Richard Dawkin's big blunder

[Alex K]

Is natural evolution a bit of a cheat too because it is guided by a fitness function?

No, you have it ass-backwards again. Whatever guides the selection process in nature is what you have to use as your "fitness function" in the theory in order to describe nature.

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You substantiated the fact that you seem to mean something different from him by blindness of evolution, nothing more.

I addressed this concern but you ignored it. It seems that blindness, in Dawkins eyes, means not guided by anything.

No I'm pretty sure that's not what Dawkins means by blindness. You just made that up.

[Faith No More]

Gravity is a independent force. Evolution happens within a system.
They are not analogous.

They are analogous in the sense one causes objects to behave in a certain manner. In fact, gravity creates the stars and the planets. The fact that one is dependent upon more factors than the other is irrelevant and does not allow you to insert intentional agency.

Can you demonstrate evolution which creates complexity that does not require an intentional agent? I can't. I look at evolutionary systems whose origins are known to me and they all require the existence an intellect.

Now you're just begging the question with an argument from incredulity.

[Heywood]

You're not understanding. The mutations themselves are random, but the process that weeds out what isn't beneficial is not random. So, if we trained different members of the same species in random ways, and then used a selective algorithm based on evolution, you would end up with highly fit animals after a long enough period of time. This algorithm needs no intentional agent to guide objects in the same way that gravity needs no intentional agent. Life evolves based on the non-intentional "guidance" of survivability.

If you want to believe that god guided evolution, fine, but don't go around saying that evolution has theistic implications when you clearly don't have a solid foundational understanding of the subject.

Evolution, as a means of creation, is set it and forget it. It isn't guided by God on a constant basis. If that is what you are implying I said, your making a straw man argument.

[Alex K]

Evolution, as a means of creation, is set it and forget it. It isn't guided by God on a constant basis. If that is what you are implying I said, your making a straw man argument.

What DID you imply, if you argue that evolution needs guidance by an intelligence to work, but you don't mean God? Do you want to argue that one can set the initial conditions such that the outcome is exactly what is desired by your deity?

[Faith No More]

Evolution, as a means of creation, is set it and forget it. It isn't guided by God on a constant basis. If that is what you are implying I said, your making a straw man argument.

I'm not even sure how this is a response to what I said.

I'm starting to think that all this is just flying over your head.

[Heywood]

No I'm pretty sure that's not what Dawkins means by blindness. You just made that up.

No, I gave you a rationale why I thought that. However when you quote me, you conveniently leave that reason out.

I'll restate for I think the third time....maybe third time will be the charm and you will stop ignoring it. I think Dawkins means by "blindness" that natural evolution isn't guided by anything. I think this because he gives an accurate demonstration of how evolution works and calls it a cheat because his demonstration is clearly guided.

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Evolution, as a means of creation, is set it and forget it. It isn't guided by God on a constant basis. If that is what you are implying I said, your making a straw man argument.

I'm not even sure how this is a response to what I said.

I'm starting to think that all this is just flying over your head.

That's okay.

I think the stuff I am saying to you is flying over your head too...and that you're being incredulous. But that is the way these discussions go.

I might be missing what you are saying because I am responding to 5 or 6 people so you don't have my complete attention.

[Alex K]

No I'm pretty sure that's not what Dawkins means by blindness. You just made that up.

No, I gave you a rationale why I thought that. However when you quote me, you conveniently leave that reason out.

I'll restate for I think the third time....maybe third time will be the charm and you will stop ignoring it. I think Dawkins means by "blindness" that natural evolution isn't guided by anything. I think this because he gives an accurate demonstration of how evolution works and calls it a cheat because his demonstration is clearly guided.

So I rewatched the segment. You completely misunderstand why he says that his example is a bit of a cheat:
He calls it a cheat because his computer example specifies the precise phenotype directly (the goal sentence) rather than a selection criterion such as a "fitness measure" on sentences. The latter would not be a cheat, but would also not yield a fixed result. Just like evolution in nature.

[Heywood]

What DID you imply, if you argue that evolution needs guidance by an intelligence to work, but you don't mean God? Do you want to argue that one can set the initial conditions such that the outcome is exactly what is desired by your deity?

If Dawkins can do it(and he did....but he called it cheating), then God can.

[Alex K]

What DID you imply, if you argue that evolution needs guidance by an intelligence to work, but you don't mean God? Do you want to argue that one can set the initial conditions such that the outcome is exactly what is desired by your deity?

If Dawkins can do it(and he did....but he called it cheating), then God can.

Of course God can, almost by definition, if you imagine it to be sufficiently powerful, it can do anything.

Dawkins "cheat" programme is not a run and forget type of deal, because he has to look specifically at the phenotype or genotype (whatever the sentence is supposed to represent) at each generation and select by comparison with the fixed ideal specifying everything about the "animal" explicitly. That's demonstrably not what happens in nature

The point is that there's no necessity for this kind of setup, nor evidence for it that nature works this way, and much evidence that it does in fact not work this way.

[Esquilax]

I'll restate for I think the third time....maybe third time will be the charm and you will stop ignoring it. I think Dawkins means by "blindness" that natural evolution isn't guided by anything. I think this because he gives an accurate demonstration of how evolution works and calls it a cheat because his demonstration is clearly guided.

And you're wrong, a third time. To begin with, Dawkins' model features an actual, complete target that is being evolved toward, which is why he calls it a cheat. To make a comparison with natural evolution, in order for Dawkins' model to be accurate there would have to be some force saying "today I am going to evolve a wolf," and then specifically selecting traits based not on the environment, but on how much closer that animal's lineage gets to looking like a wolf. Evolution does not work anything like that, and hence the computer model's specific target is a cheat.

It's also a cheat in a number of other ways, incidentally; for one, there's no guarantee that every positive trait will survive, in nature.