binary numbers .. a standard operation in software .. not simple .. the shortest 'equals' program [is] 19 lines long. The chance that random mutations alone could produce it are about one in a thousand trillion trillion." "In 23 out of 50 trials, .. [Avida] could carry out the 'equals' program.
{Comment: Above are direct quotes from the article and the Avida team - unbelievable improbability and an admission, "If you delete any of the [19] routines, it can't do the job."
Despite the above words, after pro-and-con comments, the considered conclusion of the Avida team to Question 1) was positive, "We show that there are irreducibly complex things - and they can evolve," says Adami.
{Comment: Despite: a) many "honest" admissions of astronomical improbabilities; b) the continuous intelligent-design programming inputs; c) admission that random mutations are equally likely to retrogress as to progress in development of a complex feature (such as an eye); and d) the obviousness - by simple logic - that absent its completion and functionality, any partially-developed feature would be a handicap to that animal's 'survival-of-the-fittest' capabilities and be dropped in the evolution process - the pro-Darwin team is unfazed. Zealism seems to be remarkably infectious in seeking discovery of the least similarity to nature.}
(2) Myxococcus Xanthus (and a "Joke" - A New Darwinian Principle -
Survival of the Species - By Self- Sacrificing Individual Organisms?)>/u>
In their enthusiasm to achieve a mathematical simulation of nature, the Avida team tells about a unique type of bacteria which warrants detailed analysis. (Note: Direct quotes presented are from the Zimmer article and the Avida team).
"Myxococcus Xanthus [is] a species of bacteria, which travels in giant swarms, 100,000 strong, hunting down E. coli and other bacteria, killing their prey by spitting out antibiotics, then discharging digestive enzymes that make the E. coli burst open, then feasting on the remains. But when they run out of prey, they gather together to form a stalk, the bacteria at the very top turn into sacrificial spores, carried by wind or water to start anew, the individuals that form the stalk die."
{Comment: This sacrificial cooperation apparently provided a challenge to the Avida team, thus they began "creating new commands" trying to mathematically reproduce "sacrificial deaths of individual organisms" so the parent species could survive! One can only wonder at such an endeavor: How is "death" of a mathematical organism simulated? (Joke - If they are successful in simulating self-sacrifice in a numerical program, will that lead to claims of a new Darwinian principle - "Survival-of-the-fittest species, by self-sacrifice of individual organisms"?)}
{Comment: It is completely illogical and seems incredulous that serious, intelligent adults, scientists no less, would take this story of a unique complex living organism and its very unusual self-sacrificing characteristics (for survival of its species, through sacrificial death of the individual), and attempt to mathematically simulate its "death-wish" - presumably as an attempt to somehow bolster the Darwin theory of evolution. But how? One would think it proves the exact opposite - this seems the ultimate incontrovertible persuader against Darwin-Evolutionism and its three base-points: "random mutations", "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection". This organism seems to clearly prove there had to have been definite initial and complex "design-engineered objectives" in its genetic coding - to recognize a critical situation for its species, the imminence of the threat, and then follow a built-in instructional procedure for self-sacrifice.}
{Comment: While mathematical derivatives of Avida can show how traits and characteristics can evolve (through directed "steering" of the program, with "rewards"), it can be argued that the continuous need for such devices to develop desirable characteristics, proves a "design intelligence" genesis. Like the classical question - could a million apes pounding a million typewriters for a million years come up with a literary work of art? Theoretically "yes", but even so, how could anyone find one (or a few) literary jewels among trillions of pages of gibberish? What seems stunning is the inability of pro-Darwin zealots to look around and see our entire universe of marvelous and beautiful organisms, with finely balanced, smoothly functioning and inter-acting complexity: plants, trees, birds, animals, mankind; bees and flowers and other symbiotic relationships; the complexities of attraction and results of sex; a food chain of prey and predators throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms; the splendor of sun-rises, sunsets and the intricacies of the complex laws of nature, etc. - and still insist it all came about by pure random happenstance!}
{Comment: Perhaps I don't "get it". From the quoted statements of Zimmer and the Avida team, it seems not to be real "science" at all, but spurious, specious, perhaps even pseudo-science? However, here is more than a decade of serious effort and developed momentum in the Avida program, an entire laboratory and many highly-trained scholars devoted to the subject, in a major university. Its team seems caught up in the excitement of the mathematical challenge to emulate nature - like proud parents rapturously describing some new word or trick they've taught their child. Instead of following the methods of science, logical reasoning, their self-admitted words seem to argue that their quest appears futile.}
{Comment: The never-flagging zeal that appears to drive many pro-Darwin scientists, seems not unlike the advocates of perpetual motion - enthusiastic, obsessed with a vision and oblivious to rational logic. The belief in Darwin-Evolutionism is apparently as strong to secular atheists as a principle of faith to one who worships his God, impervious to and rejecting reasoned consideration of logic and probability.
Aaron Kolom qualifies as a "rocket scientist" with over 50 years aerospace engineering: Stress Analyst to Chief of Structural Sciences on numerous military aircraft, to Corp. Director Structures and Materials, Asst. Chief Engineer Space Shuttle Program through first three flights (awarded NASA Public Service Medal), Rockwell International Corp.; Program Manager Concorde SST, VP Engineering TRE Corp.; Aerospace Consultant.
Aaron L. Kolom - from Brainwashed* and Miracles
The Perceived Mind-Set of the Secular Elite re Darwin Evolutionism!
To Believe in Them - Have Faith - In Science and Logic!
Visit website at [http://www.brainwashedandmiracles.com] to learn a bit about Science vs the Bible, from conflict to confirmation.
