Posted on 06/16/2007 1:09:15 AM PDT by balch3
Two recent news articles are discussing the death of the junk-DNA icon of Neo-Darwinism. Wired Magazine has an article pejoratively titled "One Scientist's Junk Is a Creationist's Treasure" that emphasizes the positive point that intelligent design has made successful predictions on the question of "junk-DNA." The article reports:
[A] surprising group is embracing the results: intelligent-design advocates. Since the early '70s, many scientists have believed that a large amount of many organisms' DNA is useless junk. But recently, genome researchers are finding that these "noncoding" genome regions are responsible for important biological functions.
The Wired Magazine article then quotes Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer explaining that this is a prediction of intelligent design that was largely unexpected under neo-Darwinian thought:
"It is a confirmation of a natural empirical prediction or expectation of the theory of intelligent design, and it disconfirms the neo-Darwinian hypothesis," said Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.
The Wired Magazine article openly and unashamedly confuses intelligent design with creationism, but it does admit that ID proponents are making positive predictions about the scientific data:
Advocates like Meyer are increasingly latching onto scientific evidence to support the theory of intelligent design, a modern arm of creationism that claims life is not the result of natural selection but of an intelligent creator. Most scientists believe that intelligent design is not science. But Meyer says the opossum data supports intelligent design's prediction that junk DNA sequences aren't random, but important genetic material. It's an argument Meyer makes in his yet-to-be-published manuscript, The DNA Enigma.
Another article in the Washington Post similarly discusses the death of the junk-DNA paradigm of Neo-Darwinism:
The first concerted effort to understand all the inner workings of the DNA molecule is overturning a host of long-held assumptions about the nature of genes and their role in human health and evolution. ... The findings, from a project involving hundreds of scientists in 11 countries and detailed in 29 papers being published today, confirm growing suspicions that the stretches of "junk DNA" flanking hardworking genes are not junk at all. But the study goes further, indicating for the first time that the vast majority of the 3 billion "letters" of the human genetic code are busily toiling at an array of previously invisible tasks.
(Rick Weiss, "Intricate Toiling Found In Nooks of DNA Once Believed to Stand Idle," Washington Post, June 14, 2007)
The Washington Post article explains that scientists are finally "being forced to pay attention to our non-gene DNA sequences." What were the consequences of their failure to suspect function for junk-DNA? The article explains how there may be real-world medical consequences of the failure to presume function for non-coding DNA:
But much of it seems to be playing crucial roles: regulating genes, keeping chromosomes properly packaged or helping to control the spectacularly complicated process of cell division, which is key to life and also is at the root of cancer. .... [S]everal recent studies have found that people are more likely to have Type 2 diabetes and other diseases if they have small mutations in non-gene parts of their DNA that were thought to be medically irrelevant.
Could neo-Darwinism have stopped science from investigating the causes of these medical problems?
Intelligent Design has Long Predicted This Day Proponents of intelligent design have long maintained that Neo-Darwinism's widely held assumption that our cells contain much genetic "junk" is both dangerous to the progress of science and wrong. As I explain here, design theorists recognize that "Intelligent agents typically create functional things," and thus Jonathan Wells has suggested, "From an ID perspective, however, it is extremely unlikely that an organism would expend its resources on preserving and transmitting so much ‘junk'." [4] Design theorists have thus been predicting the death of the junk-DNA paradigm for many years:
As far back as 1994, pro-ID scientist and Discovery Institute fellow Forrest Mims had warned in a letter to Science[1] against assuming that 'junk' DNA was 'useless.'" Science wouldn't print Mims' letter, but soon thereafter, in 1998, leading ID theorist William Dembski repeated this sentiment in First Things:
[Intelligent] design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term "junk DNA." Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as "junk" merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. For instance, in a recent issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, John Bodnar describes how "non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development." Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.
(William Dembski, "Intelligent Science and Design," First Things, Vol. 86:21-27 (October 1998))
In 2002, Dr. Richard Sternberg surveyed the literature and found extensive evidence for function of certain types of junk-DNA and argued that "neo-Darwinian 'narratives' have been the primary obstacle to elucidating the effects of these enigmatic components of chromosomes."[1] Sternberg concluded that "the selfish DNA narrative and allied frameworks must join the other ‘icons’ of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory that, despite their variance with empirical evidence, nevertheless persist in the literature.”[2]
Soon thereafter, an article in Scientific American explained that “the introns within genes and the long stretches of intergenic DNA between genes ... ‘were immediately assumed to be evolutionary junk.’” John S. Mattick, director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia was then quoted saying this might have been “one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.”[3]
The next year, in 2004, pro-ID molecular biologist Jonathan Wells argued that "The fact that ‘junk DNA’ is not junk has emerged not because of evolutionary theory but in spite of it. On the other hand, people asking research questions in an ID framework would presumably have been looking for the functions of non-coding regions of DNA all along, and we might now know considerably more about them."[4]
Then in 2005, Sternberg and leading geneticist James A. Shapiro conclude that “one day, we will think of what used to be called ‘junk DNA’ as a critical component of truly ‘expert’ cellular control regimes.”[5] It seems that day may have come.
