Intelligent Design and the Death of the "Junk-DNA" Neo-Darwinian Paradigm

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.

[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).

Apparently, Stephen Jay Gould didn’t get the memo:

Gould's arguments do not support creationism. They deal with the pace of evolution, not whether or not it occurred. It is a scientific discussion, and should be of no interest to creationists, who deny it all anyway. Why should you care if there were hiccups in the rate of evolution if those hiccups did not change anything but the rate?

I find it amusing that creationists distort and quote mine what scientists say to such a degree that scientists often don't recognize their own writings. It's a pity that Gould is not here to defend himself.

Yeah, provide some links to some vapid Evo-sapien sites which claim that "even most creationists no longer believe their own eyes," and pretend you've addressed the issue.

I know that nothing will change your mind until you're marching off to eternity in Hell. Fine by me. But when you are, do you really think you'll still feel that this inane rebellion against God's Truth was worth the price you'll pay?

We'll see, huh?

;-/

I love quote mining evolutionists. The evidence is so overwhelmingly against them that they can’t help but inadvertently admit it over and over and over. In fact, there are so many such quotes one could very probably write a book refuting the Church of Darwin using their own quotes exclusively. LOL

PS I am well aware that Gould clung to Darwinism in spite of the evidence. He admits that the fossil evidence shows sudden appearance and stasis, which he further admits is inconsistent with Darwinian evolution. So what does he do? He amends the dilemma by trying to make the theory of evolution fit the fossil record (and his attempts to do so were a miserable failure). Just goes to show that the Church of Darwin is a religion, not science. Creationists predict sudden appearance, stasis, and catastrophic extinction...all of which are born out by the fossil evidence. So when it comes to the fossil evidence...

CREATIONISTS 1....Church of Darwin 0

==See this: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.

See this: A Critique of Douglas Theobald’s “29 Evidences for Macroevolution”

http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1a.asp#contents

See this: A Critique of Douglas Theobald’s “29 Evidences for Macroevolution”

http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1a.asp#contents

The first section, really the introduction, of this essay includes the global flood in the argument as if the global flood actually happened. I assume it goes downhill from there but I stopped reading at that point.

This stuff is simply not science. It is religious belief masquerading as science.

==The first section, really the introduction, of this essay includes the global flood in the argument as if the global flood actually happened. I assume it goes downhill from there but I stopped reading at that point...This stuff is simply not science. It is religious belief masquerading as science.

That’s too bad, because the latest prophet from the Church of Darwin (Richard Dawkins) says that Creation Scientists ask imminently scientific questions. Indeed, his faith in the Church of Darwin is so great that he thinks that NOMA should be completely obliterated...and I’m quite positive that Creationists/IDers would be happy to oblige him.

Now, getting back to the scientific study of creation, one of the predictions of Creation Science is that the geologic column will show evidence of a worldwide flood. This prediction will either be born out by the evidence or it will not. And so far, it appears that the evidence is on the side of Creation Science (as usual)—GGG

Actually, what creationists do with the writings of evolutionary biologists and other mainstream scientists is precisely what they emphasize ought not to be done to the Bible, namely cherry-picking quotations which, when taken out of context, can be construed to mean something that the book or other literary work as a whole could not.

“Gould clung to Darwinism in spite of the evidence” is not a fair depiction of Gould’s standpoint at all. He found the evidence for evolution overwhelmingly persuasive (because it is), and was exploring a hypothesis that would treat the fossil record as providing accurate data. But it may turn out to be the case that the data is in fact too piecemeal, and that (rather than punctuated equilibrium) is why the fossil record proceeds in fits and starts (but fits and starts that nonetheless allow one to clearly trace evolution over time, the only topic of debate being whether it moves steadily and gradually or not).

I would challenge you to read a whole book by Gould or any other mainstream biologist, and then come back here and claim that any of their quotes, taken in the context of their book (not to mention their life’s work), indicates they found serious problems with the theory of evolution as a whole, and didn’t just engage in scientific discussion of the specifics.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

==Actually, what creationists do with the writings of evolutionary biologists and other mainstream scientists is precisely what they emphasize ought not to be done to the Bible, namely cherry-picking quotations which, when taken out of context, can be construed to mean something that the book or other literary work as a whole could not.

So what are you suggesting, that we not quote Church of Darwin evangelists? What would you have us do, post entire books to get at a quote? The point is, the Church of Darwin can’t help but contribute to the unraveling of their own pagan creation myth because the evidence is against them. BTW, I have read Gould and many other Church of Darwin devotees. And as you pointed out, I was sure to mention that he continued to cling to his Darwinist faith in spite of the evidence against Darwinism that he himself chose to shine the spotlight on.

==He found the evidence for evolution overwhelmingly persuasive (because it is), and was exploring a hypothesis that would treat the fossil record as providing accurate data.

Look, Gould admits that Darwin’s predictions are not confirmed by the fossil record. But rather than admitting that the Church of Darwin has been falsified by the fossil record he instead invents the biological equivalently of geocentric epicycles in order to keep his natural selection god in play. And everytime the evidence forces them to make such admissions, I for one plan to call them on it. And besides, it’s not like the quote mining you so lament is a one way street. Your talkorigins.com link is full of quote mining in the opposite direction. When it comes to the Creation/evolution wars...JUDGE AND PREPARE TO BE JUDGED.

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