Review: The Myth of Junk DNA

_{Robert Sheldon

June 30, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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Jonathan Wells’ The Myth of Junk DNA, is a well-written book that manages to accomplish two separate tasks: to silence the Darwinists who had claimed that recent genomic discoveries supported their dystopic version of The Signature in the Cell; and to bring all of us up-to-date on the breath-taking mysteries being decoded from this most ancient script.

He begins by picking up where Stephen Meyer left off, telling us that within each cell is this memory chip, this software program that directs everything we are and ever meant to be. When Watson and Crick decoded the DNA, there was great expectation that soon we would find the gene to every talent and attribute we had ever wished we had been born with. Sci-fi was filled with stories about a DNA pill that would turn you into a concert pianist, a ballerina, or a nuclear physicist, because the genes for all these talents could manually remedy what evolution had denied you. Soon a billion-dollar government program was begun to decode the human genome, after which, it was widely touted, we would find the cure to cancer and the common cold. The three billion base pairs of the human genome, it was thought, would hold genes stacked up cheek-to-jowl, together encoding some 100,000 different proteins. We knew how to count genes because we had already decoded the way the cell made protein, first by making RNA copies of the DNA, and then sending the RNA to the ribosome factory, which could identify the unique “start” and “stop” codes among the 64 different 3-letter “words” of the RNA software that marked the beginning and end of each gene.

After a decade of work and to everyone’s great surprise, the human genome project found only 10,000 such start-stop pairs, suggesting that you and I are made out of fewer proteins than an amoeba! Furthermore, over 90% of the missing genes were DNA that apparently did nothing. Much of this “dark matter” was in long “stutter repeats” that couldn’t even make a useful protein if you inserted the start and stop codons yourself. All that work, and nothing to show for it! Neither cancer nor the common cold was cured, and instead an even greater mystery was uncovered.

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Comments

... If I call myself a chicken does that mean I will suddenly start laying eggs?
I've seen you lay a few eggs. :)Mung_{July 1, 2011
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Mung:
Since the dawn of genetics eh? Like how far back was that? Mendel? I fail to see how this claim can be even remotely true.
OK OK OK OK. Not back to Mendel. I meant since we knew about DNA and how it coded for proteins. As soon as we knew that, we had to ask: so how does the cell "know" which protein to produce? The answer itself had to lie in non-coding regulatory sequences. But you are quite right, I'm not sure when the hypothesis was first mooted. I just know that "gene expression" had made it to a text book at least 37 years ago because I seemed to have married it :) You are a lawyer aren't you? It's OK, I won't hold it against you. Some of my best friends...oh, wait....Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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You know I’m a fan of yours and, contrary to the claims of one or two people here, find your postings containing links elsewhere very informative and interesting.
For the record, I'm not opposed to informative quotes and links. I'm opposed to cut and paste as a style of argument. I've shown in the past a case where 90% of the links posted had nothing to do with the claim that was supposedly being addressed. This does not mean they were not in some way informative about something. No one here on the other side of the debate is going to want to sift through all that material to try to figure out if there's something relevant there. Just wanted to clear that up.Mung_{July 1, 2011
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Pah. A lot of help you are, ba77! Ah well. At least we are having fun :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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Elizabeth: 'here am I, sitting here, wanting to be enlightened,' yep, here you are,,, wanting to be 'enlightened': http://1rico.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/head-in-the-sand.jpg Your 'enlightenment' theme song: Pure Imagination http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-uV72pQKIbornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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So scientists should merely be saying:
"Junk DNA" is the null hypothesis.Mung_{July 1, 2011
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All junk DNA must be non-coding DNA. Non-coding DNA is essential for gene expression. Therefore not all non-coding DNA can be junk.
Why do Darwinians fail at logic?Mung_{July 1, 2011
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Elizabeth, it does seem like you raise more questions than you answer when you post your answers to questions. :)Mung_{July 1, 2011
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Elizabeth:
This suggests that the way that evolution works is largely by finding (“finding”) new uses for existing proteins rather than new proteins.
So what happened to the old use? Not needed any more? So the protein went on to do other things? How does that happen? If proteins descend from other proteins by descent with modification shouldn't there be a nested hierarchy? If not why not? If not, why is a nested hierarchy a prediction of Darwinism?Mung_{July 1, 2011
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Elizabeth:
...where were we supposed to find the regulatory genes that determine when and where the protein-coding genes are expressed? So non-coding DNA had to be there, and indeed it was.

