Intelligent Design Bears Good Scientific Fruit in the Study of 'Junk DNA'

Townhall ^ | Sep 20, 2026 | Casey Luskin

[T Ruth]

For decades, many scientists have confidently dismissed the vast majority of the human DNA as useless evolutionary garbage. Yet a recently published scientific paper in Cell, one of the world’s most prestigious biology journals, declares a “paradigm shift” against the idea that huge portions of the human genome are merely “junk DNA.”

After the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, a startling discovery was made. Only about 2 percent of the entire human genome codes for proteins. Scientists naturally asked, what is the other 98 percent doing?

Evolutionary biology was ready with an answer. For decades, they had claimed that the vast majority of the human genome was essentially genetic garbage — “junk DNA.” ...

A 1969 paper titled “Non-Darwinian Evolution” in the journal Science proposed that “99 percent of mammalian DNA is not true genetic material.” Three years later, the great Japanese biologist Susumu Ohno coined the term “junk DNA” ...

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In his 2006 book "The Language of God," Francis Collins — who headed the Human Genome Project — wrote that some “45 percent of the human genome” is little better than “genetic flotsam and jetsam.”

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These discoveries [of the ENCODE project] had a dramatic effect on biological thinking. Even Francis Collins changed his tune. Speaking at a scientific conference in 2015, he admitted:

"In terms of junk DNA, we don’t use that term anymore because I think it was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional."

Collins explained that most of so-called “junk” is regulating the production of proteins, called gene expression. ...

These discoveries represented a spectacular fulfillment of ID’s prediction that we would discover function for junk DNA, and a colossal failure for evolution.

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TOPICS: Religion; Science
KEYWORDS: 2003; 2006; biology; cherrypicking; collins; dna; evolutionarybiology; franciscollins; geneexpression; genes; genome; hubris; humangenome; humangenomeproject; junkdna; proteins

[Organic Panic]

Enjoy the time God gave us on this floating rock. Anything else is a distraction.

[daniel1212]

Is there [substantive] scientific evidence for God? Is atheism a position of faith? Yes and Yes

Excerpt:

1. It's almost impossible to understand how unfathomably massive our universe truly is

2. https://www.discovery.org/m/2020/06/Fine-Tuning-Parameters-Jay-Richards.pdf

3 https://youtu.be/ocMcYyhoZh4 

4. Fine-Tuning (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

5. Science quotes on God

A list of 60 aspects as regards the above is https://wng.org/roundups/a-fine-tuned-universe-1617224984

6. 'God: new evidence' - the fine tuning of the universe - part 1

7. When science and philosophy collide in a 'fine-tuned' universe

8. The Universe Really Is Fine-Tuned, And Our Existence Is The Proof

9. Design from Fine-Tuning | Reasonable Faith

10. We Live in a Very Fortunate Universe

11. List of Fine-Tuning Parameters

12. List of Factors of Fine-Tuning of Intelligent Life in the Universe

13. Can DNA Prove the Existence of an Intelligent Designer?

14. [God DNA] Proves Presence of God” says Scientists

15. 82 Mind-Blowing Facts about DNA | FactRetriever.com

16. 'God: new evidence' - the fine tuning of the universe - part 1

17. Evidence for the Fine Tuning of the Universe

18. It Takes 26 Fundamental Constants To Give Us Our Universe, But They Still Don't Give Everything

19. The Universe as We Understand It May Be Impossible

20 https://www.c4id.org.uk/Groups/277306/Find_Resources.aspx

21. Genesis Impact

22. THINKAPOLOGETICS.COM

23. James Tour: The Mystery of Life youtu.be/zU7Lww-sBPg 

24. Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible?

25. Ancient Evidence for Jesus from Non-Christian Sources

26. Is Jesus Alive?

27. Jenny Hawkins's answer to Do modern historians agree that Jesus existed?

28. Copycat theories refuted: Tektonics.org Bible apologetics and education

29. Amazing Stories, Christian Testimonies, Healing Miracles and Inspirational Stories and actual accounts of God's intervention.

30. Science quotes on God:

[thepoodlebites]

“Evolution is inextricably tied to inheritance.”
Replacing Darwin, Nathaniel T. Jeanson, Master Books, (2017).

[muir_redwoods]

A second year engineering student could design a better spine although the human spine does seem to work better horizontally, you know, the position from which it evolved.

[Dave Wright]

The term “intelligent design” implies a teleological intent in the direction of natural selection. We assume this intelligence is consciously self-aware, but this doesn’t have to be the case. The Grand Canyon was not “intelligently designed”; it evolved from the relationship of solar energy, water chemistry, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, chemical bonds, and quantum mechanics.

