From ResearchID.org

Detecting the number of designers

When multiple computer scientists work on a project, they divide the project into separate parts. Because a large computer program may involve millions of lines of codes, one engineer cannot understand the whole system. What is done is the project is broken down into parts. The code has to be broken down in a particular way so that a different engineer can write each part. You cannot just have one randomly assign lines of code to each engineer; you have to break it into independent pieces. Each piece has to be able to work with the other pieces, but such that each engineer doesn't have to understand how the other pieces work. This is done by having each piece interact through very narrow input output channels. In this way an engineer can be working on one piece, and can trust that each other piece will do what it's suppose to do when given the right inputs. For example, one section of the code may deal with the user interface. When the user types something in a search box and clicks a button, a search is preformed and the results are displayed on the screen. Another engineer may design the database, including the search function. The engineer designing the user interface will have to call the search function, but he doesn't have to understand how the search function works. Suppose the user does a search for “evolution.” The user interface would then send the word “evolution” to the search function. The search function would send back the results of the search. In this way the, the engineer that designs the user interface does not need to know anything about how the records are stored in a database. He doesn't need to understand how the search function works. All he needs to know is that when he sends the search term to the search function, the function will produce the required results. This is a key condition for enabling a large project to be worked on by multiple people. The pieces have to work in such a way that communicates through very narrow channels. So that in order for one engineer to connect his piece of the system to another part of the system, he only has to know how the input / output channels work. So I propose that we look at life in this way. If two systems cannot be broken down in to two independent systems that are interact through very narrow channels, the must have a common designer. However, if the opposite is true, it doesn't necessarily prove that there was more then one designer. Since one designer may have done the same thing in order to make the design more intelligible. In order to detect multiple designers, what is needed is to also look at design styles.

Could this approach work to the study of life? I don't know. But maybe with some refinement it could help us learn more about the nature of the designer.

Questions about evolution

These aren't meant to be objections. They are just questions. They could stem from nothing more then my own ignorance.

• Can natural selection / random mutation be shown to be a statistically probable cause of the diversity of life today given the known time frame for evolution to have occurred? We need to have mutation occur frequently enough that evolution happened in the established time frame. Yet the mutation rate cannot be to high other wise bad mutation would overwhelm the good mutations.

• Why does evolution seem to be going backwards? Natural selection should be selecting for species that are the most effective at reproducing. Yet, human beings seem to be much poorer at reproducing then lower animals like bacteria. Why?

• From what I've read it seems to be the case that more complex organisms have higher rates of bad mutation, as well as lower rates of reproduction. Can we predict that there is an upper limit to the power of natural selection? In other words could, can natural selection select a species so complex that it cannot evolve?

• This question is philosophical in nature. Since evolution is guided only by natural selection, there is no way to predict which way evolution will go next. Evolution does not have to produce human intelligence or any intelligence at all. So it seems that the philosophical question still remains: why are we here? Why are there being smart enough to do science? Beings that are also artistic an religious. Since natural selection isn't bound to create this level of intelligence, it can be only the result of chance. So why are we here? I think that the common responce is to say that this question is philosophical question, not a scientific one. This may be the case, but it's not an answer. This only shifts the question to a different field of study. What if the best philosophical answer is that we are here because of a purposeful cause? How can this be reconciled with the scientific claim that the direction of evolution does not have a purpose? Would we not have to conclude that our scientific understanding (of blind mutation / natural selection) must be is some sense incomplete even if much of the basic ideas are correct? Second, is there anyway to reformulate (or perhaps reword) the Darwin's theory of evolution, so that it can be discussed independently of the philosophical implications?