It seems beyond dispute that the Neo-Darwinian paradigm led to a false presumption that non-coding DNA lacks function, and that this presumption has resulted in real-world negative consequences for molecular biology and even for medicine. Moreover, it can no longer seriously be maintained that intelligent design is a science stopper: under an intelligent design approach to investigating non-coding DNA, the false presumptions of Neo-Darwinism might have been avoided.
Citations:
[1] Forrest Mims, Rejected Letter to the Editor to Science, December 1, 1994.
[2] Richard v. Sternberg, "On the Roles of Repetitive DNA Elements in the Context of a Unified Genomic– Epigenetic System," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 981: 154–188 (2002).
[3] Wayt T. Gibbs, “The Unseen Genome: Gems Among the Junk,” Scientific American (Nov. 2003).
[4] Jonathan Wells, “Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research,” Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, 3.1.2 (Nov. 2004).
[5] Richard v. Sternberg and James A. Shapiro, “How Repeated Retroelements format genome function,” Cytogenetic and Genome Research, Vol. 110: 108–116 (2005).
The human footprints there are frauds. Most of the creationist websites are now advising not to rely on the Paluxy River footprints. Good link. Another good link. Commentary by AnswersInGenesis.
When "Nova" showed up to film the discovery, the producers scrapped the footage because it so plainly disproved any notion of Evolution being credible.
Sounds like creationist nonsense. Please provide a link.
Kind of makes Evolutionists look silly, since it is an unimpeachable geoligical record of humans existing right alongside the same creatures which The Theory of Evolution insists all died out "over 60 million years ago..."
False. Most creationists know that the Paluxy River human footprints are frauds and avoid making any claims about them.
Get a grip. Your religion (Evolution) is built upon lies. The Biblical record is unbroken and accurately goes back to the beginning of all time (between 8,000-10,000 years).
False. There is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that the earth is not just 8,000-10,000 years old, and there is no credible scientific evidence to the contrary.
yes, but teachers too are brainwashed by the master brainwasher.
Back in the day, IDers could also believe in Evolution. I mean ID before it was co-opted by the Creationists. Something like the book "Calculating God", by Robert Sawyer. Full ID, WITH Evolution. Its where I got interested in the IDea. I think the only IDers with a real opposition to Evolution these days are the Creationists.
Interesting about the “secondary products” in plants. The chemists avoided the arrogant belief, “I don’t understand what it does, therefore it can not be important.”
All that boring old science will be gone. But there will be rich debate about exactly which 24-hour period on the calendar 6,000 years ago the earth was created. Out of all the things in the Bible, somehow figuring out this exact date and “proving” it took exactly 24 hours is the most important thing of all.
Statements as vacant of reason and education as that one are the reason I refer to ID-iot as ID-iots. Evolution is how life developed. There are questions of detail but none of basic mechanism.
Of course, it's impossible to prove to the willfully blind that the earth isn't flat but I waste no time with those morons either.
Evolutionists had assumed that "unused" DNA was "junk" DNA, the useless leftover byproduct resulting from a long process of macroevolution.
As it turn out, it wasn't useless at all, it is still being used, and as such, tends to indicate Intelligent Design.
Additionally, because ID predicted this, at lease one of the criticisms that had been levied against ID is now knocked down, for evolutionists had said that ID would not be able to make any testable predictions.
Once more, science tends to confirm theology. Let's get used to it, because we'll be seeing a lot more of it in the future.
Sweet vindication!
Sauron
Me.
This is not the case.
I see. So you think that all life evolved over millions of years through a series of random mutations (some that worked, some that didn't), but yet it is possible that there is no 'Junk' DNA?
Uh huh.
How does evolutionary theory rely upon some DNA having no known function?
Strangely, they seem to be most convincing to those without advanced degrees in the sciences. Hmm. . .
Total, non sequitur leap of faith
Don't forget Onyate Man! :-D
==Your post makes little sense. I public opinion polls are not a way to conduct science, then why post them, and why support their use? You contradict yourself.
See my previous post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1851215/posts?page=76#76
It’s called brainwashing. They have been conditioned to believe a lie and therefore continue to ask the wrong questions. In that sense, the general public is far closer to the truth than your average Darwinist.
Creationists are not opposed to change over time within the limits of the biblical “kinds”. What they are opposed to is the notion that one kind can turn into another kind via macro evolution. And the fossil evidence suggest that they are probably right...even top evolutionists in good standing admit that the fossil evidence contradicts Darwinist predictions (and yet still cling to the notion that they will one day find the myriad of transitional species that they all admit are conspicuously absent from the fossil record). Instead, species appear abruptly in the fossil record (”as if from nowhere”), remain largely unchanged during their tenure on earth, and then mysteriously vanish as if wiped out by some sort of catastrophe. So, in so far as the fossil record is concerned, Creationist predictions blow Church of Darwin predictions out of the water.
Sorry, that happens not to be the case.
See this: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.
Note, even prominent IDers accept an old earth and common descent. That argument is over.
Apparently, Stephen Jay Gould didn’t get the memo:
The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;
2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed’.
Gould, S.J. (1977)
“Evolution’s Erratic Pace”
Natural History, vol. 86, May
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