God’s and Geeks

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Computer gamers and evolutionary scientists alike are excited over the release of the latest video game from Electronic Arts called Spore. Designed by Will Wright (creator of the popular SimCity), the game simulates the Darwinian journey from amino acid to armadillo.

 The video adventure begins when a virtual asteroid collides with a virtual primordial world. With time – shortened by a few billions of years to accommodate a player’s life and attention spans – cells grow more complex, taking on evolutionary characteristics picked by the player.

Dr. Thomas Near, an assistant professor at Yale and evolutionary biologist, told the New York Times, “This [Spore] may be totally off about how evolution works, but I’d much rather be dealing with a student who says, ‘O.K., I have no problem with evolution; I think about it the same way I think about gravity.’ If it does that, it’ll be great.”

Dr. Near’s glee at the prospect of a computer game prepping young minds to accept evolutionary theory as fact is understandable; the theory lacks the weight of gravity, which leaves the description of reality’s moving agent up for grabs. And Darwin’s proponents don’t like the competition. For them, natural selection should confine itself to the jungle and not the market place of ideas.

The irony – missed by the game’s creator and its scientific game-players – is that the virtual life forms of Spore can only “evolve” when urged on by a player – or, as some might define, a creator.

Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe says it more eloquently, “In the case of the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the appearance of most, if not all, new species, science can show us no natural causes. In the case of the universe, direct proof now exists that the cause, or causer, must transcend matter, energy, length, width, height, and time. In other words, the causer must be supernatural.”

 Apparently, Spore’s creator was beaten to the punch.

 --Mr. Curmudgeon