
Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe - jfi
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/02/hawking.god.universe/index.html
======
Groxx
> _And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere
> will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it._

Definitely deserves a "well, duh", but _so many people_ seem averse to this
line of thought. I can't count the number of times people have argued in my
vicinity for God's existence based on how nicely our planet suits us... while
in the same breath demonstrating that they understand _nothing_ about what
they're arguing against.

That said, the world _is_ trying to kill us. If we didn't fight back with
intelligence and reproduction, we'd die off rather quickly. Maybe it's not so
suitable for us.

~~~
Dove
I find the anthropic principle unpersuasive. It is entirely irrelevant to the
question it tries to answer.

Imagine applying it in a different circumstance. Imagine two people coming
upon a computer terminal, upon which was typed an elaborate love letter
addressed to one of them.

"What's this? John has written me a love letter!"

"Nonsense, it's just noise. Probably a stack dump or something."

"What? The odds are clearly against that."

"Ah, but if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would
we? Since the letter is necessary for the discussion, it requires no
explanation."

This is clearly wrong. The correct rejoinder is,

"Yes, that's just the point. We _shouldn't_ be having this discussion, but we
_are_. Hence the letter still requires explanation, and the simplest is that
John wrote it."

The fact that our universe suits us _does_ require explanation. If it didn't
suit us, we couldn't ask the question, true enough. But that's just the point.
We _shouldn't_ be here to ask the question and yet here we _are_. It still
requires explanation. Now, you can say, "Well, the universe is one of many,
and we're in the one that suits us because we couldn't live anywhere else."
Fine. Count the universes, run the probabilities, that's an explanation. Or
you can say, "God created it." That's an explanation, too.

What you cannot say is, "If it didn't suit us, we wouldn't be having this
conversation, so it requires no explanation." That's a bunch of anti-
intellectual sophistry that just annoys the people trying to honestly grapple
with the question.

~~~
Groxx
Certainly, but "God created it" is the ultimate wild-card explanation. It's
identical to saying "because." In what way is that simpler?

I can balance this equation: x = x + 1. The solution is to add God to both
sides. Simple!

The quote is primarily meant to point out that we wouldn't likely exist in a
location that isn't nigh-ideally suited for us, both because we require it to
continue and because we adapt to match it. Using it to prove God exists
strikes me as a greater misuse than using it to prove it's possible God
doesn't, given _any_ comprehension of large numbers and evolution.

~~~
lotharbot
"God created it" and "large numbers and evolution" are both ultimate wildcard
explanations, when used carelessly. Both can be equivalent to adding infinity
to both sides of your equation.

> _"we wouldn't likely exist in a location that isn't nigh-ideally suited for
> us"_

Right, but that only answers a weak variant of the argument. The stronger
variant is that the universe shouldn't have _any_ locations suited for the
evolution of _any_ form of intelligent life. The fact that we're here
indicates that there is a location suited for the evolution of intelligent
life, which requires an explanation.

There are lots of approaches you can take to provide an explanation. "We
wouldn't be asking if we didn't exist" is a weak and unsatisfying approach.

~~~
Groxx
> _Both can be equivalent to adding infinity to both sides of your equation._

Admittedly very accurate, but not quite the same. To pull from another oft-
repeated quote, time + randomness will never create a pocket watch, because
there is not a series of changes which leads to it within dumb evolution. God
/ intelligence _can_. What evolution+time describes is _very_ much a strict,
significantly-smaller subset of a God's capabilities.

~~~
lotharbot
> _What evolution+time describes is very much a strict, significantly-smaller
> subset of a God's capabilities._

The rational numbers are a significantly-smaller subset of the real numbers.
Yet adding a countable infinity to both sides of your equation is just as
useless as adding an uncountable infinity.

Similarly, "God did it", "there are a lot of universes", "we wouldn't be able
to ask if we weren't here so it doesn't need explaining", and "evolution +
time" can all be very unsatisfying answers to the stronger variant of the
argument I described above. They're all essentially big wildcards, though some
are bigger than others. Whichever argument you choose needs a LOT more detail
before it becomes better than simply adding infinity to both sides of the
equation.

------
shantanubala
I find it funny how _hands-off_ the article is. CNN tries too hard not to
offend anyone, and unlike most articles, it doesn't actually present its own
opinion.

Which would be nice to see in everyday reporting, but it seems the risk of
offending people is the only way to garner true neutrality.

