Sometimes, one runs into ID opponents who are just so confused ….

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 30, 2012

'Junk DNA', News}

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… that it is hard to know what to say in response. The blogger A-Unicornist is one such/ He huffs,

Evolution is falsifiable because it makes innumerable predictions about what we will find and where we’ll find it.

claiming that design is not falsifiable

In the same post, he announces that

And yet I don’t fancy myself a biologist. So if I were to read something like, say, The Myth of Junk DNA, a book published by the pro-ID Discovery Institute, I probably wouldn’t have the knowledge to refute most of the esoteric information in there. Fortunately there are others who do, like Larry Moran, but I’d be pretty much lost in that kind of discussion. And yet I think there are several things that, on their face, indicate that there isn’t any reason why I should take Intelligent Design seriously even if I’m not well-versed enough in biology to single-handedly refute all their specific claims.

The Myth of Junk DNA is actually quite easy to read. We’ve excerpted a number of passages here at UD. The interesting part is that Darwinists thought that the presence of huge amounts of junk DNA was evidence for their position.

Now that it turns out that much, probably most, of it isn’t junk, is that evidence against the Darwinist’s position?

We are guessing that A-unicornist will not think so.

Darwinist math goes like this: 1 + 1 = 2, but 1 minus 1 does not equal zero.

See also: He said it: Darwin’s junk DNA zealots “have forfeited any claim … to be speaking for science”

