<p>The "Evolution is a fact" argument started by JanH seems to have found
<br>overwhelming support. I have not read about many arguments for or against
<br>evolution except for JW stuff so you will know my alreay biased view:-)
<p> ;My understanding of his basic premise is that "common DNA" and
"useless DNA"
<br>should not result from an act of creation but evolution. Hence he asserts:
<p><i>" as times goes by and evolution changes species considerably, this</i>
<br><i>means a lot of junk accumulates in the DNA. In fact, most of the
DNA we have</i>
<br><i>in us -- and this is true about every other organism -- is useless
junk code,</i>
<br><i>so-called pseudocode. Some of it contains copies of code used elsewhere</i>
<br><i>(reduplications). Lots of it is code that was used by some of our
ancestors.</i>
<br><i>And, when we see that we share these meaningless sequences with
chimps and</i>
<br><i>other species as well, it is direct evidence to the fact of evolution."</i>
<p>(Would you agree that the above already indicates an evolutionist's
bias in
<br>the argument? Note the use of ancestors! )
<br>and he concludes:
<p><i>"No creationist should be allowed to repeat their silly assertions
without</i>
<br><i>being called to task to reply to this question: If we and other
species were</i>
<br><i>created directly, how come we have genes for tails, birds have genes
for teeth</i>
<br><i>and whales have genes for legs, genes that are sometimes actived
today? In the</i>
<br><i>creationist world, such a thing would be impossible. In the real
world, one</i>
<br><i>where all species is the result of evolution -- descent with modification
--</i>
<br><i>such throwbacks are both possible and exactly what we should expect.</i>
<br><i>This is just one reason we know that evolution is a fact"</i>
<p>Does this not presume to know by what means a creator would proceed
to ; make
<br>living things? ; From the point of view of the thing evolved or
created
<br>something embedded may be junk but how do we know that this would be
so for a
<br>creator?
<p>Consider another posible viewpoint. It's interesting that JanH should
menton
<br>pseudocode. ; Perhaps he has been exposed to some programming languages. ;
I
<br>myself have basic familiarity with just one or two. ; Much of the
foll. is
<br>taken from a primer that has nothing to do with evolution/creation
debate.
<br>I just thought it would represent an alternative viewpoint that could
refute
<br>the argument mentioned by JanH.
<br>The key is inheritance, please read through to the explanation of what
that
<br>is.
<p>Please bear with me, I wish I could make this shorter:
<br>======================================
<br> ;In creating new applications a very common approach
<br>taken by developers is object-oriented programming. This relatively
modern
<br>approach is considered to be far more efficient than earlier methods
of
<br>programming (i.e. creating :-)).
<p>In this approach, code and data are embedded in
<br>"black-box" objects derived from blueprints called "Classes".
<p>How are objects defined? An object is defined via its class, which determines
<br>everything about an object. Objects are individual instances of a class.
For
<br>example, you may create an object call Spot from class Dog. The Dog
class
<br>defines what it is to be a Dog object, and all the "dog-related" messages
a
<br>Dog object can act upon. All object-oriented languages have some means,
<br>usually called a factory, to "manufacture" object instances from a
class
<br>definition. You can make more than one object of this class, and call
<br>them Spot, Fido, Rover, etc. The Dog class defines messages that the
Dog
<br>objects understand, such as "bark", "fetch", and "roll-over".
<p><b>INHERITANCE IS THE KEY--</b>
<br><b><i>This is the key for someone with no bias toward evolution. ;
Could it be that</i></b>
<br><b><i>there is a creator who used an analog of inheritance? ; In
fact if he were</i></b>
<br><b><i>efficient, it would probably make far more sense for him to use
this approach</i></b>
<br><b><i>than any other!</i></b>
<p>Inheritance: What is it?
<br> ;If there is already a class which can respond to a bunch of
<br>different messages, what if you wanted to make a new, similar class
which adds
<br>just a couple of more messages? Why have to re-write the entire class?
<p>Of course, in any good object-oriented language, you don't. All you
need to do
<br>is create a subclass (or derived class, in C++ terminology) of the
original
<br>class. This new class inherits all the existing messages, and therefore,
all
<br>the behavior of the original class. The original class is called the
parent
<br>class, or superclass, of the new class. Some more jargon -- a subclass
is said
<br>to be a specialization of its superclass, and the conversely a superclass
a
<br>generalization of its subclasses.
<p>Inheritance also promotes reuse. You don't have to start from scratch
when you
<br>write a new program. You can simply reuse an existing repertoire of
classes
<br>that have behaviors similar to what you need in the new program.
<p>For example, after creating the class Dog, you might make a subclass
called
<br>Wolf, which defines some wolf-specific messages, such as hunt. Or it
might
<br>make more sense to define a common class called Canis, of which both
Dog and
<br>Wolf are subclasses.
<p>Much of the art of o-o programming is determining the best way to divide
a
<br>program into an economical set of classes. In addition to speeding
development
<br>time, proper class construction and reuse results in far fewer lines
of code,
<br>which translates to less bugs and lower maintenance costs.
<p>===================
<br> ;
<p><b>Junk or Subclassed data? ; Depends on your bias, doesn't it!!</b>
<p>Decidedly_Unsure
<br> ;
<p>BTW an eg of much subclassing/inheritance occurs in many languages for
MS
<br>Windows, where most classes are derived from the superclass called
Window.
<br>For eg. a pushbutton may have available to it all the methods of a
window
<br>including resizing, minimizing etc even though not surfaced to the
user.
<p>A pushbutton could well ask: why do I need all these methods? I just
need to
<br>be clicked!! ; From the programmers viewpoint it just happens to
be a more
<br>efficient way to do things.
<p>Guess man was really made in God's image after all. ; He's even
beginning to
<br>learn how to create efficiently!!