DNA Science Disproves Human Evolution

Institute for Creation Science ^ | 06/01/17 | Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D.

[ifinnegan]

Both you should read this and the associated article it is based on.

---

Regulatory Dynamism in Evolution
While the proteins stay mostly the same, the management evolves much faster.

https://biophilic.blogspot.com/2014/10/regulatory-dynamism-in-evolution.html

http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003771

[BroJoeK]

ifinnegan: "And you have to admit, “something less” deserves some snark."

So now you want a serious answer to a snarky post?

OK, here it is:

"Junk DNA" is a term left over from the 1960s, studied since 1972 and referring originally to all non-coding DNA, more than 90% of our genome.

But over the years other non-coding functions have been found for alleged "junk" such that today only 65% is thought definitely not used and 26% as "likely junk", meaning suspected of actual functions.

"The international Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project uncovered, by direct biochemical approaches, that at least 80% of human genomic DNA has biochemical activity.[2]
Though this was not necessarily unexpected due to previous decades of research discovering many functional noncoding regions,[3][4] some scientists criticized the conclusion for conflating biochemical activity with biological function.[5][6][7][8][9]
Estimates for the biologically functional fraction of our genome based on comparative genomics range between 8 and 15%.

However, others have argued against relying solely on estimates from comparative genomics due to its limited scope.
Non-coding DNA has been found to be involved in epigenetic activity and complex networks of genetic interactions, and is being explored in evolutionary developmental biology."

So, yet again depending on definitions, a certain amount of word-gaming involved here.

[ifinnegan]

"but alleged functions of most "junk" are not..."

Structure is function.

I reiterate, not snark, fundamental.

Let's look at the entire paragraph: -- Not really. Yes, estimates of "junk DNA" have been reduced from maybe 90% to something less, but alleged functions of most "junk" are not, as yet, determined, and the fact remains that most mutations within the "junk DNA" regions have no discernable affect on offspring. -- It's gibberish. Hand waving empty rhetoric and non-sequitur.

[ifinnegan]

So no one really knows.

And the idea of junk DNA and all this junk DNA in eukaryotes as evolutionary insulators was all hand waving and ever supported.

My point is that there is inherent function in the structure itself beyond simply narrow definitions of function, eg coding, enzymatic, regulatory.

It was presumptuous to have thought otherwise, but it was fair enough.

I am reminded of the story of when Venter made the case to Watson to sequence the entire genome, Watson said no, just the gene coding regions, that’s all that matter.

Boy was he wrong.

[Thibodeaux]

more ICS drivel

Always pretending to be relevant

[BroJoeK]

ifinnegan: "If you don’t understand structure is function you are not a physical scientist, or don’t understand it."

One of my daughters is a degreed biologist, but she is never snarky with me about it and doesn't challenge me with silly word definition games.

ifinnegan: "Structure is all we have."

I "get" that, but in DNA just a few base pairs have protein coding functions while over 90% do not.
It's an important point for anti-evolutionists who want to show those non-coding sections are not really "junk".
They assume somehow God would not create "junk".

I don't care either way, makes no difference to me.
But I will confess to confusing your snarkiness with anti-evolutionism, and that's my bad.

Sorry FRiend.

[BroJoeK]

ifinnegan: " It's gibberish. Hand waving empty rhetoric and non-sequitur."

Only to someone whose normal language is not American-English, you know, the kind we talk here at Free Republic?

Maybe you need to go back to school and learn to translate your language of science to real English?

I'd be interested, especially if they teach you to drop the snarky nonsense.

[meadsjn]

People are so desperate to believe in their man-made Fairy Tales, that they ignore all that God has revealed to us in the past two thousand years.

That is the ultimate lack of faith, in both God and in human reasoning (which was a gift from God).

[itsahoot]

all you really need is just one fully researched, documented, peer-reviewed & published example of data irrefutably falsifying a theory and that theory gets demoted -- reduced in rank -- back to hypothesis.

Global warming is a hoax and that is provable but Consensus claims to be the authority.

Just like evolution there is no criticism allowed it is settled science. Show me a school college or university that allows anyone to teach against global warming or evolution, they don't exist. Both opinions bear more resemblance to religion than science.

One does not have to even let Creation enter into the argument to disprove what is taught about evolution in schools today is inherently flawed. Of course the whole fight is with God not evidence.