~~~
sprobertson
This is just my opinion, but I think big news networks should keep their
opinions out of their reporting, supplying us with as much factual information
as possible (even if some would find those facts offensive). I find this
article to be good reporting because it introduces Hawking's controversial
opinion and a few opinion-based reactions without muddling them with its own
bias.

~~~
gjm11
Unfortunately, "keeping their opinions out" and reporting both sides is no
guarantee of avoiding bias. By way of analogy, let's pretend Hawking said
something slightly different from what he actually did, something a bit more
non-committal like "Formerly, it was widely thought that the existence of the
universe and its suitability for life are good reasons to believe in a
creator, but in the light of present-day physics I think we must say that
these things offer no evidence whatever concerning the existence or not-
existence of any sort of god". Now, imagine two possible articles reacting to
this:

1\. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking's statement. In the interests of balance, also
quotes a theologian who claims that the existence and well-suited-to-us-ness
of the universe really do demand that there be a creator.

2\. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking, as in #1. In the interests of balance, also
quotes someone who maintains that present-day science is not neutral on the
God question but offers strong evidence for the nonexistence of God.

The first would give the impression that the real debate is between those who
think modern science gives evidence for God and those who think it's neutral.
The second would give the impression that the real debate is between those who
think modern science gives evidence against God and those who think it's
neutral.

Someone puts out a report saying that anthropogenic global warming is going to
be twice as bad as currently forecast. Newspaper 1 quotes the report and gets
some "balance" from a climate scientist who defends the current consensus
figure. Newspaper 2 quotes the report and gets some "balance" from someone who
doesn't believe in anthropogenic global warming at all.

Someone puts out a report saying that 20% of Americans believe that Barack
Obama is a Muslim. Newspaper 1 gives this "balanced" coverage by quoting the
report and talking to one person who believes Obama is a Muslim and one who
doesn't. Newspaper 2 gives it "balanced" coverage by quoting the report and
talking to one person who believes it and one who thinks the whole idea is so
ridiculous that the report must the the result of push-polling, sampling
screwups or something.

During the recent US healthcare reform debate, Newspaper 1 reports on the
proposals before Congress and provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks
those proposals will mean "death panels" and nationial bankruptcy. Newspaper 2
provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks they don't go nearly far
enough and what the US needs is a robust single-payer system.

Giving equal time to both sides is only unbiased in so far as there's no
question what "both sides" are.

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window> .

------
hndb
So the reason there is a God, is that there must be a reason everything is
created. I have tried to find out why that must be so, but have not come up
with it. The only reason I could think of why people are saying this is that
it might feel better for us humans that there is a reason.

~~~
sesqu
If you assume causality, eventually you reach the problem of Primus Motivator.
If the universe expands because of the Big Bang, what caused the Big Bang?
What caused that thing to cause it; why did it do it?

Causality is such a fundamental concept that it is nearly impossible to
consider a universe without a cause. Consequently, some funky research has
been done on it in physics, but I haven't read any of it.

~~~
maushu
One thing most people forget is that we simply don't have much information
about the universe. All we know about it is what we can see from our pale blue
dot.

For all we know the big bang never happened and the reason the galaxies seem
to be moving "away" is because we are in a current of moving galaxies. (And
the universe is truly infinite not only space but in mass.)

------
george_george
First the existence of aliens and now the existence of God. What totally
unscientific speculation is Stephen Hawking going to make next for the media
to latch on to?

