Computer Evolution

I'm not sure what to make of that write-up of the "evolution" of the FPGA stuff. I'm not entirely convinced that some of Dr. Thompson's work to set up the experiment didn't influence the outcome ... in other words, I'm not sure his initial fingerprints to set up iteration 1 aren't still present at iteration 1000. But to be honest, my pea-brain was barely comprehending some of that stuff. :-)

But let's say that it did "evolve" in the class sense of that word. What does that prove? It still required a "designer" -- Dr. Thompson -- to create the environment, set the parameters and initiate the experiment. It is not as if in the dark of the lab one night a half-empty can of Diet Coke united with a #2 pencil and a McDonald's Big Mac wrapper to form a rudimentary FPGA, which then evolved further and further. I'm not being sarcastic ... I'm serious -- for this experiment there was an enormous amount of human intervention, and the consequences of that intervention may have persisted well into all the iterations of the experiment.

Maybe I'm missing your point ... and that's possible because when it comes to computers and stuff, I'm not much of a visionary.

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Question -- would you say that experiment demonstrated evolution or adaptation? Do you see a distinction between those two words and the concepts behind them?

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I've mentioned this before -- I see no real problem uniting the concept of God as creator and sustainer with the concept of evolution. Where I see the problem is when the concept of evolution is taken beyond its boundaries and suddenly God is removed the picture and evolution accounts for everything, including the initial creation.