I was certain the Darwinists would spin the ENCODE findings, but even I am stunned at their sheer audacity. In response to my previous post, Critical Rationalist says that the ENCODE findings, which falsify a prediction Darwinists have been making for decades, far from being a crushing defeat for the theory and its proponents is a positively good thing for Darwinists.
CR writes: “all theories contain errors of varying degree and that finding them is how knowledge grows . . . Surviving criticism and *not* surviving criticized is a win win situation, which doesn’t represent a blow to human intellect.”
Then CR makes the outlandish suggestion that ENCODE is somehow a loss for ID. He writes: “[When ID] Merely assum[es] the entire genome ‘should be functional’ [it] does not stick its neck out in a way that allows itself to be criticized.”
CR is wrong on both counts. Yes, Darwinism will survive ENCODE as he suggests, but not because it is the best explanation for the data. It will survive because materialists have hegemonic control of the academy and for them Darwin is quite simply the only game in town. That’s what Dawkins means when he says he would choose Darwinism even if there were no evidence for it.
No, CR, ID proponents did not merely say that the code “should be functional.” They made a testable prediction in the teeth of the overwhelming opposition from Darwinists. They said, “Darwinists are wrong when they say the vast majority of DNA is junk. We predict that function will be found.” And that prediction was confirmed.
Sorry CR. No matter how you try to spin ENCODE, it is a crushing defeat for Darwinism.