You know, John, there are times when I envy you. The pagans I know are, to a man, considerate, intelligent, and curious people. By contrast, if you show too much curiosity in some Christian circles, you are told that your faith is compromised and dangerous at best and counterfeit at worst. The benefit of having your faith “codified” is that there is a strong sense of your faith in history when it sinks in that your thoughts, as you read the words, parallel in some sense the thoughts people have had reading them for thousands of years; the disadvantage is that people seem generally unwilling to struggle to understand what they’ve read.

I’d give certain sensitive portions of my anatomy to be able to discuss the significance of my faith with someone who, like me, is trying to find answers; someone who’s trying to find out what’s true, open to the adventure of exploring this amazing Universe.

Thank you for continuing to post and share here, John, in spite of the terrible inertia of beliefs against you. In your own way, you give me hope.

Well, of course it’s not “real”, any more than watching planets orbit in a software orrery is “real”. It’s a visualization of abstract concepts that produces behavior that appears very similar to that of the “real” Universe in very salient respects.

The code that makes Critterding go is available for free download, too. There’s no code for “scooting”, no code for twirling, no code for directing changes in the population (other than the simple fact that the changes that are duplicated tend to permeate the population after a while), and no code for running as soon as you’re born. All of these behaviors fall out of a simple description of “natural selection” of completely random bodies and behaviors.

The fact that the rules of this program, the computer, and the programming language were created by an “intelligent designer” is no more of a point (or less of one) than that an “intelligent designer” created the rules for a software orrery. In neither case do I believe that these computer models imply that God simply made these things and stepped back, nor that He acts or acted merely as lawgiver, superintendent, or referee.

I do think both computer models curious in that they usefully show how seemingly intricate individual cases can be modeled with much simpler descriptions. (Frankly, if you believe as I do that God is behind everything, God creating the Universe this way allows man to see His faithfulness. We can see things behave so reliably that we can break all of our observations — and, ideally, all possible observations — down into a simple, general description, and continue to test and refine our explanation against the regular behavior of the Universe. If God were not as faithful as He is, such methodical testing of the Universe would not reveal consistent patterns to our empirical inquiries, and experiment would not be able to reliably separate good ideas from bad; in short, without the faithfulness of God, science would not even be possible. This idea will elude you completely if you believe that God’s most remarkable activities are seen when He bends or breaks the rules. But I digress.) It’s curious in light of them that there are so many who simply declare by fiat that — when it comes to biology, at least — they cannot.

It’s obvious, of course, that not all computer models parallel reality. But it’s especially interesting when we put in rules we think we observe, and the results of the computations show behavior that looks “realistic”. If we put in rules that simply do not operate in the real world, there should be a reason why the results look like the real world other than “there was a programmer”. To cut off the analysis at this point is to ignore the fact that we are capable of analyzing methods of analysis, and coming up with plausible, testable reasons why consistently similar outcomes appear similar.

God gave us the opposable thumbs and the ability to reason abstractly; we are also told that we are made in His image. Refusal to use either gift — to work or to think — is tantamount to blasphemy.

The curious thing is that they have retained vestiges of their Whifferdill behavior. You can tell when a Dealer first spies food because the first thing it does (before starting to crawl over to it) is raise its head. It has no reason to do this (other than the fact that this behavior upon spying food helped it as a Whifferdill), and in fact costs it precious energy. (When an organism’s energy falls to zero, it “dies”; motion and reproduction cost a lot.) They also search for food by spinning (rather than, say, swaying to and fro, or scooting and searching, or what have you).

An offshoot from the main Dealer lineage has developed a taste for animals, not just the food scattered about the Petri dish. I note that when they reproduce, the new one tries to shuffle away as fast as it can. Sadly, Dealers eating their young is not uncommon.

Now, when was the first Dealer? That’s actually a curious question. The ability to scoot along didn’t happen all at once. There were stages where all they could do was stretch from a base. There are a small number of creatures that don’t clearly seem to be one or the other. Still, I expect that the Whifferdills — if they survive — and the Dealers will grow more and more distinct over time until telling which is which becomes trivial for all organisms in the dish.

Seriously, this program is amazing. And they just issued a new beta (number 11).

Whoops. Make that “absolutely show that the posited process is wrong.”

Thank you for your considerate words, John and Kash. I wish I knew what to say in return that wouldn’t sound forced or trite. Your kindness helped to heal a hard couple of weeks.