Next time let’s try to do a little better.

Are you suggesting that models of natural selection must function without selection? Please pardon me if I don’t take you seriously.

NO calculation is done whether such a feed back loop is even feasible in physical reality. Just assmume a value which will help one arrive at the conclusion one wishes to assert.

Meanwhile, many creationists assert that the existence of such feedback in natural selection as so obvious that they refer to it as tautology.

Clearly, there is no pleasing them, and there is no limit to the depth of the intellectual sewer one must swim to maintain the ID position.

I invite readers to look at how Avida models the genome. Does it look like anything in real biology?

Strawman. They never claim to be precisely modelling “real biology”.

Try to avoid making a vapid statement along the lines of “Just because you can select for antibiotic-resistant bacteria doesn’t prove that bacteria can evolve antibiotic resistance because the design of the experiment captures the assumption that bacteria can evolve antibiotic resistance.”

“They admit to it in their paper”

Admit to what? That their model, like natural selection in the wild, simply builds on previously existing adaptations? You have deliberately evaded pointing out how the Avida software had a pre-ordained end state built into it. Not surprising, since it did not.

If you wish to assert something to the contrary, simply copy and paste from the software listing (it’s at the link that Richard Hoppe provided, above), and let us all see for ourselves if your assertion is true. If you cannot do this, we must perforce assume that you either fundamentally misunderstand how the software carries out its functions, or you are deliberately trying to mislead the readers of this forum.

RBH demanded:

Point specifically to the part of the source code that “captured the assumption in their software” or withdraw the canard

How does one tell Avida that a feature is selectively advantaged? Answer: put it in the parameter file.

NO calculation is done whether such a feed back loop is even feasible in physical reality. Just assmume a value which will help one arrive at the conclusion one wishes to assert.

One could give affix as much selective advantage to any feature until one gets the results one wants. Is that empirical sceince? It barely qualifies as theoretical science.

I invite readers to look at how Avida models the genome. Does it look like anything in real biology? Can it be demostrated that something so decoupled from reality (like Avida) can give valid statements beyond merely re-asserting traditional tautologies?

Here is the more recent tautology: “if co-option is possible, co-option is possible” care of Avida.

Salvador

Point specifically to the part of the source code that “captured the assumption in their software” or withdraw the canard.

Why? They admit to it in their paper:

Some readers might suggest that we ’stacked the deck’ by studying the evolution of a complex feature that will be built on simpler features that were also useful. However, that is precisely what evolutionary theory requires and indeed, our experiments showed that the complex
feature never evolved when simpler functions were not rewarded.

And to set the record straight, Avida did not really solve the problem of IC through co-option, it merely assmed it was solvable, defined the simulation in a way that captured that assumption in their software. Thus the Avida researchers merely restated the conclusion they set out to prove: in other words, circular reasoning.

RBH

This is a remarkably simple premise.

I agree. The more interesting question is: who doesn’t and what do those people have in common?

Avida has had a history of being a buggy program, and I’m happy to admit I was responsble for correcting a flaw in one of their source files (a #include file) for revision 1.6.

Sal equivocate between a problem with the include file and it being buggy. Sal made some claims about Avida which were shown to be fallacious. To claim that Avida is buggy just plainly is an attempt to trivialize its relevance to show the vacuity of intelligent design’s claims.

Sal then creates and attacks the usual strawman

And finally, it can be mathematically demonstrated that NS or any such algorithm cannot solve a wide range of problems including large scale irreducible complexity.

Which of course does not mean that NS cannot solve wide range of problems including irreducible complexity. It merely shows that there are some limitations to the algorithm but does little to show that NS cannot explain the complexity in the genome. In fact it has been shown how NS can explain IC systems as well as complexity in the genome. And of course, it also shows how ID’s focus on selection as the sole evolutionary mechanism, is another red herring.

Avida is a thorn in the sides of those who argue, erroneously, that algorithms like NS cannot explain IC systems and/or complexity. Which explains the attempts to downplay its relevance. Once again, ID tries to hide in the shadows of our ignorance, rendering it scientifically vacuous.