[ifinnegan]

“I “get” that, but in DNA just a few base pairs have protein coding functions while over 90% do not.”

Thanks.

This is the problem. Deserves a lot more time.

DNA and nucleic acid have much more function that that.

[Bob434]

[[I disagree with your ideas of “impossible”,]]

According to the greatest mathematicians of all time, even just one positive mutation that —adds new non species specific information— (This is a very important point- in order to evolve on a macro level- species MUST receive non species specific NEW information from an outside source) is impossible- not just improbable-

It’ the right question- A symposium of the world’s renown mathematicians was held in 960’s and they all concluded these results and a recent mathematician, William dembski also agrees- He’s currently the best well known math dude

[Bob434]

[[Either provide an example of my engaging in Christian bashing, or refrain from making that claim.]]

LOL with the demands- your posts are rife with them- knock yerself out- Bearing false witness lol- that’s rich-

Since you can’t refrain from doing so- I’m done with you- dealt enough with your kind in the past-

[Bob434]

[[So, if your claim there was no “spiritual death” before Adam’s Fall is correct, then an explanation is: that’s because there were no fully human living souls at the time.]]

It’s not just huans that had spirits- there was no death of vertebrates of any kind- so there was no evolution- in order for evolution to be true (IF it were even possible) you woudl need billions of years and much much nephesh chayyah death

[ifinnegan]

“I spent seven years working on my biochemistry and molecular biology Ph.D.”

Took me five.

25 years on now.

[Manly Warrior]

Exactly. I have learned that if you tell one of these folks that the force behind the event is that of God, they laugh and carry on. But when they arrive at that same conclusion on their own, the lights come on and they are able to take faith a loving Creator to heart. Or not.

[BroJoeK]

itsahoot: "Global warming is a hoax and that is provable but Consensus claims to be the authority."

I would give AGW some credit as a partially falsifiable hypothesis, meaning we can measure actual temperatures and, if done honestly, compare them to the past and future projections.
That's how we know now that much of it is just wrong and some outright hoax.
That's the science, in a nutshell.

But politicians and Leftist activists are a much different matter.
They fold imperfect science into their Leftist agenda making it a matter of partisan loyalty to the point of near-religious fervor.
So, far from encouraging real scientific investigations, they seek to shut down debates in favor of more One World Big Government socialism.

By stark contrast, evolution theory has been around for over 150 years, studied & worked-on by many thousands of scientists & scholars who had no Leftist agenda to push.
As a scientific theory it's confirmed daily by workers in many related fields (i.e., geology, medicine), so it's on solid ground.

itsahoot: "Just like evolution there is no criticism allowed it is settled science.
Show me a school college or university that allows anyone to teach against global warming or evolution, they don't exist.
Both opinions bear more resemblance to religion than science. "

I "get" that, but you're talking about public school children here who need to learn science in science classes and should be taught their religion in churches, by their families' pastors.
Even you don't want government employee union teachers telling your children what their religion teaches.
And really, that's the crux of it.
Your children should learn their religion in your church, and if you're too lazy to take them, then don't blame your government school for not teaching your religion.

Of course, many people home-school or use private religious schools, and for them, this is not an issue at all, ever.
Those teachers can teach whatever you want them to, including that evolution theory is just "fake science".

But not in public schools.

itsahoot: "One does not have to even let Creation enter into the argument to disprove what is taught about evolution in schools today is inherently flawed.
Of course the whole fight is with God not evidence."

But in fact, evolution theory is only "inherently flawed" if you reject science's basic premises & assumptions.
Those include 1) natural causes for natural processes and 2) today's natural processes were the same in Deep Past.
From that point on, basic evolution theory follows quite... well, naturally.

As for God, I frankly don't think He objects to evolution theory, just so long as we "get" Who is the Master of evolution -- Who's Plan does evolution support, Who created the dust of the earth out of which we are made?
I think He's fine with that.

[BroJoeK]

ifinnegan: "DNA and nucleic acid have much more function that that."

Sure, no problem.
Sounds to me like you are sensitive to my use of the term "junk DNA", but from a scientific perspective, that's fine.
And the fact that "junk" fell from over 90% in, say, 1975 to just 65% now doesn't much impress you.
You wish us to understand there's much more function than we yet acknowledge, fine.