~~~
Groxx
Read/re-read the article. Or at least the title. He's not speculating that God
_might_ exist, he's saying he understands the sentiments that lead people to
feel that way, while the book goes on with why he says they're wrong.

~~~
george_george
>He's not speculating that God might exist...

I understand that. I just don't understand why he feels the need to start
making these unscientific speculations about whether God does or does exist or
whether aliens do or don't exist.

------
patan
A perfect title for a post not to be read. If you don't believe in God then
for sure that you don't believe that he creates the universe. So nothing fancy
here.

------
lelele
Evolution, that's where many scientists and skeptics fail to address the _big
question_. I can't believe that life _evolves_ , in the sense of growing
organs to meet specific needs. Natural selection does not work like that: if
you have organs which don't suit you, they atrophy, that's it; if they suit
you, those which have them stronger will survive. That's it. You don't grow
wings to fly, lungs to breath air, brains to think. OTOH, believing in a
creator just moves the issue elsewhere: who created such creator? Is he/she/it
alone? I've grown comfortable with not knowing for sure what the heck we are
doing here.

~~~
samstokes
The key problem with this line of reasoning is a lack of proportion. Evolution
takes place over _millions of years_. Any intuitions you have are probably
wrong on this timescale.

Nobody claims that a proto-bird one day woke up in a treetop, thought "oh
heck, how am I going to get down?", and sprouted wings. Rather, over _millions
of generations_ of proto-birds, random variation and natural selection made
winged birds more numerous and successful than wingless birds.

The point about evolutionary theory isn't that it explains everything, but
that it gives us a framework to produce and evaluate explanations (for,
potentially, everything). The general pattern is to imagine a series of
incremental changes _between generations_ from (say) no-wings to viable wings,
where each change could occur by random genetic variation or mutation, and
where in order to be selected for, _each_ change must confer a net
reproductive advantage on its generation over the previous.

From Wikipedia [1] it looks like we don't have a fully satisfactory
evolutionary explanation of flight yet (any more than we have a fully
satisfactory evolutionary explanation of _True Blood_ ), but there are several
theories all of which are more plausible than waking up one day with wings.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight>

~~~
maushu
As a side note, wings worked so well for survival that most current insect
species have them.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Dawkins points out that at insect scale, flight isn't particularly
interesting: in many environments, tiny organisms would have difficulty _not_
flying. Thus, it may be that wings started as little rudders to control how
the wind is blowing you. From that point, it's easy to imagine a gradual
evolution to self-powered flight.

But I'm afraid this doesn't help us understand avian and mammalian evolution
of flight. The example of the flying squirrel (that can't fly, but can direct
his glide) may be a little instructive...

------
patan
I propose something interesting. Create a computer program that has some rules
so is able to question whether there is God, and whose answer is We are. Then
you can refine the program, when then program is very complex, say it
satisfies Turing test, we can think about God with the help of this machine. I
think people playing the game Life with its evolving capabilities must have
been thinking something along these lines.

------
_polos_
It should clearly be announced here:

Hawking is doing a really bad job to atheists here: he's becoming as anti-
scientific as one can get...

Science has its very defined principles, as they are: they don't have to
contradict all of: philosophy, mathematics, physics, (and so on...).

This is a really sad story: he simply seems to be a really sad and angry
person (personally, I would be worse, in his actual state...), and this seems
to influence all of his excogitations...

------
donaq
_it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not_

[citation needed]

~~~
trezor
I agree with your point, but this isn't really how you do commenting on HN.

I hope that remains true, even with the demise of digg (and therefore, by
extension, reddit).

~~~
donaq
Oh, I've been around long enough to know that HNers don't like that sort of
comment. Still, I defy you to come up with a more succinct way to get the
point across! Besides, what is life if you don't do something stupid once in a
while? :)

------
revoltingx
Heh, it's actually funny because in the bible it states that 'the Word of God
holds the universe together'

~~~
pigbucket
That's a good point. Hawking's argument presupposes a purely natural universal
gravitation, the problems with which assumption were exposed several years ago
by Burdett et al., as reported here:
<[http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-
refu...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-
gravity-with-new-int,1778/>);

------
bhiggins
I'm guessing Stephen Hawking has now run out of things to say.

------
hasenj
> any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find
> that it lives somewhere suitable for it.

This is circular reasoning.

