Uncommon Descent

Evolutionists w/Egg On Their Faces – Failed Predictions

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • the theory has been attacked on the grounds that many aspects of nature fail to show any evidence of intelligent design, such as “junk” DNA — R. T. Pennock (2002)

First, this is with a hat-tip to WINTERY KNIGHT! BTW, I posted on this many years back (jump below to my imports). Here is the video WK posted and then I will add more from him and my old posts.

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

Is the idea of junk DNA this one of the biggest mistakes in science in our lifetime? Only about 1% of our DNA codes for proteins, so what is the other 99% doing? Many evolutionary scientists over the years insisted that the non-protein coding DNA is largely junk, but intelligent design theorists predicted function will be prevalent throughout our genome. Guess which prediction turned out to be right?

Learn how scientists have discovered that the vast majority of our genome has function in this installment of the “Codes of Life” mini-series produced as part of the “Long Story Short” show on YouTube.

Find out more about scientific challenges to evolution. Download a free copy of the mini-book “Top 10 Scientific Problems With Evolution” here: TOP TEN PROBLEMS w/EVOLUTION. This free digital mini-book reviews the scientific literature and shows there are powerful scientific challenges to core tenets of Darwinian theory.

The key ideas here are this, Evolutionists predicted one thing. Intelligent Design proponents, another (EVOLUTION NEWS):

  1. …evolutionists predicted that, in line with their premise of a randomly generated genome, DNA would turn out to be full of Darwinian debris, playing no functional role but merely parasitic (atheist Richard Dawkins’s term) on the small portion of functional DNA.
  2. Proponents of intelligent design said the opposite. William Dembski (1998) and Richard Sternberg (2002) predicted widespread function for the so-called “junk.” After all, as a product of care and intention, the genome ought to be comparable in a way with products of human genius, with every detail there for a reason.

For instance, here is an article that John Woodmorappe wrote in 2002:

More and more noncoding DNA, long considered ‘junk DNA’, has eventually been found to be functional. Hardly more than a few months pass by and there is not another scientific paper demonstrating function for some form of junk DNA. As summarized in this article, there is also growing evidence that at least some pseudogenes are functional. It should be stressed that pseudogenes, unlike other so-called junk DNA, have long been burdened not only with the ingrained belief that they lack function, but also the additional onus of having supposedly lost a function. In addition, consider the following preconception relative to protein-coding genes in general:

‘Considerably less analysis of this type has been performed on coding regions, possibly be­cause the bias present from the protein-encoding function represented as nucleotide triplets (codons) promotes the general assumption that secondary functionality is present infrequently in protein cod­ing sequences.’

[….]

Against the backdrop of the customary negative opinion of pseudogenes, there have always been a few individuals who anticipated their functional potential. McCarrey (1986) et al. were probably the first to suggest that pseudogenes can be functional in terms of the regulation of the expression of its paralogous genes. They noted that the sense RNA tran­scribed by a gene could be effectively removed by hybrid­izing (forming a duplex) with the antisense RNA produced by the paralagous pseudogene. In addition, an otherwise nonfunctional peptide unit translated by the pseudogene could inhibit the peptide translated by the gene. They lik­ened these processes to a buffered acid-base titration. As described below, their ideas proved prophetic.

Inouye apparently independently realized the same pos­sibility for pseudogenes (1988)….

Of course, me being no scientist could also read the writing on the wall, similar to vestigial organs. Here are those old posts of mine:

Both posts are from Friday, June 15, 2007

“Junk” Science

Evolution Predicts “Junk”… Intelligent Design Predicts “Treasure”

A long trail of refuse is what has been left behind by the theory of evolution. From the many deaths because evolutionary theory taught that tonsils were vestigial, to stalled insight into the appendix. Now we have years lost in the study of what was known as “Junk DNA.” Many years ago I debated that this will be found not to be junk, but will be shown to be useful, and after the first Scientific American article about “Junk DNA” not being Junk DNA, I was using it as an example to bolster the Intelligent Design argument:

