Can you disprove this secular argument against evolution?

You're forgetting selection. Evolution is descent with modification and natural selection provided by the environment. For your analogy to be complete there would be selection pressures for "chemistry".--Percy

Your question makes no sense. I only pointed out that in order to have a valid analogy to evolution that you need selection pressure. How you include selection pressure in your analogy is your business, but you can't just ignore it. I think it's been explained several times already. Evolution does not build new proteins from scratch with each new generation. It modifies pre-existing proteins in minor ways, and small changes gradually accumulate into large.--Percy

Selection works. Breeders prove it all the time, and nature is constantly employing natural selection.Variation exists within all populations. Some have thicker fur, some have darker coloring, some are faster, some are bigger, some are smaller, etc. Selection is responsible for differential reproductive success operating upon normal variation. Over time any favorable mutations that happen to arise will also be selected for and gradually spread through the population.Commercial fishing has an interesting example of selection. They only catch fish above a certain size, and so adult fish now grow smaller so as to escape capture.--Percy

You misunderstand how evolution works. Organisms do not evolve during their lifetime. Heritable changes happen when offspring are produced. If the changes are roughly benign or positive then the offspring survive, and if they are detrimental then they do not. Surviving offspring produce more offspring in the next generation.--Percy

Focusing on sexual species, descent with modification occurs with every reproductive act where the genes from male and female are intermixed, and included in the mix is some number of errors. The gene intermixing and the errors is what is meant by descent with modification. Offspring are different from their parents not only in the mix of genes, but also in the precise sequences of some DNA where errors have occurred.Changes originate in individuals, but they spread through a species population, and species is the lowest grouping of biological classification. A species is a population of individuals capable of interbreeding. Evolution is about change in species. Change in individuals of a population is just variation. Individuals do not evolve during their lifetimes.If you want to disprove evolution then you need to know how it works first. If by divergence you mean speciation, the concept is the foundation of evolution and has not been falsified. Convergence happens when different species are confronted by the same survival challenges. Flight and sight have both evolved uniquely several times in completely unrelated lineages.--Percy

There were no red herrings, and the answer hasn't changed. This is where you've gone wrong. Gradually changing ecological niches drive gradual evolutionary change. Over time the accumulated changes can become significant, but across consecutive generations the changes are minute.--Percy

He *is* making a coherent argument, wrong as it is. He's saying that existing biological structures are useless when it comes to the needs of new environmental requirements. Though it's obviously not true, we can understand why he might think this since he seems unable to set aside his need for sudden change. Invasive species are an obvious counterexample to his views, where drastic environmental change causes a dramatic increase in success. The opposite also occurs, where a drastic environmental change causes death, but imported foreign species that are unsuccessful go largely unnoticed.But the case we're typically thinking of (and that Foxexhr doesn't seem to grasp) is where environmental change, however small or great, however sudden or gradual, causes selection pressures that drive evolutionary change. As long as the result isn't extinction then the species will gradually become better and better adapted.--Percy

You're just repeating your original already-rebutted arguments. You have to address the rebuttals, for instance that your numbers are pulled out of context and don't show what you think they do. And for instance that similar environmental niches are often exploited in similar ways by unrelated lineages, called convergent evolution - the eye and flight are examples.--Percy

Why do you think it couldn't be produced gradually over time using predecessor processes that slowly became what we see today? Changes are random, but selection is not. There is no single right target. There are many targets. As others are pointing out, you're committing the sharpshooter fallacy.--Percy

"Authorized" is not the only word that fits. First there are synonyms like, "approved", "certified" and "sanctioned". Then there are other words that fit, like "understood", "implemented" and "nixed". Then there are many misspellings/misuses that are plenty close enough, such as "authurize", "aproval" and "cirtifide", that would serve very nearly as well. The target space is much larger than your sharpshooter fallacy.--Percy

The point you're missing is the target space is far broader than you're imagining. One doesn't even need to hit the bulleye of one of the many workable targets.We understand that you're trying to define the problem in this way: There is one and only one needle in this haystack, and it's going to be nearly impossible to find. But the reality is that there millions of needles in the haystack.--Percy

You're working with analogies. In the analogy it is understood that the target is analogous to selection pressure. The program could be improved to make the target more analogous to selection pressure, for instance by selecting for closeness to actual words and correct grammar, but that would be a very complex program. The value of the Weasel program was as a very simple illustrative analogy to evolution, not as a model of it.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Evolutionary programs are written by people, but they model evolution, not intelligent design. The programmer defines the "natural environment" so as to model the real world to the degree of accuracy necessary.Just as an experimental biologist doesn't change selection into an intelligent process by manipulating an organism's environment, neither does a programmer by manipulating a program's "environment". The process modeled is still one of descent with modification and selection.--Percy

This misunderstands how evolution works. Evolution, analogously, also knows where the right corner is. Adaptation might be served by longer fur or larger beaks or larger size, and each increment is better adaptation, just as in your analogy each step toward the right corner is better adaptation. In an evolutionary program the fitness function models the impact of the environment, which in the real world will have multiple adaptive forces.--Percy

Whether change originates with inherent variation or mutation, descent with modification and natural selection is evolution.--Percy