I know it's unpopular to question evolution, and this might lose me all the
points I gathered in the past three weeks, but,

But this kind of argument assumes that life can and will inevitably evolve
spontaneously some where, some how.

It's a tautology.

Sure, there could be a completely different form of intelligent life, in a
completely different kind of environment, but that just means that God can and
will create any form of life in any kind of environment.

The core question is, can life really evolve spontaneously? I'm sure many will
scream "of course yes, duh".

Natural selection doesn't explain anything about how something might evolve,
it just says: if you can produce many many good options, the best will
survive, and therefore you get optimal design.

Sure, if there are forces that produce new ideas and things, and you can
choose the best every step of the way, you'll get something really good. Like
if, say, people submit patches to Linux, and they get reviewed and tested,
you'll get something that Linus himself couldn't have come up with on his own.

NS is useless if there's nothing that can produce these patches. If you have a
really good team of tester and code reviewers, but no one submits any patch
(or, no one makes any change), then the software will not evolve on its own.
It will not get better just because there are a lot of people to test it. It
needs other people to make changes/submit patches.

It's the "mutation" part that tries to explain how new things actually get
produced, and I find it ridiculous. Not only does it not fly with me
conceptually, I'd say - at the risk of being stoned - that there's no real
evidence for it. It's usually just a lot of hand waving as if, "of course
mutation can produce many useful things for NS to select from, how dare you
object to that?".

Yes, you can observe variations, and you can observe certain variations being
selected. Like skin color, or hair type. This is, however, entirely different
from observing useful patches being produced by mutations.

 _All_ cited instances of observed NS operate on variations that are already
there. This is where hand waving about mutations come in.

Video games can be designed to use a high resolution or low resolution
depending on the system specs. It's therefor not surprising when users on low
end machines will "select" the low-resolution configuration. There are options
to select from, but these options weren't produced by anything remotely
resembling a mutation; it's a built-in option that's already available --
nothing new.

No one denies the design; no one, none at all. Neo-Darwinism just says that
design can be automated by mutation and natural selection.

It is easy to describe how a complex system works once you discover it; but
that doesn't make it any less impressive. I'm often impressed by some of my
own programs, despite the fact that, not only do I know exactly how they work,
but I even built them myself. Usually when you discover the internals of a
system, it gets even more impressive.

~~~
Sandman
You're suggesting that there exists an intelligent designer, someone or
something that created 'options', as you put it, which then go through the
process of natural selection. I, on the other hand, propose that there was no
intelligent design, that all the 'options' were created simply through the
workings of the laws of nature. Now, somebody might say - but who, then,
created these laws, who said that they're going to work the way they do? And
that's just the thing - nobody did. It's just the way (our) universe works. No
intelligent designer decreed that the speed of light in vacuum will be
299,792,458 metres per second, it's simply one of the laws of physics.

~~~
hasenj
I'm not trying to come up with any alternative to anything; just pointing out
the _obvious_ problems with "mutations" that everyone seems to ignore.

The design is _obvious_. It doesn't need any proof. No one even denies it.
Even the most hard-core atheists I've come across use the word "design" a lot
when talking about the human body or even any biological structure.

They just propose that it can be automated in such a simple way that even the
deaf and blind nature can do it. I'm pointing out a fatal flaw in a key
element of this supposed automatic mechanism.

"We'll find another way" is not really a good answer; not a very scientific
one, anyway.

~~~
ErrantX
The problem is you are not considering the timescale - which is over millions
of years. There is no "obvious flaw" in mutation, not if you understand how it
works.

 _It is easy to describe how a complex system works once you discover it_

The same can equally be said of the intelligent design theory.

~~~
hasenj
I'm not trying to promote the ID "theory" or anything like that. Can't we just
focus on the question instead of questioning my motives?

> The problem is you are not considering the timescale - which is over
> millions of years.

This is exactly what I mean by hand waving. So there's a humongous timescale
involved, so what? That doesn't constitute any form of evidence.

Unless you're saying it's not really testable because we can't simulate
millions of years in a lab. In that case, well, you'd be confirming my point.