Comments

I encounter a lot of darwin-worshippers each day and it's laughable to hear them talk about evidence as if they've actually SEEN any that confirms their myth. Instead, they all refer to what they were told to think by peeps like Dawkins and Coyne etc...so it's always a thrill when I ask them to give me evidence that DOESN'T first require I accept darwin's myth as true....and then, crickets.Blue_Savannah_{July 30, 2012
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ES: Notice, how yo do not have that solid counter-example? What is that telling us? On your suggestion, if we did observe the cosmos to be such that chance behaviour and/or mechanical necessity threw out FSCO/I, FSCO/I would have no value as a sign of intelligence. The design theory movement, which argues that there are characteristic, empirically observable and reliable signs of intelligence per empirical investigation and induction, would be dead. What you are trying to shoe-horn into design theory is the sort of view favoured by a certain kind of theistic evolutionist -- I dunno if "BioLogos" is a good label, but it seems that way to me on impression -- who is usually seen in the lists against design theory. For such, design is apprehended in light of an overarching worldview, it is not inferred on observable signs that mark out design from chance and necessity as reasonably direct causal factors. A dropped heavy object near earth tends to fall at 9.8 N/kg If it is a flipped fair coin, the uppermost side is a chance outcome. If you have 501 such, you will strongly tend to see a near 50-50 H/T distribution in no particular order. If you saw 501 coins spelling out the ASCII code for the first 73 or so letters (and spaces) of this post, you would rightly and with high reliability infer design as best explanation. That should make the key point plain enough. And, we can extend this in the first instance to the origin of a gated, encapsulated, metabolising automaton that uses a digital code stored in strings and thus embeds a von Neumann self replicator. KFkairosfocus_{July 30, 2012
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KF: you said: if there were solid evidence that undirected chance and mechanical necessity routinely are observed to cause functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information Question: might one not suggest that the universe was "designed" to behave that way? I'd guess the answer is, yes, but that would be a claim that could not be tested?es58_{July 30, 2012
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Okay, Barry. I am only the sister of a court clerk, who may soon be put to work typing transcript. But I keep wanting a real judge to hear the case. I mean someone who can say that evidence is either for the Crown or for the Defense. It is not out there in limbo. If major Darwinists say that junk DNA is evidence for their position and that turns out to be false, then the benefit of falsification should be transferred to the Defense bench. Not? Suppose the Crown alleges that Schmeazle must have been the murderer because he had a key to murder victim Schmoe's apartment. Well, it turns out that he did have a key but Schmoe had changed the locks two weeks earlier, and Schmeazle's key wouldn't fit. So now, Counsel for the the Defense can say, "My learned friend is convinced that my client is the murderer because he had a key. But we have learned that the key does not fit the lock. On this particular account, he is no more likely to have committed the heinous act than - you will pardon me - Paris Hilton or His Honour here. My learned friend really must come up with a more serious case."News_{July 30, 2012
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The OP asks: “Now that it turns out that much, probably most, of it isn’t junk, is that evidence against the Darwinist’s position?” The Darwinist system is so malleable that anything AND its opposite proves Darwinism. You’ve got rape and murder? Darwinism accounts for that. You’ve got altruism and philanthropy? Darwinism accounts for that too. So to answer the question posed in the OP, according to Darwinists junk DNA proves Darwinism. But if it turns out there is no junk DNA, that will prove Darwinism too.Barry Arrington_{July 30, 2012
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F/N: Of course, if there were solid evidence that undirected chance and mechanical necessity routinely are observed to cause functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information the design theory movement would collapse. Which is easily found out. So, we know two things (1) A-U either has not done his homework or is lying in order to smear design thought, and (2) The ID prediction that such FSCO/I will continue to be routinely and only observed to result from intelligent design is standing up pretty well. So, "unfalsifiable," probably here means, massively empirically confirmed, to the chagrin of the devotees of evolutionary materialism. In such a case it is rhetorically convenient to twist massive empirical support for a risky claim, into a projected "unfalisfiability" -- standing in for, pseudo-scientific. KFkairosfocus_{July 30, 2012
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Um, the Unicornist (who believes in or wishes to become a Unicorn?) admits that he (or she) cannot begin to tell the difference between Truth and Falsehood in any scientific data, does not wish to educate himself (or herself) so that he CAN tell the difference between shoe polish and dog doo-doo, but still wishes to denounce people as being wrong because he (or she) FEELS that Darwinism is correct. Well, gee, how does that make ME feel? Oh, wait. Science is about voting now. So if you get enough votes from people who admit they don't understand the questions or the data, then you can claim Concensus. It works for the Global Warming crowd.mahuna_{July 30, 2012
