[Soliton]

This guy is just using the old ID dodge of criticising evolution without offering positive evidence for ID. There is a college experiment that breaks up the class into a design team and an evolution team. They each attempt to create an airplain out of a drinking straw and two pieces of paper. The design team has access to all of the aeronautical engineering literature available at the school along with calculators and computers. The evolution team just has multiple lengths of straws and dozens of different wings to select from. The evolution team rolls a die and and tests the wing formation indicated randomely. Over a very short period of time the evolution team has found the optimum configuration. This is because form follows function, so physics determines the wing shape, not some random event. Randomness is simply part of providing the alternative formations from which evolution can select. The design team usually comes up with very nearly the same configuration for the same reason, form follows function. The purpose of the experiment is not to prove evolution, but to demonstrate that evolutionary processes mimic design.

[Soliton]

airplane Sheesh

[Matchett-PI]

"This guy is just using the old ID dodge of criticising evolution without offering positive evidence for ID."

Not so. He doesn't believe it is possible to offer positive evidence for ID.

You didn't read the link to the thread (or to the other conversations).

You reeeeally might want to. :)

[RightWhale]

This guy is just using the old ID dodge of criticising evolution without offering positive evidence for ID

Probably not. This seems to be neither.

[RightWhale]

This guy is just using the old ID dodge of criticising evolution without offering positive evidence for ID

Probably not. This seems to be neither.

[MEGoody]

The purpose of the experiment is not to prove evolution, but to demonstrate that evolutionary processes mimic design.

Indeed, since the designers of the experiment pulled together the elements required to make a plane, then provided sets of hands to put the elements together in varying combinations until something works.

For the experiment to truly mimic the theory of evolution (without a designer guiding it), they would just have to sit around and wait for an airplane to occur by itself.

[RobbyS]

The purpose of the experiment is not to prove evolution, but to demonstrate that evolutionary processes mimic design. Chesterton once said that God writes straight with crooked lines.

[Robwin]

And guess what, chum? That experiment showed that the optimum airplane was created by Intelligent Design, not random selection. Thanks for adding it.

[redtetrahedron]

The evolution team just has multiple lengths of straws and dozens of different wings to select from.

I would personally like to know how the evolution team came up with the different straws and the wings to start with...