Evolution Computer Simulation Under Fire

A new peer-reviewed paper has been published by BIO-Complexity, an intelligent design journal. Entitled A Vivisection of the ev Computer Organism: Identifying Sources of Active Information, this paper demonstrates that most of the success of the EV computer simulation in finding a target, is not due to the evolutionary algorithm, but rather "the success of ev is largely due to active information introduced by the Hamming oracle and from the perceptron structure."

And,

"It is not due to the evolutionary algorithm used to perform the search. Indeed, other algorithms are shown to mine active information more efficiently from the knowledge sources provided by ev."

So, intelligent design has not contributed anything to the biological sciences, has it? I beg to differ. Undoubtedly, this paper has contributed something to science.

If you haven't noticed, there's been a lot going around with computer simulations and evolution. Consider this computer simulation that absolutely proves the flagellum could have easily evolved - one of my personal favorites:

"Dr. Jackson Martin, Director and Professor of the Flagellum Project at the Hoboken Nature Institute, today announced completion of software that successfully demonstrates the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. Critics of evolution have claimed that the flagellum is too complex to evolve using the gradual changes required by natural selection.

'The flagellum is very complicated,' said Martin. 'Like a motor, it has a rotor, a stator, and complex control mechanisms.'

Martin and his students have demonstrated, however, that the complex flagellum can be easily created using the forces of natural selection.

'We have not only shown that the flagellum can be evolved, it’s hard not to evolve the flagellum.”

In simulation software called EvolFlag, Martin and his students carefully apply gradual modifications to an initial set of boundary conditions.

Martin’s most impressive demonstration was evolution of the bacterial flagellum from common table salt.

'Salt, of course, contains no biochemicals,' offered Martin. 'The ability to evolve a fully functional flagellum from simple table salt is a tribute to the miracle of evolution' . . ."

I'm impressed.