Genetic algorithms require a designer to specify desired outcome

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Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 Related claims 6 Acknowledgments

Claim

Genetic algorithms and computer evolution simulations do not show that intelligent design is unnecessary. On the contrary, those programs must be designed themselves, and they require a designer to specify the outcome.

Source

• Gitt, Werner, 1993. Did God Use Evolution?, p. 92

Responses

1. Genetic algorithms have created machinery which performs useful tasks without any human being understanding how that machinery does its job. How, exactly, does a human designer go about specifying a desired outcome which no human being understands?
2. Most progams that demonstrate evolution only demonstrate one case - what is the best circuit for this, what is the best way to walk, etc. In the real world, organisms only have to preserve and spread their genes to be considered evolutionarily successful, and it does not matter one bit how they do this. In other words, there are no imposed specifications.
3. This argument is specious and uses a subtle equivocation. The simulations require a designer in that the simulated world must be made in a way that is similar in some relevant way to our natural world. Our world comes with a set of natural laws that interact with each other. The designer of the experiment is mimicking these laws in some manner and observing the outcome; there is no specified or planned outcome.
4. Genetic algorithms and computer evolution simulations do not show that intelligent design is unnecessary. Nor are they intended to. Moreover, those programs do not reinforce intelligent design, either. So the claim is a Red Herring. Genetic algorithms do, incidentally, show that no deity of a higher quality than a demiurge is necessary to explain evolution, since the programmer is a demiurge to her simulation. Genetic algorithms do not exist for the purpose of refuting or endorsing intelligent design. They have real, big-people uses.
5. add more responses

Fallacies contained in this claim

• Reification (computer simulations have nothing necessarily to do with objective reality, even if they have an abstract correlation to it)
• add fallacies

Related claims

• Design is detectable
• Complexity indicates design
• Irreducible complexity indicates design
• Complex specified information indicates design
• Dembski's filter can detect design
• Purpose indicates design
• Functional integration indicates design
• Similarities in DNA and anatomy are due to common design
• SETI researchers expect they can detect design

Acknowledgments