In opening the magazine we might expect that we would be treated to some very particular and convincing biological facts, or perhaps view a just-discovered archeological cache of valuable hitherto missing fossils linking the species. Something real, in other words.
Instead the scientists at Michigan State end up being computer scientists, and the creatures whose “evolution” they are so triumphantly parading as proof that evolution works are “digital organisms—strings of commands—akin to computer viruses.”
That’s it? Computer organisms?
Afraid so, which leads us to make what would seem to be an obvious point. What kind of desperation or fundamental confusions would lead anyone to identify the “evolution” of computer organisms with the evolution of actual organisms?
Let’s begin with the desperation. As we have just seen in a recent issue of National Geographic, evolutionary scientists and their defenders are feeling the sting of the rising number of scientists and philosophers who dare to point out the gaps in the reasoning and evidence of Darwinism (neo- or otherwise). (see tothesource article below: Has Darwin Become Dogma?)
Suddenly, they feel the need for public defense.
The confusion is related to the desperation. The turn to computers arises out of the need to assure people that evolution is demonstrably true, a way to shore up the gaps in the actual evidence with digital bits. But herein lies the confusion, and the confusion leads to a strange kind of illusion that computer generated images are, somehow, metaphysically identical with real animals and flowers.
Witness the following. The author of the piece Carl Zimmer assures us that the “digital bits” of the heralded computer program “can mutate in much the same way DNA mutates.” The software program that allows this evolutionary prestidigitation is called Avida.
After more than a decade of development, Avida’s digital organisms are now getting close to fulfilling the definition of biological life. “More and more of the features that biologists have said were necessary for life we can check off,” says Robert Pennock, a philosopher at Michigan State and a member of the Avida team. “Does this, does that, does this. Metabolism? Maybe not quite yet, but getting pretty close.”
Mr. Pennock is, by the way, one of the most strident critics of those who criticize evolution. That he seems nearly oblivious to the distinction between a living thing and digital ephemera on a computer screen does not bode well for his position. What could cause such a confusion?
The confusion is in great part the result of reductionism. Remember the rather unsophisticated kind of reductionism you experienced in high school science class? “You’re only worth $1.59,” the teacher would announce with an impish grin. “That’s right! If you reduced your body to its chemical constituents—hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and so on—it would be worth about $1.59 to a chemist!”
Well, the scientists at Michigan State are espousing a more sophisticated form of reductionism, one that assumes that there is really nothing else to a living thing than the chemical compound, DNA.
How so? DNA contains the genetic code. The genetic code is the cause of everything that the organism is or does. Therefore, all that we need to simulate life and its mysterious workings—we are assured—is to simulate the genetic code in a computer code. As Zimmer confidently states,
It may seem strange to talk about a chunk of computer codes in the same way you talk about a cherry tree or a dolphin. But the more biologists think about life, the more compelling the equations become. Computer programs and DNA are both sets of instructions. Computer programs tell a computer how to process information, while DNA instructs a cell how to assemble proteins.
The problem with this confusion is that…well, it’s confused. First and foremost, the reductionist belief that DNA is the secret of life, the chemical genie that magically produces organisms out of a linear computer-like code, is false. As biologist H. F. Nijhout states,
The most generally useful hypothesis about the function of genes is the following: Genes are passive sources of materials upon which a cell can draw, and are part of an evolved mechanism that allows organisms, their tissues and their cells to be independent of their environment by providing the means of synthesizing, importing, or structuring the substances (not just gene products, but all substances) required for metabolism, growth and differentiation.
In sum, DNA is not a genie. DNA is itself a wonderfully complex, but passive source of material used by the far more wonderfully intricate living cell. The cell simply cannot be reduced to DNA. (I refer to Nijhout here, so as not to be accused of using an anti-evolutionist in making this point about DNA.)
Therefore, a computer program that allegedly imitates some aspect of DNA tells us very little…except about the unfounded presuppositions of those who believe that they have created life by creating a computer program.
But that isn’t the only confusion. At the heart of their efforts to “prove evolution works,” is the conviction that merely random, natural processes alone can produce life through evolution. This is not a neutral conviction. It is formed as a denial that an intelligent agent, God, created life in all its splendor and complexity. The computer program was designed to show that we don’t need a Divine Designer.
Catch the contradiction? In order to demonstrate that the development of life doesn’t need intelligence to create and guide it, several very intelligent scientists get together and design a complex program run on an ingeniously designed computer…to demonstrate that intelligence and design play no part in evolution.
Perhaps Avida does prove something after all—the necessity of a intentional designer to make both digital and real organisms.
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