I attended college in the early 80s, before computers were common tools owned by your 'run of the mill' university student. We had a computer lab at my school but I never went in there because I was a broadcasting major. I knew of one student at my college who had a PC in his room, my friend Steve. It was fun to play 'Star Trek' on and I figured my friend Steve did engineering stuff on it because he was an engineering major, but I didn't know much more than that.
One day Steve showed me a few other uses for his computer that got me excited about them. He explained to me that by using something called a word processing program you could type class papers into the computer. The words appear on the screen. Make a mistake? You just back space over the word and retype it! No erasers. No liquid paper. Type your paper, check it out on the screen, and then print it out. The onscreen editing feature would save me hours and hours when typing term papers! In my estimation, computers went from being a novelty item used by engineering students to an ingenious and useful tool for anyone. I was hooked!
Another feature of Steve's word processor (WordStar) that excited me was the spell checker. You run the spellchecker and the program highlights the words that you've misspelled. This was too good to be true. I almost felt guilty using it! For me, Steve's computer was an ingenious miracle.
As stated in installment 3, the purpose of this series is to provide a list of supporting premises for the conclusion that there is a God and that God is involved in the world and wants to have a relationship with us. Premise 1 dealt with the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the requirement for design/intelligence and energy to arrive at the ordered complexity observable in our world today. My second premise delves into the incredible, ingenious, biological adaptations seen in living organisms. These perfect, astounding, useful biological components are evidence for an ingenious, powerful, creator God, just as Steve's ingenious word processing program is evidence for an intelligent software programmer. If there is a program, there must be a programmer.
An adaptation is the modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment. In future installments these adaptations will be discussed more thoroughly.
One day Steve showed me a few other uses for his computer that got me excited about them. He explained to me that by using something called a word processing program you could type class papers into the computer. The words appear on the screen. Make a mistake? You just back space over the word and retype it! No erasers. No liquid paper. Type your paper, check it out on the screen, and then print it out. The onscreen editing feature would save me hours and hours when typing term papers! In my estimation, computers went from being a novelty item used by engineering students to an ingenious and useful tool for anyone. I was hooked!
Another feature of Steve's word processor (WordStar) that excited me was the spell checker. You run the spellchecker and the program highlights the words that you've misspelled. This was too good to be true. I almost felt guilty using it! For me, Steve's computer was an ingenious miracle.
As stated in installment 3, the purpose of this series is to provide a list of supporting premises for the conclusion that there is a God and that God is involved in the world and wants to have a relationship with us. Premise 1 dealt with the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the requirement for design/intelligence and energy to arrive at the ordered complexity observable in our world today. My second premise delves into the incredible, ingenious, biological adaptations seen in living organisms. These perfect, astounding, useful biological components are evidence for an ingenious, powerful, creator God, just as Steve's ingenious word processing program is evidence for an intelligent software programmer. If there is a program, there must be a programmer.
An adaptation is the modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment. In future installments these adaptations will be discussed more thoroughly.
No comments:
Post a Comment