I'm not arguing sin and death--I'm not even really arguing theology. I'm trying to stick to genetic algorithms and computer models.
I'll lay out where I was going: it seemed to me that AndrewC was pursuing the argument that GAs don't tell us anything about evolution because there is intelligence involved in their application--someone decides what a solution is and when it's been reached.
It seemed to me that that would invalidate any attempt to computer-model natural systems, like storms--at some point, the programmer has to decide what a "storm" is and how he'll know when he's got one. Now, I don't think most people consider storms as "intelligently designed" in the sense that God needs to step in and start stirring the air to get a hurricane going--rather, once the laws governing the atmosphere are in place, hurricanes pretty much happen on their own. (This is also the way "theistic evolutionists" see evolution--a natural process following God's laws that doesn't require his direct intervention to play out.)
Not wanting to make assumptions about AndrewC's beliefs, I asked if he thought that any natural process happens on its own that way. Apparently he does not. If that's the case, then I don't see how he could accept any computer model of a natural process, because how could a computer program model the intervention of God? It seems like a very small God who could be captured and predicted in a computer program.
Oh come on now. You corrected your viewpoint about miracles a few posts ago. And models are just that, models. They are incomplete, I repeat, incomplete, "descriptions" of the subject that they address, even if the subject is entirely conceptual, because we have no way of assuring that the model is completely congruent in every way with the concept. So you have attempted to construct a straw man with the computer and program tack.
It seemed to me that that would invalidate any attempt to computer-model natural systems, like storms--at some point, the programmer has to decide what a "storm" is and how he'll know when he's got one.
Show me the model that predicts a storm exactly and I will show you a miracle.
Not wanting to make assumptions about AndrewC's beliefs, I asked if he thought that any natural process happens on its own that way. Apparently he does not.
Not just "apparently", I don't. I stated so. The actual question being, "Do you believe that there's any such thing as an undirected natural process?"
You and I have different concepts of God. God is timeless.