For instance you can find a response here that I wrote in March of 2005:

This is originally from VOLCONVO, a debate forum I graced many years ago, now defunct, under:

philosophy-religion/4153-global-myths-evolution-spin-off-3

It is nice to see more and more INFORMATION (pun intended) come out on this, and the prediction made by Intelligent Design leaders in 1994! (Taken from EVOLUTION NEWS article):

As far back as 1994, pro-ID scientist and Discovery Institute fellow Forrest Mims had warned in a letter to Science against assuming that ‘junk’ DNA was ‘useless.'” Science wouldn’t print Mims’ letter, but soon thereafter, in 1998, leading ID theorist William Dembski repeated this sentiment in First Things:

[Intelligent] design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term “junk DNA.” Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as “junk” merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. For instance, in a recent issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, John Bodnar describes how “non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development.” Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.

(William Dembski, “Intelligent Science and Design,” First Things, Vol. 86:21-27 (October 1998)

If these scientists were coming from the perspective that everything was “designed” to begin with, they wouldn’t merely write off unknowns as “junk.”

10:13 PM 

Killing in the Name of Darwin

The Dangers of Darwinism

People use to have their tonsils pulled whenever they were slightly inflamed. In the 1930’s over half of all children had their tonsils and adenoids removed. In 1969, 19.5 out of every 1,000 children under the age of nine had undergone a tonsillectomy. By 1971 the frequency had dropped to only 14.8 per 1,000, with the percentage continuing to decrease in subsequent years. Most medical authorities now actively discourage tonsillectomies. Many agree with Wooley, chairman of the department of pediatrics at Wayne State University, who was quoted in one study as saying: “If there are one million tonsillectomies done in the United States, there are 999,000 that don’t need doing.”

In the Medical World News (N. J. Vianna, Peter Greenwald, and U. N. Davies, September 10, 1973, p.10), a story stated that although removal of tonsils at a young age obviously eliminates tonsillitis (the inflammation of the tonsils) it may significantly increase the incidence of strep-throat and even Hodgkin’s disease. In fact, according to the New York Department of Cancer Control: “…people who have had tonsillectomies are nearly three times as likely to develop Hodgkin’s Disease, a form of cancer that attacks the lymphoid tissue” (Lawrence Galton, “All Those Tonsil Operations: Useless? Dangerous?”Parade, May 2 (1976), pp. 26ff).

Ken Miller, 13 years ago, said, 

  • “the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles. Evolution, in contrast, can easily explain them as nothing more than failed experiments in a random process.” (ARN and UNCOMMON DECENT)

The SCIENCE DAILY article that the above ARN article links to has this to say:

“This impressive effort has uncovered many exciting surprises and blazed the way for future efforts to explore the functional landscape of the entire human genome,” said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “Because of the hard work and keen insights of the ENCODE consortium, the scientific community will need to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do, as well as how the genome’s functional elements have evolved. This could have significant implications for efforts to identify the DNA sequences involved in many human diseases.”….

….The ENCODE consortium’s major findings include the discovery that the majority of DNA in the human genome is transcribed into functional molecules, called RNA, and that these transcripts extensively overlap one another. This broad pattern of transcription challenges the long-standing view that the human genome consists of a relatively small set of discrete genes, along with a vast amount of so-called junk DNA that is not biologically active.

Thanks to the design theorists who predicted this outcome for the Intelligent Design theory, and for showing how this revelation refutes the prediction (yet again) that we should see if evolution is true. That is, useless genes and DNA.

