Last week philosopher Robert Pennock testified in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial about the Avida computer program simulating evolution (the court reporters misspelled Avida and I've corrected it here in this quote.)

In the Avida system we’re not simulating evolution. Evolution is actually happening. It’s the very mechanisms of evolution itself as Darwin discovered them. … So, that’s the sense in which it’s an instance of evolution not just a simulation. (p91-92)

Darwinists at Michigan State University Prove Computers Work

For centuries breeders have been selecting variations in existing species, yet this approach has never produced a single new species. Still less has it produced new organs or body plans. In 1859, however, Charles Darwin wrote that variation and selection are the cause of the origin of species, and his followers are still looking for evidence that he was right.

Frustrated by the stubborn refusal of real organisms to obey Darwin's dictates, researchers at Michigan State University have turned to computer code. Using a software program called Avida, they have now succeeded in proving that if a computer is instructed to generate a program capable of doing basic arithmetic it can eventually... do basic arithmetic!

Someone might naively object that Darwin's theory is supposed to be about the evolution of living things, and neither computers nor computer programs are alive. But Darwin's followers have cleverly overcome this objection by re-defining "life" to mean "that which evolves by mutation and selection." Reporting on the Michigan State research in Discover magazine,* science writer Carl Zimmer writes: "After more than a decade of development, Avida's digital organisms are now getting close to fulfilling the definition of biological life."

Zimmer quotes several of the Michigan State researchers. One of them is philosophy professor Robert Pennock, who said: "More and more of the features that biologists have said were necessary for life we can check off... Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it."

Another is microbiologist Richard Lenski, who has been trying for decades to produce new species of bacteria through intense selection. Having failed at that, Lenski is now tempted to close his laboratory and turn to Avida: "In an hour I can gather more information than we had been able to gather in years of working on bacteria."

Zimmer concluded that "the Avida team is putting Darwin to the test in a way that was previously unimaginable." Having moved beyond the foolish prejudice that evolution is about living organisms that are actually alive, evolution-by-computer experts are now "beginning to shed light on some of the biggest questions of evolution." Those questions include:

(1) How did eyes evolve? According to Zimmer, creationists irrationally claim that eyes show "signs of intelligent design." Avida has "hit a nerve in the antievolution movement" by proving that this is false. All we need is "a patch of photosensitive cells" that has "evolved into a pit." If we just plug the parameters of this pre-existing eye into a carefully designed computer program, we can prove that eyes evolved without any need for design.

(2) Why many species instead of one? If one plant in the forest does a better job of capturing sunlight than all the other species, Darwin's theory might predict that it would eliminate its all competitors; yet this doesn't happen. Avida solves this problem by proving that a computer with an adequate supply of numbers can use several different ways to generate a program capable of doing simple arithmetic.

(3) Why be nice? The existence of altruism has always been a problem for Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest, because an organism doesn't enhance its own survival by sacrificing itself for another. According to Zimmer, Charles Ofria (director of the Digital Evolution Laboratory) thinks that it may someday be possible to get digital "organisms" to work together if "we get them to communicate." The result could be an "altruistic" computer code capable of solving "real-world computer problems."

(4) Why sex? Sexual reproduction has also been a big problem for Darwinian evolution, because an organism that can reproduce by simply splitting in two seems more fit than an organism that cannot reproduce without the help of another. The standard explanation is that sex increases fitness by mixing genes that enable organisms to deal with different environments. To test this, Michigan State biologist Dusan Misevic has spent the past few years programming Avida's digital "organisms" to "have sex" by exchanging chunks of computer code. Unfortunately, his efforts have met with such limited success that Misevic concludes: "We must look to other explanations to help explain sex in general."

(5) Is there life on other planets? Cal Tech digital-evolution researcher Evan Dorn has found a pattern common to life on Earth and "life" in Avida that he thinks may help us to recognize extraterrestrial life. According to Zimmer: "If Dorn is right, discovery of non-DNA life would become a little less spectacular because it would mean that we have already stumbled across it here on Earth -- in East Lansing, Michigan."

(6) What will life on Earth look like in the future? Zimmer writes that project director Ofria "acknowledges that harmful computer viruses may eventually evolve like his caged digital organisms." Ofria himself said: "Some day it's going to happen, and it's going to be scary. Better to study them now so we know how to deal with them."

So the Michigan State researchers have proved that a carefully designed computer program can simulate undesigned eye evolution, as long as it starts with a functioning eye; that a computer can sometimes find multiple solutions to a simple problem; that it might someday be possible to program computers to simulate something like altruism; that computers have failed to show us how sex evolved; that a computer in Michigan may -- or may not -- be able to tell us what aliens look like -- if they exist; and that scary computer viruses give us a glimpse of future life on Earth.

According to Zimmer, these revolutionary results "prove evolution works."

It is rumored that the Michigan State team tried to sell its stuff to a video game company but was told that its simulations wouldn't convince an eight-year-old. Not to worry, though: Given the publicly funded group's inestimable contributions to science and human welfare, American taxpayers will probably continue to support this exciting pastime.

------------------
* Carl Zimmer, "Testing Darwin: Scientists at Michigan State University Prove Evolution Works," Discover (February, 2005): 28-35