Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About Knuth

Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About Knuth Christianity and Computer Science

When Mentioned at All • Ethics • Excellence

Examples from other fields • Astronomy – “Big Bang” – creation implies a creator • History – Providence as an organizing principle • Philosophy – God as a frame of reference - reality • Literature – Themes such as redemption

Areas of Interest • Cultural Impact • Apologetics – Strong AI – Genetic Program & Algorithms – Intelligent Design Theory • Understanding Creation – – Man as a creator Linguistics Bioinformatics Design in nature • Service to the Church

The Cultural Mandate “Culture is what we make of the world, both in creating cultural artifacts as well as in making sense of the world around us. By making chairs and omelets, languages and laws, we participate in the good work of culture making. ” What is Current Culture Like? Crouch, Andy. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

What’s this Computers picture of? Networked Engine control • Anti-Lock brakes • Traction control • Roll Over protection • Navigation • Security / fob • Sound systems Current Cars have 30 -100 processors and up to 100 million lines of code • Coming Soon – drive by wire, self driving cars, etc.

Where’s the computer • Clay models • Wind tunnel testing • Crash testing • Material estimates • Blueprints • Tool and Die production

Where’s the computer • Just in time inventory • Automated material handling • Robotic Assembly • Welding • painting

Where’s the computer? • Inventory control • Sales projections • Revenue management • Financing • Insurance

• Essentially everything you buy depends on computers for its design, manufacturing, distribution, and in many cases the object itself contains computers Phillips Consumer Products TV’s have the amount of software that PC’s had 5 years ago Electric Shavers have a much software as early PC’s

Apologetics

Popular Science April 2006 John Koza Has Built an Invention Machine Related Topics Artificial Life Evolving Robots Intelligent Design Darwin Goes Hi. Tech

Smithsonian Magazine Sept 2007 The Player – Luis Von Ahn Related Topics “Strong” AI “It’s a philosophical Brains question. If you Building think the brain is a machine there’s no reason a machine can’t be made to do anything the brain can. ”

Understanding Creation Man as a creator

Isaiah 28: 23 -26 Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say. When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on braking up and harrowing the soil? When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cummin? Does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in its field? His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.

Isaiah 28: 27 -29 Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin; Caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread; so one does not go on threshing it forever. Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it. All this also comes from the LORD Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom.

Proverbs 30: 18 -19 KJV There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.

Fredrick Brooks • Excerpt from No Silver Bullet • Excerpt from The Mythical Man Month

Man as a creator “Software people are not alone in facing complexity. Physics deals with terribly complex objects even at the "fundamental" particle level. The physicist labors on, however, in a firm faith that there are unifying principles to be found, whether in quarks or in unified field theories. Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. “ “No such faith comforts the software engineer. Much of the complexity that he must master is arbitrary complexity, forced without rhyme or reason by the many human institutions and systems to which his interfaces must conform. These differ from interface to interface, and from time to time, not because of necessity but only because they were designed by different people, rather than by God. ” Fred Brooks – No Silver Bullet

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Third Millennium Ministries' mission is to equip church leaders in their own lands by creating a multimedia Solomon's Temple Fly Through seminary curriculum in five major languages in fifteen years.

Christian Groups Desperately Seeking Technical Help • • Campus Crusade Mission to the World Southern Baptist Mission Board GEM Discipleship Project