Evolution - the core idea
If someone says that "Evolution as an idea does not work", is it in any way possible that she or he has any idea what the idea/model of Evolution is? After all I've always succeeded in getting evolution based algorithms to work in development of any software where I've needed them.
So, to get to the fundamental basic idea of evolution, let's first cut it off from the complex context of development of life.
What in context of life is "reproducing", is in general terms "copying". Often it's about copying oneself, but "being copied by something else" fits the bill too. Organisms copy themselves, blocks of data in computer's memory can be copied, ideas spread from one person to another, business strategies spread from a company to other.
Then there's the "change". Organisms get mutations, information in the memory of the computer can be changed, ideas can be tweaked, as well as business strategies. This change makes the things being copied different from each other.
So, there are all these things being copied, slightly different from each other. The one that gets copied most efficiently, ends up with more copies than the others. The beneficial difference takes over, more so when this happens over several generations of copy operations.
Usually this is also an iterative process. New changes are regularly introduced to the system and if they are beneficial compared to the previous state, they take over.
As for development of life, any claim that Evolution theory does not make sense or is too complex simply is not true. No other explanation of life has ever become anywhere near to the Evolution theory in the simplicity of the idea. Can you really think about the sentence "The one that gets copied most efficiently, ends up with more copies than the others", and say that it makes no sense to you? By Occam's Razor it's the most probable explanation of life, but I have also much stronger evidence for Evolution theory than that. Since the basic idea of "The one that gets copied most efficiently, ends up with more copies than the others" certainly works under any normal conditions, what would be the mechanism preventing it happening on living organisms? Saying that living organisms develop (only) by some other mechanism than evolution, is a claim that there's both evolution inhibiting mechanism and the life developing mechanism in play.
So, to get to the fundamental basic idea of evolution, let's first cut it off from the complex context of development of life.
What in context of life is "reproducing", is in general terms "copying". Often it's about copying oneself, but "being copied by something else" fits the bill too. Organisms copy themselves, blocks of data in computer's memory can be copied, ideas spread from one person to another, business strategies spread from a company to other.
Then there's the "change". Organisms get mutations, information in the memory of the computer can be changed, ideas can be tweaked, as well as business strategies. This change makes the things being copied different from each other.
So, there are all these things being copied, slightly different from each other. The one that gets copied most efficiently, ends up with more copies than the others. The beneficial difference takes over, more so when this happens over several generations of copy operations.
Usually this is also an iterative process. New changes are regularly introduced to the system and if they are beneficial compared to the previous state, they take over.
As for development of life, any claim that Evolution theory does not make sense or is too complex simply is not true. No other explanation of life has ever become anywhere near to the Evolution theory in the simplicity of the idea. Can you really think about the sentence "The one that gets copied most efficiently, ends up with more copies than the others", and say that it makes no sense to you? By Occam's Razor it's the most probable explanation of life, but I have also much stronger evidence for Evolution theory than that. Since the basic idea of "The one that gets copied most efficiently, ends up with more copies than the others" certainly works under any normal conditions, what would be the mechanism preventing it happening on living organisms? Saying that living organisms develop (only) by some other mechanism than evolution, is a claim that there's both evolution inhibiting mechanism and the life developing mechanism in play.