From Winston Ewert of the Evolutionary Information Lab, writing at Evolution News & Views:
Ev Ever Again — Eying an Evolutionary Simulation
A writer at The Skeptical Zone, Patrick, recently contributed a post on the computer simulation ev. He takes aim at William Dembski, Robert Marks, and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab’s analysis of that simulation. However, the events he discusses actually show a history of Darwinists repeatedly misunderstanding or misrepresenting arguments for intelligent design.
Patrick fundamentally mistakes the claim we are making about ev (and evolutionary simulations in general). Regarding a response to Schneider from the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, he says:
He admits again that evolution does work in certain environments.
Patrick treats this as an admission that undermines our argument, but it is what we have been saying over and over again. We have argued that evolution only works in certain environments. In order for Darwinian evolution to work, you must have an appropriate fitness landscape. This is what Dembski said in “America’s Obsession with Design,” the first time I’m aware of that he wrote about ev. It is also what Dembski wrote in No Free Lunch. It is also what we said in “A Vivisection of the ev Computer Organism: Identifying Sources of Active Information,”as well as our response to Schneider’s criticisms.
We are not claiming and have not claimed that evolution simply doesn’t work in any environment. We have claimed that it only works in certain environments. More.
So ev sometimes works. So do all kinds of things. “Sometimes works” can’t account for the history of life. We’re back where we started, but we have collected masses of loyalty points (darwins) to redeem for corporate rewards (which always turn out to be more loyalty points). See also: Computer sim Avida sneaks in information Follow UD News at Twitter!