The same laws apply to the emergence and evolution of life. Matter that reproduces is more stable and survives over time as a species longer than ordinary non-reproducing matter. This creates an entropy gradient from less-stable to more-stable forms of matter. Matter randomly discovered how to create a battery from the voltage difference between hydrogen and carbon dioxide ions under the right conditions of temperature, pressure, and proximity, driving an “engine” of hydrocarbon synthesis and greater complexity. Complixification temporarily raised the individual organism’s entropy, but reproduction increased the stability of its species.

Four billion years later, here we are. No design needed. The whole thing is just a ball rolling down a hill, except the ball is the matter/energy of the universe, and the hill is the entropy of the universe.

[cgbg]

The single cell proves your claim to be total nonsense.

You would be shocked at how ridiculously complex it is.

An excellent book that would “reboot” your thinking on this and other topics:

https://www.amazon.com/Falsification-Science-Our-Distorted-Reality/dp/B08WK2H7SJ/

[MikelTackNailer]

When you consider the fact that matter can only be altered, never truly destroyed, reincarnation becomes unassailable truth - just not in the spiritual way of thinking.

But I AM constantly surprised by mankind’s tendency toward arrogance. Coining the term “Junk DNA” was dismissive of biology yet to be understood.

[Fester Chugabrew]

The best evidence against intelligent design is chaos. It’s clearest propoents belong to satan. Let them rage at will. God and truth always win.

[House Atreides]

“ After the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, a startling discovery was made. Only about 2 percent of the entire human genome codes for proteins. Scientists naturally asked, what is the other 98 percent doing?”
********************************************************************

Hmmm…. 2 percent for producing the “building blocks”. And the other 98% is “junk”. Somewhere in that 98% lies the “instruction manuals”.

[EnderWiggin1970]

A second year engineering student could design a better spine although the human spine does seem to work better horizontally, you know, the position from which it evolved.

Nope. Evolutionists from Richard Dawkins on down are full of ignorant claims like this (without referencing actual experts in the relevant fields in question), and there is a corresponding literature of creationists who actually cite the actual science and scientific experts in the relevant fields to show that the evolutionary claims of dysteleology are incompetent and inaccurate. If you think you can come up with a better spine (as opposed to just vaguely waving your hands) go ahead and specify the design so that critics can evaluate it.

Poor Design: An Invalid Argument Against Intelligent Design

[one guy in new jersey]

🤔🤨🙄

Check the math, m_r.

Statistically speaking, new species evolution via genetic mutation impossible.

Can never succeed

[EnderWiggin1970]

This creates an entropy gradient from less-stable to more-stable forms of matter.

A crystal is more stable than a biological cell, and the increasing entropy of the universe does indeed promote the dull, stable, repeating aspects of nature over the more complex features like living organisms. But that is devolution, not evolution. You are effectively arguing that no designer is needed to explain life if we just assume the universe is a randomly generated automated biological factory, such that complex biology just emerges as the expected result. Think that through and you'll realize you've just assumed an initial state that requires an even greater Designer.

Besides, open systems just decay faster than closed ones in almost all cases, and there's no reason to think they can generate spontaneously increasingly complexity; crystals and layered sediments and such are what you get in the real world.

[Albion Wilde]

bump

[Inyo-Mono]

Bookmark.

[Señor Presidente]

evolution via genetic mutation impossible

Even worse, that impossibility never has a chance of occurring without an equally impossible library of galactic and planetary events preceding it.

Yet, anyone who dares question it is called uneducated, anti-science, etc.

We can follow the dots, too!

[William Tell]

The idea that the structure of individual proteins provides sufficient information to grow and maintain a living organism seems pretty far-fetched to me.

The growing organism needs guidance on when proteins are needed, where proteins are needed, and how much of any given protein is needed. Also required is guidance regarding how, when, and how much of a given pair of proteins might be needed. Any single protein by itself is unlikely to perform an important function.

My intuition would be that the amount of "junk DNA" needed to guide biological processes could vastly exceed the amount of DNA which simply codes for proteins.

[NonValueAdded]

Data segment.

[muir_redwoods]

Equine exhaust, youre using a bunch of scribblings assembled by herdsmen who didn’t know where the sun went at night. The human body works but it’s hardly a great design. Why are a woman’s hips barely broad enough to birth a babies head? Why run a urethra though the prostate when a plumbing apprentice would simply go around it?

Use the Bible for spiritual solace if you find it there but don’t ever confuse it with a scientific treatise on the origins and development of life. For that purpose, it’s a leaky vessel.

[central_va]

Why can’t science recreate life in the lab? I’ll even spot them amino acids.