Junk DNA: goodbye! (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, September 29, 2013, 17:12 (4074 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You have drawn our attention to this before, and I pointed out that if we still can't answer the question "what, in fact, do they do?" we can hardly say they are not junk. However, we also discussed the fact that even if it turns out DNA is 100% functional, it still won't prove anything either way about design.
 
DAVID: You miss the main point. "Junk" supports a chance mechanism discarding stuff, a la Darwinian style unguided evoluton. A 100% functional DNA demands design. You can't just slough it off. It doesn't prove design, but what else is there?-It's all a question of your starting point. One person looks at DNA, sees how complex it is, and concludes that it must have been designed; this means that no matter how unlikely it may seem, there must be a designer of whose origin, nature and even existence we know absolutely nothing. The atheist doesn't believe in such an unknown and unknowable being, and concludes that no matter how unlikely it may seem, the first self-replicating molecule must have assembled itself by chance, and then evolution followed its natural course. If "junk" is not junk, that is because natural selection ensures that what is useful survives and what isn't useful disappears. People can always find an explanation to fit in with their beliefs. The atheist can learn to accommodate non-junk just as the theist can learn to accommodate evolution.