Catching up here: Here’s Bryan College’s creationist biologist Todd C. Wood on ENCODE (“Everyone’s excited about ENCODE,” Todd’s Blog, September 6, 2012):
According to the Nature paper, there’s some biochemical function to about 80% of the genome, or to put it as they do in the abstract:
These data enabled us to assign biochemical functions for 80% of the genome, in particular outside of the well-studied protein-coding regions.
There’s a lot of excited press coverage about these findings:
What bothers me more this time is this undercurrent I’m seeing that basically perceives this latest hyperbole as especially egregious because creationists will misunderstand the results and use them for propaganda purposes. I hope no one is actually suggesting that scientists ought to modify the presentation of their results to prevent creationists from misusing them? Perhaps even … dare I say it? … censor themselves to prevent creationists from taking advantage? Because that really is starting to sound like an anticreationist conspiracy.
Well, what should really bother Wood is if some of science’s tax burdens are so mediocre that their only concern is that creationists – who turned out to be right that most of the genome is not junk – will benefit.
That is just how life works. Darwin’s men were misled by their own beliefs into adopting the highly improbable idea that most of the genome is junk and now they can just stew in it.
Of course people with the correct ideas are more likely to benefit in the long run. In the short run, whoever has the ear of authority or a good scam going benefits. But in the long run things even out.
The most hopeful thing for the creationists is the fact that Darwinists appear not to be learning anything from the experience. But maybe they can’t afford to. Anyway, like we said, Darwin’s memory deserves better than today’s typical Darwinist.