10:34 PM 

SEE OTHER POSTS HERE ON MY .COM:

 

The Electrical Blueprints That Orchestrate Life | Michael Levin

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes by way of UNCOMMON DESCENT, hat-tip to Denyse O’Leary:

  • I’ve written about the “electric cell” here and here, describing how electric currents in cell membranes transmit information through an “electric code.” I’ve also written about “water wires” and cable bacteria. Biologists have long known about the membrane potential of an individual cell, which measures about -70 millivolts, due to ionic separations. They have known that neurons transmit ionic voltages down their membranes. Now, recent discoveries are showing that we must expand our exploration of bioelectricity to the whole body. – David Coppedge (March 15, 2023)

TED: DNA isn’t the only builder in the biological world — there’s also a mysterious bioelectric layer directing cells to work together to grow organs, systems and bodies, says biologist Michael Levin. Sharing unforgettable and groundbreaking footage of two-headed worms, he introduces us to xenobots — the world’s first living robots, created in his lab by cracking the electrical code of cells — and discusses what this discovery may mean for the future of medicine, the environment and even life itself. (This conversation, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson, was recorded June 2020.)

Another Failed Origin of Life Prediction for Evolutionary Naturalists

Published by Papa Giorgio

The above video is the “perhaps” of modern science, that the below refutes with more updated information.

This is with a h-t to Fazale Rana. Fazal wrote on the matter here, “Sea Vents Closed as Life-Origin Site.” Below are some excerpts from the Science Daily article:

One of the greatest mysteries facing humans is how life originated on Earth. Scientists have determined approximately when life began (roughly 3.8 billion years ago), but there is still intense debate about exactly how life began. One possibility — that simple metabolic reactions emerged near ancient seafloor hot springs, enabling the leap from a non-living to a living world — has grown in popularity in the last two decades.

Recent research by geochemists Eoghan Reeves, Jeff Seewald, and Jill McDermott at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the first to test a fundamental assumption of this ‘metabolism first’ hypothesis, and finds that it may not have been as easy as previously assumed. Instead, their findings could provide a focus for the search for life on other planets. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1977, scientists discovered biological communities unexpectedly living around seafloor hydrothermal vents, far from sunlight and thriving on a chemical soup rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and sulfur, spewing from the geysers. Inspired by these findings, scientists later proposed that hydrothermal vents provided an ideal environment with all the ingredients needed for microbial life to emerge on early Earth. A central figure in this hypothesis is a simple sulfur-containing carbon compound called “methanethiol” — a supposed geologic precursor of the Acetyl-CoA enzyme present in many organisms, including humans. Scientists suspected methanethiol could have been the “starter dough” from which all life emerged.

The question Reeves and his colleagues set out to test was whether methanethiol — a critical precursor of life — could form at modern day vent sites by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. Could methanethiol be the bridge between a chemical, non-living world and the first microbial life on the planet?

Carbon dioxide, hydrogen and sulfide are the common ingredients present in hydrothermal black smoker fluids. “The thought was that making methanethiol from these basic ingredients at seafloor hydrothermal vents should therefore have been an easy process,” adds Reeves.

The theory was appealing, and solved many of the basic problems with existing ideas that life may have been carried to Earth on a comet or asteroid….

[….]

“What we essentially found in our survey is that we don’t think methanethiol is forming by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. This might be disappointing news for anyone assuming an easy start for hydrothermal proto-metabolism,” says Reeves. “However, our finding that methanethiol may be readily forming as a breakdown product of microbial life provides further indication that life is present and widespread below the seafloor and is very exciting.”

The researchers believe this new understanding could change how we think about searching for life on other planets.

Uncommon Descent notes the following after quoting the above Science Daily article:

As noted earlier, origin of life is a problem in the origin of huge amount of information and looking for a way it happened due to some fluke has always been a waste of time.

Software engineer Arminius Mignea’s specifications for a simplest self-replicator in Engineering and the Ultimate would be a useful read on that score. It advances the discussion by setting out what origin of life (by human or other hands) models should look like, to merit consideration.

Too often, people play rhetorical games that sound like: “Life happened, so my ‘stink world’ is plausible” or “The prevailing consensus says Stink World is plausible, therefore life.”

It’s a form of homage to philosophical materialism, not science really, and it suck in lots of well-meaning people. They don’t realize that when we are asked to accept an inherently implausible idea because it is materialist, we are invited to put materialism above every other consideration, including logic, reason, and evidence.