Again, the design is quite obvious, while the "mutation" proposition is not
plausible, and remains unproven.

And no, I don't identify myself as a proponent of " _The_ Intelligent Design
Theory". I don't claim to have the definitive answer and I don't feel the need
to propose an alternative to neo-darwinism.

~~~
ErrantX
No, I was saying that the apparent problems you see in mutation is due to the
fact that you don't seem to be considering the huge time-scale involved.

Saying "design is obvious" is all very well but I see lots of flaws with that?
Who's right?

:)

~~~
hasenj
It seems you don't understand what I'm talking about.

Having a long time is only useful if mutations can produce good "patches". If
you can't prove that they can, then all the time in the world won't do you any
good.

It's like you're saying:

A & B & C & D, therefor Z

I'm pointing out that A is false. You're objecting by pointing out that B is
true. I'm saying "who cares"?

When one of your basic premises doesn't hold, it doesn't matter if all the
other ones hold.

~~~
ErrantX
I'm somewhat confused by your argument (actually; entirely confused). Perhaps
a quick refresher of Evolution is useful.

Basically there is a wide misconception that mutation and NS _is_ Evolution.
This is something of a well taught fallacy.

Evolution consists of three parts - Variation, Mechanism and Outcome. The
first of these, Variation, relates to the physical phenomena that cause
changes in organisms. One of these is mutation; which is a random action at
the _gene level_ causing something different to occur in the organism. There
are several other things that can cause variation in an organism.

The second is Mechanism; which is the process by which individual variations
take effect across a "population". This is, in effect, the guts of evolution -
and one of the main parts of that is Natural selection (which is an easy
theory to comprehend). The thing to remember about NS is that this is a very
very slow process; if one variation is favoured this is not a process that
occurs from one generation to the next. NS works best in larger populations -
so the progress of multiple variations through the population can take
hundreds, or thousands, of generations.

The final part of Evolution is the outcome of the progress of variations
across a species; this is more about the phenomena we observe (i.e. that we
are adapted to our environment, or that two species "co-operate" at a very
basic level). This is the guts of your particular problem. Mutation is a
pretty provable phenomena because, well, we see mutation all the time!

Your original post made this note:

 _If you have a really good team of tester and code reviewers, but no one
submits any patch (or, no one makes any change), then the software will not
evolve on its own. It will not get better just because there are a lot of
people to test it. It needs other people to make changes/submit patches._

Consider a more "true to life" version of your example; a program exists that
can compile and produce a version of itself as well as doing some other
specific task. People download V1 of this program that, say, flashes a pixel
on your screen. As the program compiles itself a random "mutation" may occur
in the code - adding, removing or changing something. Programs that don't work
are discarded (naturally) and those that do something extra or cool are
favoured. Over the course of millions of generations you will end up with a
number of highly evolved programs - for example a network scanner, a web
browser and a word pad.

Your mistake is in assuming a system that requires an intelligent input.

You seem to be suggesting that it is unlikely for mutation to create useful
variations; this is also a fallacy because mutation is random. So despite
being unlikely it is not impossible; please remember we are not talking about
a mutation that suddenly means the offspring grows a lung - that is a common
misconception. We are already highly evolved over millions of generations - so
it is a lot harder to observe directly in current organisms. But we can
observe it in bacteria who adapt to new situations through mutation. That is
the basis of the whole shebang.

The theory of evolution has survived this challenge a number of times without
being proven fallacious.

~~~
hasenj
I think I know what I'm talking about. Please refrain from assuming I'm basing
my argument on some misconceptions unless you clearly see that.

NS is a process for selecting changes. It doesn't introduce any change. NS
does not produce variations. If NS produced variations then it would be
sufficient on its own, and no one would go looking for other causes of
variation, such as mutations. NS is not the guts of evolution, it's only a
part of it, and by itself it is useless.

This is actually a testable statement.

If NS by itself is sufficient for producing variations _and_ selecting them,
no one would go looking for some other source of variation.

From what I understand, Darwin himself didn't think too much of explaining
where variations come from; they seemed to occur naturally, so it doesn't
matter where they come from. This doesn't work anymore, so people had to
actually think and fill this gap.

