"The Edge of Evolution" by Michael Behe

They didn't represent anything. It was not a model for natural selection. It was a simple way of explaining how cumulative selection can work on inherited traits to 'climb mount improbable'. There are only a small number of pages in the book which discusses the weasel, and it does explicitly state that it is not a model of biological evolution in any interesting way. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

In the weasel example there are no nucleotides. There are single letter changes. Which are seen by the selection method. And each letter change is inherited by the offspring. So it shows precisely what it is meant to show: That inherited traits, with variations, can climb mount improbable if a selection method is employed.It is nothing to do with 'genes', 'nucleotides' or 'natural selection', other than in the most broadest possible sense. If Dawkins claimed that his program explained biological evolution by means of natural selection you'd have a point. But he explicitly says it doesn't and he explicitly says it explains something else.

No - it was designed to show how the core idea behind biological evolution works: How a selection method can help ratchet up probabilities so that what appears to be a highly improbable end product isn't necessarily as improbable as it first appears.As Dawkins says:

quote:

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Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways. One of these is that, in each generation of selective 'breeding', the mutant 'progeny' phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn't like that. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success.

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Con men all over know that it is always a bad idea to explain that your con is a con and why it is a con to the mark. Either that or Dawkins wasn't intending to con anyone and creationists have spent the last twenty years working themselves up over what is essentially a quote mine.It was a little example, hardly worth getting excited about that discussed the concept of cumulative selection. After he comments how it doesn't really model biological evolution in any reasonable way he goes onto discuss his biomorph idea which he argues, does resemble biological evolution more closely.You should probably read the book.

Yeah - I'd advise against constantly bringing up a small starting example used by an author to give his readers an idea on what cumulative selection means and arguing against it as if it was designed with a hidden agenda to propagandize for evolution. You'd do much better to argue against the biomorphs.
And you'd probably do well not to try and argue that the model doesn't perfectly replicate nature, since they are all by necessity simplifications that are meant to make it easier to understand the concepts that underly the complex system of biology to people that have not spend years studying it.I think that just about concludes our discussion since this thread is not about Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker but about Behe's Edge of Evolution...which contains problems enough of its own to fill a thread I think.