Evolution Icon Evolution

Why ENCODE Is a Significant Defeat for Darwinism


A week ago the Wall Street Journal (news department) published an article in line with what has appeared here at ENV. Headline: “‘Junk DNA’ Theory Debunked.”
Today, the paper published a letter by someone called Tom Shillock in Portland, Oregon. Opening two sentences:

Anyone with even the slightest understanding of the evolutionary process knows that evolution is too relentlessly efficient to have allowed most, or even large sections, of DNA to be “junk.” Any intelligent scientist would have simply said, “I don’t know.”

Now they tell us.
The ENCODE result is a significant defeat for Darwinism because the evidence supporting evolution by random mutation and natural selection has always been so sparse. Before the latest results, Darwinists could plausibly claim that junk DNA was their evidence. It “encoded” the history of random mutations. No longer.

Tom Bethell

Tom Bethell graduated from Oxford University and is a long-time journalist who has served as Washington editor for Harper’s, a contributing editor to Washington Monthly, and a senior editor at The American Spectator. He has written articles for many magazines, including Fortune, the New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly. Praised by Tom Wolfe as “one of our most brilliant essayists,” Bethell is the previous author of The Noblest Triumph: Property through the Ages, Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. He resides in Washington, DC.

Share

Tags

Junk DNA