The guts of evolution, really, is producing variations. For evolution is
nothing but the progression of species by having small variations accumulate
over a long time.

NS without variations to choose from will do absolutely nothing to advance the
cause of evolving any species.

The patching/test analogy works great, I don't know why it didn't make sense
to you.

NS by itself doesn't do anything, for the same reason that testing by itself
doesn't actually develop anything.

Suppose you have two teams, team A and team B. Team B does nothing but
testing. They test and test and test, and they only accept something of good
quality, and no code makes it into production unless it's passed the testing
by team B. Team A do the actual development, they use a decentralized version
control system, and every change is made into its own branch, and it's then
sent to team B to be tested.

Team B doesn't by itself make anything; they only accept or reject changes
done by team A. If team A doesn't send any changes to team B, the software
will not evolve.

Similarly, NS can only select variations, it doesn't produce them.

Is that analogy really hard to understand?

There has to be some other forces that create these variations, and the
proposed idea is that these variations are caused by random mutations.

What tends to happen in evolutionary literature is, the role of NS is
magnified, and the role of mutations is marginalized, as if it's the selection
process that matters, not the variation-producing process.

The mere occurrence of mutations is not the subject of my argument.

The part that is often overlooked, even though it is so crucial, is the lack
of evidence for whether mutations have the ability to actually produce any
useful set of variations for NS to act on.

It's assumed that eventually mutations will always produce something useful,
but this is a claim that lacks evidence.

This is the heart of evolution; the mechanism that produce these small changes
that eventually accumulate.

This is ten times more significant that NS.

Darwin focused on NS so much, but that's because he assumed that NS is the
force that drives the variations. It's as if competition would motivate
individual animals to better adapt themselves to their environment, by
extending their necks, and things like that. He even talks a lot about the
competition! If you really think about it, he's making an analogy with market
competition: market competition drives people to provide better
services/products. The fact that people will make better product is not so
important, because they always can, but who's to force them? If a crappy
product sells, you won't be motivated to improve it. Competition forces you to
improve your products.

Darwin must have thought the same about natural selection: it doesn't matter
where variations come from, they just naturally occur.

This is where neo-darwinism comes in. It says, no no, that doesn't really
work. Variations come from mutations.

Once you say that, NS stops becoming so important, and the mechanism that
produces the variations becomes much more important.

Natural variations in the gene pool (like hair color) _cannot_ contribute to
evolution, because they always revolve around a closed circle.

Suppose I have 3 options for hair, each option having 5 possible choices:

* color: white, black, red, yellow, blue * type: straight1, straight2, curly1, curly2, curly3 * length: really-short, short, medium, long, really-long

That's 5^3 possible variations right there. It's really easy to imagine having
more such options. You can have 20 trivial options, each having 2 choices.
That would be about a million possible variation (2^20). You can try to mix
and match any number of configuration for these options, but it would never
result in a new species even after a billion years.

The only mechanism for actually creating new kinds of variations that _can_
lead to the evolution of new species is mutation.

As for your self-replicating pixel-drawing program that can evolve to a web
browser -- you are more than welcome to have a go at it. I can tell you from
now that it will fail. There's a simpler experiment, that will also fail:
<http://www.randommutation.com/darwinianevolution.htm>

> You seem to be suggesting that it is unlikely for mutation to create useful
> variations; this is also a fallacy because mutation is random. So despite
> being unlikely it is not impossible

Yet another instance of hand waving. You might think it is possible, but until
you prove it, I will claim that this is an unscientific claim.

> remember we are not talking about a mutation that suddenly means the
> offspring grows a lung - that is a common misconception.

I never suggested that a single mutation must produce a lung.

This is a common technique. I might call it "The argument from you don't
really understand".

I think you're the one who's not understanding my argument.

Suppose complex feature X requires 100 steps to come about. Each step is a
tiny change in something that already exists, but after a 100 steps, it will
be basically transformed into X. Each such step must be producible by a
mutation. Not only that, but each step must be advantageous enough to be
selected by NS.