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When you think about it it really is strange that a Darwinist would try to claim that the theory of Darwinism makes accurate predictions because for a person to be able to make accurate predictions requires foresight, yet foresight is a property that is uniquely associated with a mind. Yet the materialistic philosophy which undergirds Darwinism holds that mind/consciousness is merely illusory, holds mind to be something of a second order emergent property of a material basis. Thus, if one were to be honest about what Darwinism actually predicts, that one would have to admit that materialism predicts (in so far as we able to transfer the predictive property of a mind onto a static system of logic) that we, if we were truly just material beings as Darwinism holds, should not have been able to make any accurate predictions in the first place. As to the claim that accurate predictions were able to be made within the framework of Darwinism, that simply is not true except for isolated, trivial, cases. But even in the cases where it is construed that Darwinism did make accurate predictions, the fact is that even scientific theories that are flat out wrong sometimes make accurate predictions (such as geocentrism), but when false scientific theories fail in their predictions the people supporting that false theory construct elaborate explanations to explain away the contrary data. An amazing parallel to Darwinism is Geocentrism. Geocentrism constructed more and more elaborate explanations to 'explain away' conflicting data. This, as with the current falsification of Darwinism, went on for a very long time before the weight of evidence finally crushed geocentrism and rendered it moot as a plausible theory. Notes: For a list of the many failed predictions of Darwinian theory, and the elaborate explanations that have been constructed to explain away conflicting data, here is a excellent site:
Darwin’s Predictions - Cornelius Hunter - PhD. Biophysics http://www.darwinspredictions.com/
Further notes: In fact, by the falsification criteria laid out by Lakatos, Darwinism is found, in reality, to be a ‘degenerating science program’, i.e. a ‘pseudoscience’;
Science and Pseudoscience (transcript) - "In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts" - Lakatos http://www2.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/about/lakatos/scienceandpseudosciencetranscript.aspx Science and Pseudoscience – Lakatos – audio lecture http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/2002_LakatosScienceAndPseudoscience128.mp3
As well, the entire materialistic framework, which undergirds neo-Darwinism, has been notoriously wrong in its overarching predictions for what we would find in reality:
Predictions of Materialism compared to Predictions of Theism within the scientific method: https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dc8z67wz_5fwz42dg9
And contrary to the claims of neo-Darwinists that ID makes no accurate predictions that can be falsified, that simply is not true; In contrast to there being no identifiable falsification criteria for neo-Darwinism (at least no identifiable falsification criteria that neo-Darwinists will accept), here is a very rough outline of the basic falsification criteria for Intelligent Design (i.e. One molecular machine generated by purely Darwinian processes):
Michael Behe on Falsifying Intelligent Design – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jXXJN4o_A
Here is a more detailed list of the falsification criteria for Intelligent Design:
A Positive, Testable Case for Intelligent Design – Casey Luskin – March 2011 – several examples of cited research http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/03/a_closer_look_at_one_scientist045311.html
Here are some predictions of ID:
A Response to Questions from a Biology Teacher: How Do We Test Intelligent Design? - March 2010 Excerpt: Regarding testability, ID (Intelligent Design) makes the following testable predictions: (1) Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information). (2) Forms containing large amounts of novel information will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without similar precursors. (3) Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and other functional parts will be re-used in different and unrelated organisms. (4) Much so-called “junk DNA” will turn out to perform valuable functions. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/a_response_to_questions_from_a.html
Perhaps the main prediction of ID (falsification criteria) is that purely material processes will NEVER generate non-trivial functional information:
Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information – Abel, Trevors Excerpt: Shannon information theory measures the relative degrees of RSC and OSC. Shannon information theory cannot measure FSC. FSC is invariably associated with all forms of complex biofunction, including biochemical pathways, cycles, positive and negative feedback regulation, and homeostatic metabolism. The algorithmic programming of FSC, not merely its aperiodicity, accounts for biological organization. No empirical evidence exists of either RSC of OSC ever having produced a single instance of sophisticated biological organization. Organization invariably manifests FSC rather than successive random events (RSC) or low-informational self-ordering phenomena (OSC).,,, Testable hypotheses about FSC What testable empirical hypotheses can we make about FSC that might allow us to identify when FSC exists? In any of the following null hypotheses [137], demonstrating a single exception would allow falsification. We invite assistance in the falsification of any of the following null hypotheses: Null hypothesis #1 Stochastic ensembles of physical units cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function. Null hypothesis #2 Dynamically-ordered sequences of individual physical units (physicality patterned by natural law causation) cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function. Null hypothesis #3 Statistically weighted means (e.g., increased availability of certain units in the polymerization environment) giving rise to patterned (compressible) sequences of units cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function. Null hypothesis #4 Computationally successful configurable switches cannot be set by chance, necessity, or any combination of the two, even over large periods of time. We repeat that a single incident of nontrivial algorithmic programming success achieved without selection for fitness at the decision-node programming level would falsify any of these null hypotheses. This renders each of these hypotheses scientifically testable. We offer the prediction that none of these four hypotheses will be falsified. http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29
Of note, it is good that the penalty for making false predictions in science is not the same as it was in Old Testament for making false prophecies. The penalty for making a false prophecy was death:
Deuteronomy 18:20-22 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.”
Of related note: as to a stunningly accurate prophecy from God that came to pass in our lifetimes:
Restoration Of Israel and Jerusalem In Prophecy (doing the math)- Chuck Missler - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/8598581
bornagain77_{July 30, 2012
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Does it ever say what those alleged innumerable predictions about what we will find and where we’ll find it are?Joe_{July 30, 2012
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