There has been a text book called “Gene Expression” on our bookshelf for the 37 years of our marriage.
Can you quote from your book how they reasoned in this way and came to the same conclusion? But why could regulatory genes not code for proteins that control the expression of other proteins?
A regulator gene, regulator, or regulatory gene is a gene involved in controlling the expression of one or more other genes. A regulator gene may encode a protein, or it may work at the level of RNA, as in the case of genes encoding microRNAs.
Now if it is in fact the case that regulatory genes can and do encode proteins, how does it follow that there must be non-coding DNA? It doesn't. Another non prediction of evolutionary theory.Mung_{July 1, 2011
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I do see why you guys think that “Darwinism” is junk.
Darwinism is junk because it is junk science. It's largely guesswork and story telling.Mung_{July 1, 2011
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Regulatory genes (non-coding genes) have been posited and known about pretty well since the dawn of genetics
Since the dawn of genetics eh? Like how far back was that? Mendel? I fail to see how this claim can be even remotely true.Mung_{July 1, 2011
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An ethnologist? I thought Dawkins was an evolutionary biologist.Barb_{July 1, 2011
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Well, that seems a little unreasonable on your part ba77! I mean, here am I, sitting here, wanting to be enlightened, and you won't try to explain to me why violation of non-locality is a problem for evolutionary theory! :(Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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Sorry Elizabeth I don't 'want to convince you', I gave up on that weeks ago,, I merely want to show others how unreasonable you are!!!bornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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ba77
And, Elizabeth, exactly how does finding ‘non-local’ information not present an insurmountable difficulty to the ‘local’ material causes of neo-Darwinism???,,, Your question is simply ludicrous!!!
Well, humour, me, ba77. You want to convince me, right? Well, explain to me where the difficulty lies, because right now I'm not seeing it.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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And, Elizabeth, exactly how does finding 'non-local' information not present an insurmountable difficulty to the 'local' material causes of neo-Darwinism???,,, Your question is simply ludicrous!!! as to this question: 'And what possible relevance does it have to the issue of whether non-coding DNA is, or is not, junk?' Seeing that 'non-local' quantum information is infused throughout the entire DNA structure, 'holding the DNA together', I would say this has direct relevance to the neo-Darwinian claims of Junk DNA,,, '''Please note this 'unanswered question'''' Quantum Dots Spotlight DNA-Repair Proteins in Motion - March 2010 Excerpt: "How this system works is an important unanswered question in this field," he said. "It has to be able to identify very small mistakes in a 3-dimensional morass of gene strands. It's akin to spotting potholes on every street all over the country and getting them fixed before the next rush hour." Dr. Bennett Van Houten - of note: A bacterium has about 40 team members on its pothole crew. That allows its entire genome to be scanned for errors in 20 minutes, the typical doubling time.,, These smart machines can apparently also interact with other damage control teams if they cannot fix the problem on the spot. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123522.htm i.e. not only HOW does it do it, but exactly WHY would neo-Darwinism go to such Herculean efforts to protect DNA??? Sorry Elizabeth no excuse making and ignoring allowed!!! Although evolution depends on 'mutations/errors' to DNA to make evolution plausible, there are multiple layers of error correction in the cell to protect against any "random changes" to DNA from happening in the first place: The Evolutionary Dynamics of Digital and Nucleotide Codes: A Mutation Protection Perspective - February 2011 Excerpt: "Unbounded random change of nucleotide codes through the accumulation of irreparable, advantageous, code-expanding, inheritable mutations at the level of individual nucleotides, as proposed by evolutionary theory, requires the mutation protection at the level of the individual nucleotides and at the higher levels of the code to be switched off or at least to dysfunction. Dysfunctioning mutation protection, however, is the origin of cancer and hereditary diseases, which reduce the capacity to live and to reproduce. Our mutation protection perspective of the evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes thus reveals the presence of a paradox in evolutionary theory between the necessity and the disadvantage of dysfunctioning mutation protection. This mutation protection paradox, which is closely related with the paradox between evolvability and mutational robustness, needs further investigation." http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2011/04/26/dna_repair_mechanisms_reveal_a_contradic The Darwinism contradiction of repair systems Excerpt: The bottom line is that repair mechanisms are incompatible with Darwinism in principle. Since sophisticated repair mechanisms do exist in the cell after all, then the thing to discard in the dilemma to avoid the contradiction necessarily is the Darwinist dogma. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-darwinism-contradiction-of-repair-systems/ ===================== further note to 'non-local' quantum information; DNA Caught Rock 'N Rollin': On Rare Occasions DNA Dances Itself Into a Different Shape - January 2011 Excerpt: Because critical interactions between DNA and proteins are thought to be directed by both the sequence of bases and the flexing of the molecule, these excited states represent a whole new level of information contained in the genetic code, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110128104244.htm Systems biology: Untangling the protein web - July 2009 Excerpt: Vidal thinks that technological improvements — especially in nanotechnology, to generate more data, and microscopy, to explore interaction inside cells, along with increased computer power — are required to push systems biology forward. "Combine all this and you can start to think that maybe some of the information flow can be captured," he says. But when it comes to figuring out the best way to explore information flow in cells, Tyers jokes that it is like comparing different degrees of infinity. "The interesting point coming out of all these studies is how complex these systems are — the different feedback loops and how they cross-regulate each other and adapt to perturbations are only just becoming apparent," he says. "The simple pathway models are a gross oversimplification of what is actually happening." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7253/full/460415a.htmlbornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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In what sense does "the falsification of local realism" falsify "neo-Darwinism"? And what possible relevance does it have to the issue of whether non-coding DNA is, or is not, junk?Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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And to further dovetail into Dembski and Marks's work on Conservation of Information and make the 'proof' that much stronger 'scientifically';,,, LIFE'S CONSERVATION LAW: Why Darwinian Evolution Cannot Create Biological Information William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II http://evoinfo.org/publications/lifes-conservation-law/ ,,,Encoded classical information, such as what we find in computer programs, and yes as we find encoded in DNA, is found to be a subset of 'transcendent' quantum information by the following method:,,, This following research provides solid falsification for Rolf Landauer’s contention that information encoded in a computer is merely physical (merely ‘emergent’ from a material basis) since he believed it always required energy to erase it; Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 2011 Excerpt: No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm ,,,And here is the empirical confirmation that quantum information is 'conserved';,,, Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.htmlbornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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For instance Elizabeth of 'excuse making' instead of 'following the evidence', the following 'proof' you have simply ignored repeatedly instead of honestly trying to supply a sufficient cause to explain the effect: Falsification of neo-Darwinism; First, Here is the falsification of local realism (reductive materialism). Here is a clip of a talk in which Alain Aspect talks about the failure of ‘local realism’, or the failure of reductive materialism, to explain reality: The Failure Of Local Realism – Reductive Materialism – Alain Aspect – video http://www.metacafe.com/w/4744145 The falsification for local realism (reductive materialism) was recently greatly strengthened: Physicists close two loopholes while violating local realism – November 2010 Excerpt: The latest test in quantum mechanics provides even stronger support than before for the view that nature violates local realism and is thus in contradiction with a classical worldview. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-physicists-loopholes-violating-local-realism.html Quantum Measurements: Common Sense Is Not Enough, Physicists Show – July 2009 Excerpt: scientists have now proven comprehensively in an experiment for the first time that the experimentally observed phenomena cannot be described by non-contextual models with hidden variables. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090722142824.htm (of note: hidden variables were postulated to remove the need for ‘spooky’ forces, as Einstein termed them — forces that act instantaneously at great distances, thereby breaking the most cherished rule of relativity theory, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.) And yet, quantum entanglement, which rigorously falsified local realism (reductive materialism) as the complete description of reality, is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale! Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA & Protein Folding – short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/ Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint – 2010 Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours (arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1). “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/ The relevance of continuous variable entanglement in DNA – July 2010 Excerpt: We consider a chain of harmonic oscillators with dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbours resulting in a van der Waals type bonding. The binding energies between entangled and classically correlated states are compared. We apply our model to DNA. By comparing our model with numerical simulations we conclude that entanglement may play a crucial role in explaining the stability of the DNA double helix. http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1 Quantum Information confirmed in DNA by direct empirical research; DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows – June 2011 Excerpt: — DNA — can discern between quantum states known as spin. – The researchers fabricated self-assembling, single layers of DNA attached to a gold substrate. They then exposed the DNA to mixed groups of electrons with both directions of spin. Indeed, the team’s results surpassed expectations: The biological molecules reacted strongly with the electrons carrying one of those spins, and hardly at all with the others. The longer the molecule, the more efficient it was at choosing electrons with the desired spin, while single strands and damaged bits of DNA did not exhibit this property. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110331104014.htm Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? A.C. McINTOSH Excerpt: This paper highlights the distinctive and non-material nature of information and its relationship with matter, energy and natural forces. It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate. http://journals.witpress.com/paperinfo.asp?pid=420 i.e. It is very interesting to note that quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints, should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, for how can the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy space/time) ’cause’ when the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ falsified material particles as its own ‘causation’ in the first place? (A. Aspect) Appealing to the probability of various configurations of material particles, as neo-Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the energy/matter particles themselves to supply! To give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘specified’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place! ,,,To refute this falsification of neo-Darwinism, one must falsify Alain Aspect, and company’s, falsification of local realism (reductive materialism)! ,,, As well, appealing to ‘non-reductive’ materialism (multiverse or many-worlds) to try to explain quantum non-locality in molecular biology ends up destroying the very possibility of doing science rationally; BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010 Excerpt: For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ ,,,Michael Behe has a profound answer to the infinite multiverse (non-reductive materialism) argument in “Edge of Evolution”. If there are infinite universes, then we couldn’t trust our senses, because it would be just as likely that our universe might only consist of a human brain that pops into existence which has the neurons configured just right to only give the appearance of past memories. It would also be just as likely that we are floating brains in a lab, with some scientist feeding us fake experiences. Those scenarios would be just as likely as the one we appear to be in now (one universe with all of our experiences being “real”). Bottom line is, if there really are an infinite number of universes out there, then we can’t trust anything we perceive to be true, which means there is no point in seeking any truth whatsoever. “The multiverse idea rests on assumptions that would be laughed out of town if they came from a religious text.” Gregg Easterbrook ================= Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger by Richard Conn Henry – Physics Professor – John Hopkins University Excerpt: Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the “illusion” of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism (solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist). (Dr. Henry’s referenced experiment and paper – “An experimental test of non-local realism” by S. Gröblacher et. al., Nature 446, 871, April 2007 – “To be or not to be local” by Alain Aspect, Nature 446, 866, April 2007 =========================bornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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They aren't excuses ba77. I'm not ignoring "the evidence", I'm just ignoring most of your links! Because I haven't yet found that any of your links actually lead to evidence! But I have to hand it to you: you've got me in a double bind. If I follow your links and say I don't think they support your case, you say I'm ignoring the evidence. If I don't follow your links, you say I'm ignoring the evidence. What's a girl to do?Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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Elizabeth, and now you make excuses for why you ignore evidence, just lovely!bornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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ba77: I agree it is hard for you to convince me of what you want to convince me of. But that isn't because I "ignore evidence that disagrees with [my] 'chosen' worldview" but because I don't find the evidence you present persuasive! Often it is to videos of someone telling me something, rather than actual evidence, and when you do reference actual scientific evidence, I don't find that it rebuts my case! But I do admit I don't follow all that many of your links. You present a great many, and the relevance of most of them to the point at issue often seems to me to be tenuous. Anyway, I'm sure other people here enjoy them, but I suggest that simply posting a list of links, especially to videos of power point presentations, isn't a very efficient way of making a persuasive argument, or even more, attempting to rebut one.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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Elizabeth, there is no 'convincing' you of anything for you ignore evidence that disagrees with your 'chosen' worldview, instead of follow the evidence to the truth.bornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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junkdnaforlife:
Liz: “But the idea that every time a function is found for a stretch of non-coding DNA that Darwinism takes a mortal blow, is just silly.” Not a mortal blow, just another example of a dogma driven prediction based on an ideological craving rather than prudent scientific circumspect. I think when the phrase, “embarrass creationists” enters the non-coding dna/pseudogene narrative, as Chris Doyle noted in 2, that this becomes a food fight and not a scientific discussion, which it seems is what Dawkins is more interested in anyhow.
tbh, I partly agree with that last point. It should be pointed out more often that Dawkins hasn't been an active scientist for many years, and when he was, he was an ethologist. He's a smart guy, of course, but he gets a lot of stuff wrong, particularly when he's in polemical mode. When he is simply being informative, he's pretty good to read IMO. But he has an axe to grind, and would certainly not be my choice of source for what evolutionary theories actually posit. And the fact is that protein coding is a minor part of what genes do, and has to be. It is one thing for a cell to produce proteins. It's quite another to produce the right proteins in the right place at the right time. So a huge amount of what DNA does has be regulatory, i.e. non-coding. I'm sure Dawkins knows this, but somehow the idea has got around that "Darwinism predicts" that any DNA sequence that doesn't code for protein must be evolutionary junk. Yes, we would expect to find evolutionary junk in the genome, such as pseudogenes, as well as other kinds of junk (ERVs, for instance) and we do. But we would also expect to find large sequences of non-coding DNA that regulate gene expression. If we didn't, something really would be wrong with our science!
