Salvador Cordova Talks about DNA and Non-DNA Inheritance

_{Jonathan Bartlett

July 14, 2017

'Junk DNA', Evolutionary biology}

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These are a pair of videos from the AM-Nat Biology conference. I have had lots of other things going on so I’ve been slow getting these up, but Salvador’s talks became more relevant as Dan Graur doubles down to try to prove that the genome is mostly junk.

You can get the rest of the talks from the AM-Nat Biology conference (that have been uploaded so far) from here.

Comments

#9 JohnnyB bada bing, bada boom by design, duplication, redundancy more than makes sense for critical infrastructure, data storage and communications systems.DATCG_{July 19, 2017
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Sal's posting at Crev.info too... on Dr. John Sanford, Geneticist, Inventor, Patent holderDATCG_{July 19, 2017
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JohnnyB, again, enjoyed the post. Had time to watch 2 of Sal's videos, one from your previous post. Enjoyed them both, good slides on ENCODE and non-coding regions, ALUs, etc. I miss Sal, glad to see he's very much involved. Always enjoyed his post.DATCG_{July 19, 2017
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J-Mac @19:
There is a bit of risk in what Sal is doing [...]
What kind of risk? Can you elaborate? Thanks. BTW, here's a relatively recent (rehearsal) presentation video by Sal that you may like to watch: https://www.youtube.com/embed/W1QR2cI-ZagDionisio_{July 17, 2017
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Thanks johnnyb. It's certainly Sal's choice and I respect that as everyone should...There is a bit of risk in what Sal is doing though... I hope he maintains his integrity and remains true to himself and to what he believes... I hope he didn't separate himself from ID "for the greater good..."J-Mac_{July 16, 2017
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I don't know if Sal is banned or not, but I can say for sure that he does not believe in Darwinian evolution or universal common ancestry. From what I can gather, he agrees with ID in spirit, but thinks that our attempts at over-formalizing our arguments (i.e., developing Irreducible Complexity, Specified Complexity, etc.) is counterproductive. I think he thinks that the informal proofs are more true-to-life and more convincing, and that the formal proofs are too complex to understand and have too many edge cases to be useful. If you want to keep up with Sal, he posts fairly regularly at The Skeptical Zone.johnnyb_{July 16, 2017
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But Sal didn't join Darwinists, did he? He believes in common descent as I recall...J-Mac_{July 15, 2017
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My best guess is that Salvador was banned for being a quisling. :)Mung_{July 15, 2017
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Mung, I agree... Though there is not much to defend...didn't know he was banned... Can you say why?J-Mac_{July 15, 2017
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Further to the comment by rvb8 above: "increasingly the singular beauty of humanity, and its beautiful design, looks like a jalloppy, wacked together in a gerrymandered spirit; or, evolved. " It saddens me for what they are holding forth as truth about the human body. It is as if rvb8 and others who hold to such a view never get out of the house and see the many faceted beauty of humanity and the obviously designed human body. I have commented on this elsewhere to show that if those holding to such a depraved view of the human body were to just get out of the house/lab/lecture hall, they would witness an endless demonstration of the beauty and versatility of the thing we call a human being. No ... the human body is not a "jalopy, backed together in a gerrymandered spirit." Open your eyes and see rvb8 ... open your ears and hear rvb8. And put on those glasses I've talked about elsewhere -- http://enchroma.com/?gclid=CLX_gpzSjNUCFcS4wAodisoNHw And read my article at: https://ayearningforpublius.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/the-not-so-intelligent-designer/ Cheering for you rvb8 ... donDonJohnsonDD682_{July 15, 2017
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Given that Salvador is no longer able to defend his claims here at UD I think it's unfair to post them here at UD. It's sort of like banning Larry Moran and then posting OPs of his claims. If we are going to put up for discussion here at UD claims made by a specific individual, we ought not be banning that individual from participating here at UD. What do readers think?Mung_{July 15, 2017
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It's pretty funny how 98% junk DNA became 90% over the years and now Graur paddled back a bit and accepts the 75% but still downplays it... On the other hand, Larry Moran and others still stick to their guns of 90%...but in my view not for much longer... I've read on the genetic load issue extensively and came to the conclusion it should be taken with the grain of salt...it's just another evolutionary assumption that doesn't hold up anymore but Darwinists don't like it because another of their predictions failed... I can make a prediction that Graur, Moran and others will pretend as if nothing happened when human genome will turn out to be fully functional... I hope Moran publishes his book 90% junk DNA soon so that J. Wells can shove it up his ass lol...I can't wait! BTW: Great job Sal! I've learned many new things...J-Mac_{July 15, 2017
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Rvb8, Knock out mice do fine in the lab, but they can't survive in the wild. Why? Because without so-called junk DNA they are totally blind at night. Their junk DNA turns into nigh vision, so they can find food and avoid predators in darkness. Without it they are as good as dead...J-Mac_{July 15, 2017
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johnnyb at #9: Well said! That's why knockout experiments that only measure survival or gross problems will never be a good and sensitive way to measure biological function. On the other hand, the results of purifying selection over millions of years are much finer and precise.gpuccio_{July 15, 2017
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rvb8 - In a typical server room, you can shut down over half of the equipment without causing immediate problems. The very large air conditioners can be shut down and it will not cause problems for hours or even days. The online battery backup system can be shut down without causing any immediate problems (probably for years). The hard drive backup system can be shut down without causing any immediate problems. You can eliminate most of the outgoing network connections. You could also physically remove a power supply from each of the machines without causing problems. You can physically remove a hard disk from each of the machines without causing problems. Most server rooms have a spare parts area. You can remove that, too. You can remove all of the secondary DNS machines. You can remove all of the staging machines. That only prevents the testing of future functionality and doesn't affect today. You can remove all of the locks and physical security features from the room. You can remove all of the cable management items and just let the cable hang there. You can remove the roof and it everything will work until it rains. You could also remove most of the walls with similar results. So, I guess we need to go to our system administrators and complain about how much junk they have in their server rooms. We don't need it! Why are we paying for all this!?johnnyb_{July 15, 2017
