Hey Ink, welcome to the boards.
I've read your openning post and have a few comments.
The puzzle analogy is essentially the Monkeys typing Hamlet analogy phrased differently.
The problem with all of these ideas is that they are theoretical experiments - but for all these experiments, we have to measure the success. By injecting an observer who judges the outcome, you automatically come out with Intelligence being involved in the experiment.
Your computer analogy is also one I've heard before - but here's something that people never point out.
If computers are very precise and the software is constructed of 1s and 0s, and they will only work if those numbers are in the right order and put there by an intelligent being - then what are bugs?
Why is it that a computer which is running fine will suddenly do something weird? (ie my MS Word no longer thinks that cookie is spelled correctly). Something has knocked one of the 1s into a 0 - that something (be it radiation, a magnetic field, etc) is not the result of intelligence. Yet, this change results in different behavior by the computer.
If I decide that this change is benificial and give the new software to friends, then essentially that program has evolved and spread it's code/DNA to new locations
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