Evolutionary Simulators: How accurate are they?

If I was promoting this topic I would wonder what the purpose of it was ? To find support for the claims made in the original thread ? It is certainly odd that they are repeated.As far as I know most evolutionary simulators do not make a major attempt to represent the complexities of biology, preferring to simplify and abstract those, in favour of focussing on the evolutionary process directly. However I see no reason to believe that they are "designed to produce exactly what the programmer wants" in terms of evolutionary success.However, the description given simply ignores whatever is going on beneath the surface. It ignores, for instance, the role played by food and reproduction in even the simple example given in the link. And that example is almost certainly not the sort of thing Taz meant - Taz more likely meant Avida or the older Tierra.It seems that once again we have a creationist inventing his own "facts".

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Insomuch that because its so simplistic with very defined parameters, its bound to produce exactly what the designers want-- artificial evidence of evolution, which is supposed to translate in to biology. I think its far to oversimplified to be taken seriously.

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Actually it shows that evolutionary mechanisms work in principle.

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That is no more realistic to biological systems than a video game is to training actual football players.

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YOUR description was like a video game. The simulator you link to includes food and reproduction and so is far better. I have to wonder why you linked to it instead of one that actually did fit your description of "most" evolutionary simulators.

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I was going to post a link to Avida, but then they reminded me that you have to download it first. I wanted all posters and lurkers to be able to immediately understand what these programs entail.

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Judging from your description in the OP I think you mean that you wanted them to look at what they saw on the screen and not to think about what the program was actually doing. Linking to the Avida documentation would be far more effective in terms of understanding what the programs really do.

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Since I'm not a creationist, you must be talking about someone else.

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Odd that you seemed to have problems believing that Behe WASN'T a creationist, then. If you accept common descent but reject Behe's idea of God-as-genetic-engineer what exactly DO you beleive ?

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What makes you think that the Monte Carlo method is only applicable to evolution?

When did I say it was? That was the pretense of Taz's rant, all of which brought up by TAZ, not me. He brought up the supposed misrepresentation of evolution, and it was he that used the MC method as a basis for providing some evidentiary support.

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So why are you restricting it to evolution?

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I'm not. Go back and follow the dialogue. First tell me how this conversation began, then tell me where I restricted the MC method solely to evolution.

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Well I just did that and it turns out that Rrhain's reading was quite reasonable. Taz was arguing that your point was wrong in general and suggested:

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Look, do yourself a favor and learn some programming. Then use the monte carlo method to solve a physical (preferably chaotic) system.

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You replied:

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If you're not talking about evolution, then how does the MC method even apply to the conversation?

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Which implies that you think that the MC only applies to evolution. Of course the alternative is that you simply failed to understand what Taz was saying. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Runs of Avida to test Behe's claim - using Behe's original definition of Irreducible Complexity succeeded. Thus they proved that Irreducible Complexity is in principle producible by Darwinian mechanisms. This refutes claims to the contrary such as Dembski's assertion that he need not consider evolution when dealing with the bacterial flagellum (in the one attempt I know of to apply his "Design Inference" to biology - a complete mess).It should be also pointed out that Behe's whole argument is an "in principle" argument. It does not rely on the details of biology. Thus the Avida runs also discredit Behe's argument. They do not prove Behe's conclusion wrong, but they undercut it by removing the support.It should also be emphasised that Behe's argument has nothing to do with having "information" available. It is based solely on the idea that if evolution were to construct systems by simply adding parta, one at a time, an IC system would be non-functional until it were completed - and thus could not benefit from natural selection. The information needed for the parts and their assembly could be "available" in the sense that they are in the programs we are discussing without affecting Behe's argument in the slightest.Edited by PaulK, : Expanded