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Had we remained in Eden, none of this would have been an issue. But we didn't stay, because we humans --who were created to be good, but were given free will-- preferred to do things our own way. The rest is history. This is a messed up world, with a huge gap between the "Ought" and the "Is". The biological systems have been terribly affected as well. Actually, it's amazing that they have made it this far, despite so much mess. That speaks volume of the robustness of the designed systems. No human-designed informational systems --not even the most ruggedized ones-- would have survived the overwhelmingly hostile conditions the more sophisticated biological systems have endured through history. But many things have been badly affected, though. That's why we see so many horrible diseases and problems. The elaborate meiotic / mitotic choreographies include processes where things can easily go wrong if the surrounding conditions are far from desirable. DNA recombination and other otherwise beautiful mechanisms --which are part of the embedded variability framework-- are prone to noise-induced alterations that can turn deleterious in many cases. That's why some of us long to get back to where we once belonged. Fortunately our Creator has graciously offered the Way back to enjoy His glorious presence forever. Then none of these issues discussed here shall be remembered. Sadly many have rejected the gracious offer, hence they won't stop singing Frank Sinatra's popular song "my way" and will continue marching on their chosen path that leads to eternal separation from Divine Grace. This world is the closest the followers of Christ will be to experience graceless conditions and the closest the rest will be to experience God's grace, which has kept this world from self-annihilation. We were made to be good, to communicate well. We chose not to. It's the human malady mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah. Opposite perspectives of the same reality. The Russian language word for "good" sounds like "horror show" in English language. The evo-devo foundational paradigm described @1090 in the thread "A third way of evolution?" is at the core of the evolutionary dilemma. The rest of the discussion is complementary. But before one gets to that eco-devo problem, important issues like the appearance of complex functional specified information in proteins --so well explained in gpuccio's recent articles here-- must be understood well.Dionisio_{July 15, 2017
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Jon Garvey @5: Insightful commentary. Thanks.Dionisio_{July 15, 2017
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jstanley01 @4: Interesting observation. Thanks.Dionisio_{July 15, 2017
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...looks like a jalloppy, wacked together in a gerrymandered spirit; or, evolved
Well, it's good to know that one can, indeed, distinguish design from non-design by appearances, even if opinions vary as to which of the two is operating in the case of the human being and other biological systems. If one can infer non-design, then one can infer design on the same principles. So I guess we'll no longer hear the complaint that ID is wrong in principle to claim they are distinguishable... though I doubt that what's sauce for the goose will prove to be sauce for the gander. Why do IDists believe we can’t remove large sections of non-coding (junk!) human DNA, and get a perfectly functional human? This is a more subtle point - it's a metaphysical claim that all design necessarily has to do with the efficiency of individual function, and that is false (quite apart from the more limited question of redundancy in design, which is increasingly obvious in the structure of genetic control networks). The "fact" that designed structure must be all "for" function is actually instead a teleological assumption. Francis Bacon abandoned teleology at the dawn of modern science precisely because God's final causes may not be reliably guessed. But for some reason the dictum that "all structure is related to function", which actually arises from Darwinian assumptions, is allowed in as the one axiom of final causation, despite the denial that final causes exist. Only, with the eclipse of adaptationism, it's now lack of function that gets attached to evolutionary theory, whilst "function" gets attached to design theory. But the truth is that design allows many other final causes than mere "function" for structure - such as future provision, the function of entire ecosystems or even the whole biosphere, aesthetics, utility for man (Alfred Russul Wallace included that in his evolutionary theory), etc, etc. If "Junk DNA" were ever finally proved to have no benefit for the organism, all it would actually disprove is Darwinian adaptationism: it would not affect the question of design at all, except so far as design theorists had been seduced into limiting their view of "design" to the same limited "function" as the adaptationists do.Jon Garvey_{July 15, 2017
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So, junk DNA turns out to be the hill that the Darwinists have decided to die on. Funny stuff. Of course, in real life, we human beings only rarely get to choose the hill that we die on. Most of the time, the hill choses us.jstanley01_{July 14, 2017
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Actually it was Dan Graur, and John and Rebecca Moores, professores of Biology and Biochemistry, of the University of Houston, that presented the, "at least 75% of the human genome is junk", evidence. Increasingly the singular beauty of humanity, and its beautiful design, looks like a jalloppy, wacked together in a gerrymandered spirit; or, evolved. Why is it, one asks, that experiments on fruit flys that remove large chunks of non-coding DNA (junk!), still produce a functional friutfly? Why do IDists believe we can't remove large sections of non-coding (junk!) human DNA, and get a perfectly functional human? We can. And as experiments on higher primates prove, they also have screeds of useless DNA. Functional at some distant evolutionary past; useless today.rvb8_{July 14, 2017
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Yes, agree with gpuccio, that's interesting indeed, though above my pay grade. Well done! Thanks.Dionisio_{July 14, 2017
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johnnyb: Very interesting presentation. Thanks to you and Sal. I really must find the time to listen to all that good stuff! :)gpuccio_{July 14, 2017
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