# Was It All An Accident...Or Did An Intelligent **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 19, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721 "2013-01-19T17:18:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 39
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721/761 "2013-02-24T02:47:33Z")
> [@For You](#): > > No, it would not take longer. In fact, in the classical “infinite number of monkeys”, the process itself would essentially be instantaneous. The problem would lie in the fact that the complete works of Shakespeare (really, one might say the totality of all literature) would be spread out across a landscape of infinite typewriters, what would be time consuming would be gathering them all up in a coherent compilation. Then you would have to lay them on a stack of turtles … Grin! You got me there; the metaphor I was familiar with was a finite number of monkeys. Heck, just one Bonobo and a Selectric… “From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing Save the eaggle, feather’d kingg Damn machine the g is sticked.” (R.A. Lafferty) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721/762 "2013-02-24T03:40:02Z")
> [@NormalDude](#): > > The old notion thet a trillion monkeys typing on a typewriter for a trillion years will never produce the works of Shakespeare has never been dis-proven. What if, among other attributes, God \* is \* the driving force of intelligence in the universe? If you give me a function which returns a value which is proportional to how close a set of words is to the complete Shakespeare, I can write you a genetic algorithm which will generate them from a starting random value very quickly. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721/763 "2013-02-24T04:43:14Z")
Richard Dawkins did something very much like that, with, if memory serves, a few lines of Shakespeare. He also demonstrated a very nifty “random” function that generated patterns very similar to real-world spiderwebs, demonstrating how “optimization routines” in computers closely mimic real-world optimization. (Spiders that are wasteful of silk are at a competitive disadvantage with respect to those that don’t.) These kinds of computer sims parallel the real world, and are suggestive of how reality works. They may not prove anything by themselves, but they help point the way to the truth. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721/764 "2013-02-24T06:26:25Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > If you give me a function which returns a value which is proportional to how close a set of words is to the complete Shakespeare, I can write you a genetic algorithm which will generate them from a starting random value very quickly. Except, Shakespeare is particularly orderly, the real challenge would be _Finnegans Wake_, because, really, would you be able to tell? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721/765 "2013-02-24T08:50:19Z")
> [@For You](#): > > Except, Shakespeare is particularly orderly, the real challenge would be _Finnegans Wake_, because, really, would you be able to tell? diff(1) You don’t need to understand it, you just need to be able to measure how many character positions are different. ---
**Author:** ![Molesworth\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9dc877/32.png) [@Molesworth\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Molesworth_2)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721/766 "2013-03-03T11:01:01Z")
OP’s assertion that a “God” created the Universe is far more ridiculous than the idea that the Universe came to be out of nothing. OP is simply introducing a completely unnecessary middleman. Why is the idea that an omnipotent deity just came into being and created the universe any more valid than the idea that the idea that the universe just came into being? Again, OP is just talking about a wholly unnecessary step. The Universe just suddenly appearing is far less unlikely than a deity suddenly appearing and deciding to create a universe and having the ability to do so. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-all-an-accident-or-did-an-intelligent/647721.md?page=38)