a comment on transitional forms

I've often noticed that when I want to make a big change in the
structure of a working program, I typical start by adding the features
I want to change in such a way that they work independent of
the working part of the code. Later, as I become more assured
of the performance, I begin to incorporate that code into the
working code. At each step, I check what has changed and make
sure that nothing of the original part has changed. In the final
steps, I start removing the old code, all the while continuously
checking to be sure that nothing has broken the original program.

In the end, the code can become drastically changed, but all the
while in the back ground, I was building greater functionality in
the original code. All of this is quite incremental, as anyone who
has ever written complicated and huge amounts of code knows.
I also tend to adopt pieces of code that have worked before to
do a new task.

So to sum then, whereas I admit I have plan in mind and the
environments are different, I sense that I have basically used
strategies that they might call in genetics "neutral mutations",
"gene duplication", to change and build very complex code
that can solve difficult problems. Along the way, the formal
output of the program remained largely unchanged, until I
threw the switch.

Surely an organism in an environment where the change is
gradual will have within its resources some means whereby,
assuming the change is not too rapid and continues in a
similar direction for a long enough time, it has some remote
chance of passing that transition. In the end, it could very
well display a very large change that comes from basically
"neutral mutations".

So it is really hard to see how we, as Christians, can continue
to argue that this simply __cannot__ take place. And worse, to
demand the demonstration of microscopically small transitional forms
to satisfy our expectations on how God works in the world. Maybe
that is just not the way God does things, and we have to accept
that. We are to ask God in prayer for help, but we are surely not to
demand how God will accomplish His purpose. And, if we have
rejected what God has called good because we first don't understand
it, but worse we don't even like it, are we not also yielding to temptation
and opening the doors far more grievous sin?

by Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
Received on Mon Dec 12 08:36:20 2005