Tag: Junk DNA
Nature Paper Shows “Junk-RNA” Going the Same Direction as “Junk-DNA”
When large-scale function was detected for non-coding DNA (once called “junk” DNA) Darwinists, knowing that their viewpoint had long boasted that junk-DNA was evidence for common ancestry and that they were losing that argument, responded in one of two ways: Some sought to rewrite history by claiming that evolutionary biology predicted all along that we’d find function for junk-DNA. Others, however, pushed the “junk” back to RNA. They effectively argued, “Sure, we know that most of the genome is being transcribed into RNA, but that doesn’t mean that the RNAs have function. Much of the transcriptome might in fact be junk.” Evolutionist biochemist Larry Moran, for example, argued that either “[t]he so-called transcripts are just noise from accidental transcription” or Read More ›
Study Challenges Two Icons of Evolution: Functional Junk DNA Shows “Surprising” Genetic Differences Between Humans and Apes
In 2004, cognitive scientist Keith E. Stanovich took the position that junk DNA “is essentially a parasite,” and that “junk DNA is a puzzle only if we are clinging to the assumption that our genes are there to do something for us.”1 In 2006, Michael Shermer asserted, “Rather than being intelligently designed, the human genome looks more and more like a mosaic of mutations, fragment copies, borrowed sequences, and discarded strings of DNA that were jerry-built over millions of years of evolution.”2 The following year, a human physiology textbook stated that “junk DNA” is “considered defective” and comprises “inherited sequences [that] perform no currently known ‘genetically useful’ purpose, yet they remain part of the chromosomes.”3 These sources promoting the classic Read More ›
“Large Scale” Function for Endogenous Retroviruses: Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled While Another Darwinist Argument Bites the Dust
ID predicts function because the basis for ID’s predictions is observations of how intelligent agents design things, and intelligent agents tend to design objects that perform some kind of function.
Another Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled: Function for a Pseudogene
Darwinists have long made an argument from ignorance, where our lack of present knowledge of the function for a given biological structure is taken as evidence that there is no function and the structure is merely a vestige of evolutionary history. Darwinists have commonly made this mistake with many types of “junk” DNA, now known to have function. In contrast, intelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function. Here’s where it gets interesting: Functionless structures may have been originally designed but were later rendered functionless by natural processes. For example, if you leave a laptop computer on the top of a mountain for 1000 years where it is exposed to Read More ›
A Response to Dr. Dawkins’ “The Information Challenge” (Part 3): The “Junk”-DNA Blunder
[Editor’s note: This was the third installment of a three-part series. The full article, A Response to Dr. Dawkins’ “The Information Challenge”, can be read here.] In Part 1 and Part 2 of this response to Richard Dawkins’ article, “The Information Challenge,” I explained why gene duplication is not an adequate explanation of how Darwinian processes can produce new information. But Dawkins’ article has other problems. He writes that “most of the capacity of the genome of any animal is not used to store useful information.” This is another good example demonstrating how Neo-Darwinism led may scientists to wrongly believe that non-coding DNA was largely junk. Dawkins’ statement is directly refuted by the findings of recent studies, which the Washington Read More ›