So of course you should attempt to spin doctor the “Myth of Junk DNA”, any neo-darwinist worth her weight in mutations should try to muddy the water.
Quite the reverse. I'm trying to clear the water, by distinguishing between "junk" (i.e. pseudogenes, ERVs and stuff) which must be a subset of all "non-coding DNA". We don't know how small a subset, but it's certainly exciting to identify regulatory functions in non-coding DNA, because we predict it must be there! (That's not a Darwinian prediction btw, merely a prediction based on our understanding of the mechanisms of gene expressing, but it has important implications for evolutionary theory).
That being said, I believe you stated before you were once were once on team Jesus, and now you are a free agent, that’s too bad, you would be a good debater to have back on the squad.
aw, I'm touched :) But I'm better at debating for what I think is supported by evidence and argument! If you want me back on "team Jesus" you'll have to convince that you are right :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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ba77:
Chris, I’ll try to keep it on evidence, but one observation as to Elizabeth’s prideful claim to being a ‘scientist’, If I call myself a chicken does that mean I will suddenly start laying eggs?
No, but if you train for several years as a chicken, and successfully master (mistress?) the skilled art of egg-laying, then you will be entitled to call yourself a fully credentialled chicken :) I simply meant, ba77, that being a scientist is what I do for a living. (And I'm finding it just as much fun as playing the viola da gamba :))Elizabeth Liddle_{July 1, 2011
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Hi bornagain77, I suspect that Lizzie advances this claim because she actually is a scientist (ie. someone who has been paid to do scientific work). I understand where you're coming from though. I usually object to the phrase "I am a scientist" because people only tend to use it when they are stating their beliefs and want us to take their word for it that those beliefs are true. The beauty of science is that it belongs to everyone: if the observational and experimental evidence is on your side then no amount of disagreement can change the truth: even if those who disagree are all scientists.Chris Doyle_{July 1, 2011
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continued from 10; moreover 'life' is 'screaming' for an explanation as to why it is so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium: Dr. Morowitz did another probability calculation working from the thermodynamic perspective with a already existing cell and came up with this number: DID LIFE START BY CHANCE? Excerpt: Molecular biophysicist, Horold Morowitz (Yale University), calculated the odds of life beginning under natural conditions (spontaneous generation). He calculated, if one were to take the simplest living cell and break every chemical bond within it, the odds that the cell would reassemble under ideal natural conditions (the best possible chemical environment) would be one chance in 10^100,000,000,000. You will have probably have trouble imagining a number so large, so Hugh Ross provides us with the following example. If all the matter in the Universe was converted into building blocks of life, and if assembly of these building blocks were attempted once a microsecond for the entire age of the universe. Then instead of the odds being 1 in 10^100,000,000,000, they would be 1 in 10^99,999,999,916 (also of note: 1 with 100 billion zeros following would fill approx. 20,000 encyclopedias) http://members.tripod.com/~Black_J/chance.html Does DNA Have Telepathic Properties?-A Galaxy Insight Excerpt: DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet.,,, The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/04/does-dna-have-t.html i.e. From a 'scientific' point of view the question that is screaming at us is 'exactly what is the component that constraining life to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium?" ,,, And as noted previously the resounding answer is 'non-reducible' transcendent information!!!bornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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Liz: "But the idea that every time a function is found for a stretch of non-coding DNA that Darwinism takes a mortal blow, is just silly." Not a mortal blow, just another example of a dogma driven prediction based on an ideological craving rather than prudent scientific circumspect. I think when the phrase, "embarrass creationists" enters the non-coding dna/pseudogene narrative, as Chris Doyle noted in 2, that this becomes a food fight and not a scientific discussion, which it seems is what Dawkins is more interested in anyhow. So of course you should attempt to spin doctor the "Myth of Junk DNA", any neo-darwinist worth her weight in mutations should try to muddy the water. That being said, I believe you stated before you were once were once on team Jesus, and now you are a free agent, that's too bad, you would be a good debater to have back on the squad.junkdnaforlife_{July 1, 2011
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Chris, I'll try to keep it on evidence, but one observation as to Elizabeth's prideful claim to being a 'scientist', If I call myself a chicken does that mean I will suddenly start laying eggs?bornagain77_{July 1, 2011
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