Genome complexity: pseudogenes (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, August 24, 2013, 12:23 (4110 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: If recognized junk becomes only a tiny percentage of DNA where does the atheist argument devolve to? -dhw: Perhaps you overlooked the rest of my post! Let me repeat it for you:
"[...] if none of it is junk, atheist evolutionists can claim natural selection has streamlined DNA, theists can claim that God has streamlined DNA, and theist evolutionists can claim that God designed DNA in such a way that natural selection would streamline it. It doesn't matter what we discover about Nature, the information can always be twisted to fit the theory."-DAVID: You persist in missing the point, which is why I have ignored the above. The evolutionists point to junk as proof of evolution. Lots of inventive mutations discarded in the process of evolutionary development, creating a huge pile of DNA junk, which then 'proves' evoluton happened from the debris left behind. [...] 
And you are right about twisting. Dawkins is doing just that. He has quotes saying that junk proves evolution and newer quotes which tell us, the lack of junk proves evolution.-You asked what the atheist argument would be if it was proved that junk DNA was not junk, and I told you. Just for the record, Dawkins' miraculous, even hilarious U-turn was as follows: "I have noticed that there are some creationists who are jumping on [the ENCODE results] because they think that's awkward for Darwinism. Quite the contrary it's exactly what a Darwinist would hope for, to find usefulness in the living world...." (Interview with Rabbi Sacks) That's what I meant by natural selection streamlining DNA (it retains what is useful). The report on the interview also tells us what Dawkins said before his volte face: "It stretches even their [Creationists'] creative ingenuity to make a convincing reason why an intelligent designer should have created a pseudogene -- a gene that does absolutely nothing and gives every appearance of being a superannuated version of a gene that used to do something -- unless he was deliberately setting out to fool us." That's the previous atheist argument I was referring to in my post.
 
I gather that ENCODE'S findings are still in dispute, but obviously I'm in no position to take sides. For the sake of argument, though, I'm quite prepared to accept that 80% or even 100% of "junk" is not junk. My point here is that it won't make people change their basic beliefs, and there's no reason why it should. When common descent first hit the headlines, what did believers do? They either refused to accept the theory, or adapted their beliefs to incorporate it. Similarly now, atheists either reject the DNA findings or adapt them to Darwinism. And so I stand by the two points I have made during this discussion: 1) Even if there is no junk, this does not in any way justify the claim made in the article that evolution is "a failed paradigm"; 2) It doesn't matter what we discover about Nature, the information can always be twisted to fit the theory. To which I would add, none of us know which theory is correct.