Evidence for evolution

Hi Jydee, Well, you can make a computer run a program - such as a genetic algorithm - that makes it's operations analagous to natural selection. But I don't see that the genetic code is any more analagous to binary code than it is to any other form of codified data. Please could you describe the similarities that you mean? Genetic mutations occur randomly but evolution is not random. It is not possible to design a digital video camera without this knowledge. But you could design many of the components of a digital video camera without even knowing what a digital camera is. All of the components that make up a digital video camera was designed before anybody had ever seen a digital camera in real life, and many of them were perfected before anybody even conceived of a digital camera. If you want to stretch the analogy betwen the design of industrial objects and evolution, you could say that the components of biological systems are "designed" (or evolved) in a similar way, without any necessary understanding of the larger systems of which they are a part. But I don't see that the human design of useful objects is particularly relevant to a discussion of evolution. Judging by the frequency with which my computer crashes, you don't need that much intelligence. In fact it's remarkably easy to write a bad program.Different computer programmers have different styles of coding. Personally I write a few lines of code, test it, make sure it works, write a few more lines, test it, correct bugs that I put in earlier but didn't notice at the time, add a few more lines, test it again, etc. etc. By the time I've finished a large program, I have forgotten what half of the code was originally for. Some of it may well be unnecessary. Some lines of code may never even get used, because they are contained in subfunctions that I decided during the writing of the program that I never actually need to call.Certainly I don't imagine that a single computer programmer sits down and writes a large program (like a word processor or a spreadsheet or something) having rationally decided in detail how every single line of code is going to work together. I think the description of how I do computer programming is a little more realistic, and is rather pleasantly analagous to the evolutionary process, but only in a superficial way.Best wishes,Mick[edited by Mick to correct dbCode]This message has been edited by mick, 03-25-2005 02:48 PM