Dear Alan Kay,

I am writing to express my disappointment at your evolution thingy as
the centre piece of the exhibit on squeakland.org

Your first page of the active essay is tremendously enthusiastic about
how complex the world is and how well things have been, and I try and
paraphrase (because I cant look at it on solaris at the moment) ,
"DESIGNED BY EVOLUTION".

I appreciate that you are trying to communicate the concept of "wow! how
clever is evolution", but I put to you that giving intelligence to a
dumb process is somewhat misleading and overstating the case.

Here you are saying that the incredible complexity of life is being
DESIGNED, and therefore your use of the word design and the enthusiasm
and the words that you use actually in what you say points to the need
for there to be a DESIGNER. A concept that evolution advocates
vehemently deny.

In normal understanding and use of such language we tend to make
statements like, "Squeak that's a cool complex software tool.... who
thought of that? Who programmed it who designed it?". It is the
complexity and amount of structured information that leads us to make a
simply cognitive association between complexity and design and therefore
intelligence. If I was to say "Squeak that's a cool programming tool,
isn't my cat clever to have made this" then you would automatically
suspect something is wrong. Can I be blamed for questioning your
presentation on the basis that I suspect that something is wrong in a
similar manner.

You are giving evolution the credit for having intelligence and
creativity, which by definition it being a random process it does it
does not have. Given that you invest so much enthusiasm into what is
obviously a false statement, given the known relationship between
design, designers and intelligence/motive. The built in mismatch here
that should lead us to question the principles and the assumptions
behind the statements, rather than to present them as indisputable
facts.

There is an old saying... If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck
and swims like a duck, it is likely to be a duck!
Occams razor (or the XP equivalent, use the simplest thing that could
possibly explain that!) indicates that if you found DESIGN then the best
and simplest explanation for that is that there is a DESIGNER! Evolution
is actually quite a complex theory and it is quite difficult to get it
to actually work in practice. It flies in the face of Mr Occam since it
is not the most obvious conclusion to state as a fact after wondering at
the complexity of the natural world around us.

In contemporary science as people have investigated it further
especially at the molecular level inside cells. The more that
complexity, or to be more specific "irreducible complexity" is used as
an argument against the viability of evolution as an agent of design. I
am amazed that you are able to state clearly the opposite to this. I.E.
The logical thing to say as a scientist is  "wow isn't this complex, how
on earth did that evolve." You are saying, "wow isn't this complex isn't
evolution cool." It is on this basis that I am questioning your
"scientific credibility", your approach to science in this case appears
to be based upon assumptions, rather than on genuine scientific method.
I am not trying to start a debate here but I am appealing to you to do
good science!

Let me give you a complete picture of how I believe that science works
and hopefully you will get what I am saying. You observe something,
hypothesize and test. Given an event that is observed there are four
possibilities that can be considered.

1. Law
2. Chance
3.  Some agency (intelligent or otherwise)
4. Highly Improbable event.

For example a Forensic scientist may look at a crime scene seeing a
plant pot scattered on to the floor. He would consider.

1 law.  If the window is wide open and the wind is blowing at 90 mph the
laws of physics give an explanation as to why the pot is on the floor.

2. chance. If the window is flapping and the weather is gust then there
is a chance that an accidental gust of wind blew and then the pot fell.

3. If the window is shut but there is a foot print in the earth and
finger prints on the vase The vase falling incident has resulted in an
increase in "information" and thus this points to an intelligent agency.

4. If none of the others is a suitable explanation then this is the last
one, unlikely but remote.

---

The key thing to note about number 3 is that it is possible to measure,
based upon "measuring information content"  whether there has been an
intelligent agency involved.  There are many techniques (information
flows, convergence of paths etc.) that can be employed that make testing
"Item 3" hypotheses viable!

---

The problem with evolution is that those who propose it have accepted by
faith a "naturalistic materialistic" philosophy, this philosophy makes
an assumption. (Science is supposed to question, or at least be
suspicious of assumptions!) The assumption is that "there is no
intelligent agency involved." This means that by definition there is no
Option 3 in the naturalistic philosophy of science as applied to the
question of origins. If you wear a red filter on your glasses then you
will mot be able to see certain colours, asserting that those colours do
not exist is not valid given that they can be measured via other means!

There are currently scientists that seriously propose theories of
origins using both options 1  (Denton) and 3 (Behe).
Defining a philosophy of science without option 3, means that the only
possibility left is that chance (2) is the "designer", as directed by
"law" (2). Such a philosophy of science is incomplete, and basically
irresponsible.


---

I would like to finish on a positive note, here is another chance for
you for go WOW.

Here is a model of a car engine!
 http://www.phoenix-model.com/images/Minicraft/MIN11201.jpg

Here is an animation of a molecular engine! WOW!
 http://www.arn.org/mm/mm.htm

http://www.arn.org/docs/mm/atpmechanism.htm

finally as a direct challenge to the content of your active essay
perhaps you could look at. http://www.theory-of-evolution.org  on this
site there is an almost identical presentation using the "methinks it is
a weasel" example. as a java applet.

thanks for your time, "methinks there is a cat among the ducks"

respectfully

Keith














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