[Contention 1:] We humans like to think of ourselves as on the top of the heap compared to all the other living things on our planet. Life has evolved over three billion years from simple one-celled creatures through to multicellular plants and animals coming in all shapes and sizes and abilities. In addition to growing ecological complexity, over the history of life we’ve also seen the evolution of intelligence, complex societies and technological invention, until we arrive today at people flying around the world at 35,000 feet discussing the in-flight movie.
Yes. It’s almost like we are in charge of the planet, at least morally and intellectually.
Researchers assumed that that meant we would have a lot of genes.
[Contention 2:] About a half-century ago the estimated number of human genes was in the millions. Today we’re down to about 20,000. We now know, for example, that bananas, with their 30,000 genes, have 50 percent more genes than we do.
…
Extrapolating the analysis beyond the human knockouts study leads to an estimate that only 3,000 human genes are actually needed to build a healthy human. This is in the same ballpark as the number of genes in “giant viruses.” Pandoravirus, recovered from 30,000-year-old Siberian ice in 2014, is the largest virus known to date and has 2,500 genes.
A reasonable person would assume that genes aren’t nearly what they are made out to be. So the solution is…
[Contention 3:] There is a growing field of study – dubbed “sociomicrobiology” – that examines the extraordinarily complex social lives of microbes, which stand up in comparison with our own. My own contributions to these areas concern giving viruses their rightful place in this invisible soap opera.
We have become aware in the last decade that microbes spend over 90 percent of their lives as biofilms, which may best be thought of as biological tissue. More.
In other words, microbes are like ants; their complex social lives feature everything except conscious individual intelligence. That’s a find, for sure, but we are still where we were, except for the demise of genetic fundamentalism, not much missed.
In other words, naturalism was dead wrong in the past. It will be deader wrong in the future.
See also: What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness
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So much wrong with the article to pick from, so little time to correct it all:
So, to focus on just this one particular ‘not even wrong’ statement from the article:
“The genes provide instructions on how and when to assemble the proteins that you’re made of and that carry out all the functions of life within your body.”
Actually, contrary to what the author may believe, it is the developmental Gene Regulatory Networks (dGRNs) that ‘provide instructions on how and when to assemble the proteins’ from the gene sequences. The gene sequences are basically passively sitting at the bottom level of multiple layers of very complex interweaving regulatory networks that are actually determining how and when the genetic sequences are being used. (Talbott 2015).
Moreover, as Meyer pointed out in Darwin’s Doubt, dGRNs are not compatible with the gradualist assumptions of Darwinian evolution:
Thus, where Darwinists most need plasticity in the genome to be viable as a theory, (i.e. developmental Gene Regulatory Networks), is the place where mutations are found to be almost ‘always catastrophically bad’. Yet, it is exactly in this area of the genome (i.e. regulatory networks) where substantial differences are found between even the supposedly closely related species of chimps and humans.
Finding inflexible dGRNs and yet vastly different dGRNs is the exact opposite finding of what Darwinian evolution would have predicted should have been found. If Darwinian evolution were a normal falsifiable science, (instead of being basically a unfalsifiable religion for atheists), this finding would certainly have counted as one more nail in its scientific coffin.
Of related note: King and Wilson, who started the whole 99% genetic similarity myth off in the 1970s, themselves argued that the regulatory regions must be very different between humans and chimps:
of related note:
OT:
Ok News, so what exactly is a gene? And whats the solution?? …. and for that matter what was the problem?
@3:
Around the time mark 4:40 in this video, titled “The integration of evolutionary biology with physiological science”, Professor Denis Noble provides an interesting answer to the above quoted question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_q_bOWc8i0