I’ll try to spread this post over the blogosphere. Thanks!…

“evolutionary computing” does not prove Darwin is right or that his teaching is useful, it is only an image. And the same result and advance in computing can be obtained through other analogies (again trial and errors, local selection of a breeder at a micro-evolution level).

Speaking as a computer scientist (M Sc).

Believing (or, at least, understanding) the concept of evolution has been of great use in computer science. An entire branch of computing is referred to as “evolutionary computing.”

Put in layman’s terms — as I am a layman in the area of computing — evolutionary computing takes the concept of evolution and applies it to computer algorithms. From a starting point a variety of possible algorithms are test for the quality of their results. The fittest are kept, fiddled with, and merged with others. The less fit algorithms are discarded.

This evolutionary process is repeated until a sufficiently “fit” algorithm for the desired task is arrived at.

If evolution is false, it would not be the first time that a false belief led to a useful outcome. In this case, belief in evolution has definitely made better computer scientists.

Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch was a contemporary of Darwin, who did not believe him. Nevertheless, he wrote that, even if evolution were accepted, Judaism “would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus and one single law of ‘adaptation and heredity’ in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today…”

That view of God, Creator of the Universe, and all its processes is the one that I hold. “Belief” in evolution does not weaken my faith in God, nor does it replace God. Indeed, it increases my appreciation for His Creation and my Faith in his greatness.

“So to the Mennonites of Roxton Falls, and all other creationists: if you insist on having the schools your children attend teach religious myth instead of scientific fact, you may either pay for such a school out of your own pocket,”

1) They do, they pay tax for endoctrination of other children by the Monopoly of education and don’t receive any subsidy. They thought that gave them to right to do as in other provinces: be left alone! In Quebec ALL SCHOOLS, even so called “privated” much teach the curriculum decided by some Prussian dwarfs in some cubicles.

2) The curriculum does not go at all in any little problems with this *theory* (does it really explain macromutations, the odds are quasi miraculous).

3) Believing (it is the term) in Evolution had never made a better mechanic, farmer or even computer scientists. It has made a lot of people believe in the Survival of the Fittest as a new mythology replacing God, see what it has led to (Nazism, Racism).