Avida: Does it refute intelligent design?

In 2003, researchers from the University of Michigan published the results of an evolution-simulating program called Avida, in Nature. The authors of the article described the program as refuting the evidence of intelligent design, and claimed that the program proves that “complex adaptive traits have already emerged with standard Darwinian mechanisms.” In 2009, four researchers at the Intelligent Design Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory made their contribution to this scientific debate, in a peer-reviewed article titled "Bolithic Logic-Based Evolution: Anatomy of a Digital Organism." Based on concepts previously proven by William Dembski and Robert J. Marks, that article argued that Aveda programmers were smuggling "active and influential information" so that the program could emulate those evolutionary goals. According to the article, the sources of that "influential information", cleverly programmed, include: * "Influential information is present in the initial Avida configuration." "The initial Avida configuration owes credit to the fundamental role that code (known as: nop-C nonfunctional instructions play in obtaining the target function (EQU function)." "mutations, appropriateness, and selection of the fittest among a number of mutant offspring." Importantly, there is a "peaceful or cumulative feedback loop", where Aveda's "digital" mutations are primarily pre-programmed to perform a useful function, and the criterion for survival or "reward" is that function. Ewart, Dembski, and Marx focused on the third point, noting that “this cumulative impact information is made clear by the inability to generate a single equality function [the target EQU function] in Aveda without using that information.” The three asked the question, “What happens when that cumulative impact information is not applied?” The authors of the original article on Aveda reported in Nature: “50 samples evolved in an environment where the survival criterion for the equality function only, and no samples evolved into simpler ones. We predicted that the equality function would evolve even more slowly, because selection would not have maintained the simple functions that provide the basis for building more complex functions. None of these samples evolved into the equality function, which is a critical difference from the samples that evolved for equality in another environment where the survival criterion is for all jobs.” But does the standard of survival in the real world keep the “mutations” to such an extent that the Aveda program does? As the passage just quoted shows, when Apida is tuned to mimic the real biologist – where it may be necessary to make a lot of changes before it produces any useful function that can be selected (for irreducible complexity) – “none of these specimens developed” the target function. Aveda's innovators cheered its success loudly, but Ewert, Dembski, and Marx showed that Aveda uses "cumulative affective information" by retaining digital "mutations", pre-programmed to reach desired results. Aveda did not simulate a true Darwinian development that was indifferent to future outcomes, and could not use active or influential information. These meanings may worry proponents of modern evolutionary theory: not only is random Darwinian evolution "no better than blind inquiry", but Aveda's programmers have manipulated and designed it to succeed, and in doing so have shown that intelligence is a real necessity for generating biologically complex traits. The mini Vida that comes with the article can be found at evoinfo.org/minivida. Reference: Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, and Robert C. Marks II, "Synthetic Evolution Theory in Nand (No-and) Logic: Anatomy of Digital Objects", IEEE International Conference Minutes 2009 on Systems, Humans, and Cybernetics (Machine and Animal Control), pp. 3047-3053 (October, 2009). Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, and Robert J. Marks II, “Evolutionary Synthesis of Nand Logic: Dissecting a Digital Organism,” Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pp. 3047-3053 (October, 2009). — Source: Published on Facebook's "Braheen Center" page