So remind me, is there a larger point?

[BroJoeK]

Bob434: "According to the greatest mathematicians of all time, even just one positive mutation that —adds new non species specific information—

(This is a very important point- in order to evolve on a macro level- species MUST receive non species specific NEW information from an outside source)

is impossible- not just improbable-"

Math is like any other science, if you begin with the wrong assumptions, then you'll end with false conclusions, regardless of how accurate your process is.
What you and your mathematicians here are trying to do is measure the "probability" of a single huge mutation which suddenly adds a totally new biological feature.
But evolution is not seen to work that way.

Instead, what we see in both extant species and the fossil record are many different small changes, which over time build up to major species differences.
The probability of small mutations is now observed to be 100% with every offspring.
Yes, most mutations are harmless or harmful, but occasionally some are helpful, and that's evolution, in a nutshell.

[BroJoeK]

Bob434M: "It’s not just huans that had spirits- there was no death of vertebrates of any kind- so there was no evolution-"

Then, sadly, we disagree.
I don't think any other creature has the spirit soul which God first breathed into Adam.
And without such souls they could not suffer your term, "spirit death".

Have a great day, FRiend.

[exDemMom]

“*Most* non-coding regions are filler.”

You’re 20 years behind the times at least.

You base that claim on what, exactly? On the fact that I do not repeat creationist pseudoscience nonsense, and only stick with the actual scientific papers published in journals like Science or Journal of Biological Chemistry?

“As long as the sequences at the ends of the introns remains conserved, the rest can be any sequence at all without changing the function.”

DNA is an amazing molecule (as is RNA) you should look in to it some day.

Too many people, yourself apparently included, think nucleic acids are generic blocks with a static structure.

I guess you missed the part where I said that my Ph.D. is in the field of biochemistry and molecular biology. Biochemistry is the study of biomolecule structure and function, as well as the various metabolic pathways that function within the cell. Molecular biology is the study of nucleic acid structure, regulation, and function. That means that I know every detail of the physical structure of these molecules at the molecular level: how many base pairs make up a helix, the differing chemistries of the nucleic acid minor groove vs. the major groove, etc. If I do not jump into a discussion of minute details such as the hydrophobic nature of nucleotide base stacking as compared to the polar/hydrophilic nature of the phosphate backbone, it is not because I don't know these details, but because they are a) irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and b) the vast majority of people who might read anything I post here won't have a clue what I am talking about.

You, of course, keep bringing up more and more details that are outside of the scope of this discussion--I know, the tactic is meant to trip me up so that you can incorrectly claim that because I have not memorized one among hundreds thousands of scientific papers written on the topic, I don't know anything.

The fact is that junk DNA is still junk DNA. The protein whose biochemistry and molecular biology I characterized in grad school takes up 74,146 base pairs on the chromosome, but the coding region is only 2547 base pairs--meaning that 96.6% of that gene is junk that the cell excises and discards when it makes the template mRNA that is actually used to make the protein. I can guarantee you that if I want to make that protein in vitro, I do not need those extra 71,599 space-filling nucleotides--they truly are useless, hence their designation as "junk." FYI, the scientist, Dr. Phillip Sharp, who determined that most genetic DNA is actually junk was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work. I have seen him speak about that work (and he provided lunch, too, but that wasn't why all of the graduate students went to watch him speak).

Anyway, I find myself here falling for your purposeful distractions. The point of my original comment is that the author of the original article may claim to have a genuine Ph.D. in genetics (and I can actually find his name on genuine scientific articles), but he is misusing his knowledge to mislead people for reasons I do not understand. First, he made an assertion that is not based on any facts and is certainly not known within the scientific community, and then he used that assertion to support a baseless claim that genetic similarity does not "prove" evolution. Regardless of how many times you (figuratively) shout "squirrel!" or throw shiny objects, the basic fact remains that he took a false premise and presented a false conclusion.

I can't help but observe that a "discussion" with a creationist is much like the "investigation" into Trump-Russia ties. The investigation has found nothing, so the politicians behind it keep widening it to include more and more extraneous and irrelevant stuff. Much like creationists: when their claim that they've "disproven" evolution is debunked, they jump to another claim, and another, ad infinitum. I believe the proper term for that is the "Gish gallop"--named after another scientist who found the allure of delving into pseudoscience irresistible.