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Dembski-Hitchens Debate — The Real “Universal Acid”

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The recent Dembski-Hitchens debate is available here.

As Dembski points out, Hitchens hitches much of his atheistic wagon to Darwinism (the creation myth of atheistic materialism, which is dissolving rapidly in the universal acid* of genuine scientific rigor).

Very revealing is Hitchens’ reference to cave-dwelling creatures that lose their eyes. He thinks that this is evidence of “evolution.” In fact, this is evidence of devolution — the loss of information, not the origin or creation of it. It is evidence for informational entropy. Decay happens all by itself.

Consider computer code like mine that simulates human intelligence in the game of checkers.

It is approximately 65,000 lines of highly optimized and refined computer code in the C/C++ language. (This does not include several tens of thousands of additional lines of code that compute, compress, store, and provide real-time execution access and decompression to the endgame databases.)

Introduce random errors into that code and some of its functions will be disabled (or, the program will die upon conception when compiled and executed). Try to improve the same program by the introduction of random errors and there is no chance of success, even given an infinite amount of time, since random degradation will always outrun any possible random improvement.

As it turns out, virtually all examples of the creative powers of Darwinian evolution (random variation/errors and natural selection) rest either on the mixing and matching of existing information, or what Michael Behe refers to as trench warfare (destroying information for a temporary advantage in a pathological environment, such as a bacterium in the presence of an antibiotic) as opposed to an arms race.

The bottom line is that the infinitely creative, information-producing powers of the Darwinian mechanism are nonexistent, and only exist in the infinitely creative imaginations of Darwinists, who have an infinite capacity for spinning fanciful stories that are completely out of contact with modern scientific evidence and reasoning.

* Daniel Dennett calls Darwinism a universal acid that essentially destroys all traditional theistic belief.

Comments
The graphical user interface is programmed in object C++, using the Windows SDK libraries. The artificial-intelligence engine is programmed in modularized ANSI procedural C for maximum computational efficiency and memory usage (use of bit fields, low-level bit-manipulation routines in CPU registers, etc.). If you download my program you'll find that I included a tribute to one of my mentors, Marion Tinsley. Click on the File menu and select About The REAL Champ... Marion was a true genius and a professor of mathematics. He was also a devout born-again Christian. Through his influence, and that of many others, I eventually came to the conclusion that one does not need to park his brain at the church door in order to become a Christian. In fact, the opposite is the case. Shortly before he died in 1995 I had the privilege of sharing with Marion my conversion from atheism to Christianity. I'll never forget our phone conversation.GilDodgen
November 22, 2010
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Borne: Perfectly right. I have played a little with C and C++ programming, a few years ago: a fascinating world and a fascinating experience.gpuccio
November 22, 2010
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Oops, correction: A huge amount of intelligence had to be injected. Just like in the natural world where intelligence -in the form of highly algorithmic, prescribed and formal information- (not to mention meta-information whose existence is literally impossible without intelligence) had to be introduced.Borne
November 22, 2010
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gpuccio: Gil stated the use of C/C++. C is a procedural language but C++ is an OO language. I suspect if C++ is there for any reason at all it had to be its OO advantages. Btw, C++ is an extended version of C. It constitutes a complex planned "evolution" that added OO structures and many improvements over C. But, it had nothing to do with random chance and natural selection!! :-) A huge amount of intelligence had to be injected. Just like in the natural world where w/o intelligence -in the form of highly algorithmic, prescribed and formal information- (not to mention meta-information whose existence is literally impossible without intelligence) had to be introduced. Darwinists never get this, and seeing that they usually don't even understand it, they merely dismiss it and go on in their secure little world of self-deception.Borne
November 22, 2010
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Neil: The role of the code in a computer program is very different from the role of the DNA in biological systems. Why? Proteins are very similar to objects in OOP. It is rue that we don't understand well how the controlling procedures are implemented in DNA (we have only glimpses of that), but they must be implemented just the same. But protein coding genes code for functional objects which are components of functional networks, like in human programs. Well, I don't know if Gil's program is object oriented, but I don't think that really makes a difference as to he results of random variation.gpuccio
November 22, 2010
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I am glad that somebody finally pointed out to Hitchens how lame his blind cave fish epiphany is. The sad thing is that after Hitchens had what he thought was meaningful scientific insight about blind cave fish, he consulted Richard Dawkins, who shamelessly told him that cave fish going blind was in fact proof of evolution. Hitchens doesn't know much about science, so I give him a pass, but Dawkins definitely knows better.Jehu
November 21, 2010
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I've been listening to the debate. I'll congratulate both debaters for a quality discussion. When you mention random changes to the code of a checkers program, I'll say that I think it a rather poor analogy with evolution. The role of the code in a computer program is very different from the role of the DNA in biological systems.Neil Rickert
November 21, 2010
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