06 June 2005

Intelligent Design

I've got an experiment for everyone to do. And before someone comes on here and whines about this being about Lee, I assure you, it isn't.

One of my Marine buddies, who's one of the most interesting Marines I've ever met, introduced me to The Game of Life. It's a computer simulation, and it's fairly simple. You're given a grid, and each cell is either "live" or "dead". If a dead cell is in contact with enough live cells, it comes to life. If a live cell is adjacent to too few, or too many, other live cells, it dies. People use the system to make some really amazing animations and experiments.

Go to the link that I posted. Aside from being able to set up your own simulations, there are a number of high level systems that you can select and then initiate. Watch a few of them, particularly the Space Filler or the Wick Stretcher. Once you've seen a couple of them, particularly the ones I mentioned, manipulate them beforehand. Change a single cell; either eliminate a live cell, or activate a dead cell adjacent to another live cell. Once you've done that, initiate the simulation, and watch the effect.

If the manipulation of one cell in a simple program like this one can cause death and stagnation after no more than a few thousand generations, can you honestly continue to believe that life developed on Earth as a result of sheer chance? It's things like this that make it nearly impossible for me to disbelief the existence of God. Even when I consider it from the alternative point of view, I'm eventually compelled by the simultaneous complexity and simplicity in our world, and by how much harmony must exist in order for life to exist in the way it does.

Believe or disbelieve, that's up to you; but things like this certainly give even the atheist something to think about.

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