Sometimes it takes a two-by-four. And often even that doesn't work.
The Dawkins program to produce the string "Methinks it is like a weasel" involves three processes: 1. Random variation -- on each "generation", 1/8th of the character strings in the "population" (size selected by user) have one of their text characters completely randomized to some other character. 2. Selection -- the character string which has the most "correct" characters (or if more than one such string exists, the most recent such) is flagged, and a) will be "bred", and b) won't itself be mutated or replaced by one of its own "offspring". 3. Reproduction -- the current "most fit" character string undergoes "sexual reproduction' with randomly chosen other strings, and the resulting offspring replace the "mates". (This is actually more akin to biological lateral gene transfer.) So all three of the processes necessary for evolution to take place are in the Dawkins program. And, as predicted by "evolutionists", the results are swift and sure -- the mutating, reproducing, subject-to-selection population very quickly (within seconds) produces a Shakespeare text string which the creationist "pure random" methods would not have produced before the Earth permanently froze over. |