(Notice how NS here actually makes things more difficult).

A small example: the word "yellow" can be transformed to "hello" by two steps:

yellow -> hellow -> hello

The problem here is, "hellow" is not a valid word, and therefore NS would fail
it, and this chain of variations will not work.

Of course this example doesn't exactly apply to genes, but it clearly
illustrates two points:

\- Each "tiny step" must be producible by a random mutation \- Each such step
must pass NS.

Now, from reading the brain-simulation thread the other day, I sort of
conclude that no one really knows what these steps might even look like,
because genetic engineering is really hard, and the way genes translate to
features is still largely a mystery.

> The theory of evolution has survived this challenge a number of times
> without being proven fallacious.

Not really.

Of course, you will ignore everything I'm saying, because instead of focusing
on evidence and logic, you're fixated on the notion that I'm an idiot (or
misinformed) and therefore my argument is obviously false. I mean, how dare I
question evolution? Right?

~~~
ErrantX
> As for your self-replicating pixel-drawing program that can evolve to a web
> browser -- you are more than welcome to have a go at it. I can tell you from
> now that it will fail. There's a simpler experiment, that will also fail:
> <http://www.randommutation.com/darwinianevolution.htm>

That's a flawed example for several reasons. The main one is that the
selection is based on a target (the new word) or is considered over too short
a timespan. Even worse is that you are getting random variation in every
generation, which is actually against the principle of evolution. In your
cited example the whole chain would die out very quickly - favouring chains
that mutated more slowly.

My example is better because the end product is irrelevant; the code becomes a
program. Programs that are "better" in some ambiguous way will be used more
frequently. Over time the most useful programs will evolve; but only over
millions of generations. The end product is uncertain; but according to
Darwinian theory it would fit the environment (so, if we had no internet there
would be no network scanner to evolve).

> Yet another instance of hand waving. You might think it is possible, but
> until you prove it, I will claim that this is an unscientific claim.

I'm sorry but what is unprovable about mutation; this is one of the aspects we
have observed! Both at a cellular and DNA level.

> The part that is often overlooked, even though it is so crucial, is the lack
> of evidence for whether mutations have the ability to actually produce any
> useful set of variations for NS to act on.

Most of your argument seems based on the idea that a mutation can produce a
change/feature - but that it cannot be shown empirically that good
changes/features have or can occur. This does not seem logical at all; you are
basically arguing that it is impossible to a random mutation to have a
positive effect on the offspring. This is incorrect; the mutation inarguably,
as you agree, can produce a change - so at some point a positive change must
occur (even if it is entirely unlikely).

As I am sure you appreciate; subtle improvements take a long time to take
effect. That we exist in this form _is_ highly improbable - but that is not
dis-proof of the theory.

Please bear in mind I am just trying to be helpful here - not making any
criticism of how informed you are. However you do not appear to be schooled in
Darwinian theory because:

> Darwin focused on NS so much, but that's because he assumed that NS is the
> force that drives the variations.

Is 100% counter to what Evolution says.

> If you really think about it, he's making an analogy with market competition

He's not. In the slightest. He is making an empirical observation that animal
survival is related to competing with others. NS is the process by which
organisms with inheritable mutations that favour them survive longer and
slowly mix their genes into the species.

The process of stacking mutations in sequence to achieve what we are today is
complex and highly unlikely; but not impossible. That is the point Evolution
makes. I don't see a counter explanation with such solid theory, that is all.

------
rvanrooy
If evolution is such a obvious theory as to be taken as fact, then why are
there no species obviously evolving into another?

According to the theory, millions of years ago Chimps evolved into humans. Why
then are there no chimps in a stage of evolving that would signify a
progression to a different species? They've had millions of years to do so...

~~~
wlievens
How do you know there aren't any?

~~~
rvanrooy
Surely if they did, they'd be widely referenced and be irrefutable?

My point is, evolution is a theory, which cannot be proved even by its most
hardened supporters. There is more gray here than you would seem to admit.

------
abless
>"The 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of
the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is
something rather than nothing," said Denis Alexander.

Wrong.

