Junk DNA: goodbye! (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 27, 2014, 15:48 (3555 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:However, as usual, you insist that humans and - to a lesser degree - our fellow animals are capable of making their own spontaneous decisions, whereas other life forms from bacteria onwards are automata. THAT is the difference between us.-Again, either I've not been clear or you misunderstand. we humans hae different sets of cellular controls. My kidney acts autonomously and automatically on its ow, just like a bacterial cell. But I have a brain which is some sort of a basis for consciousness, and I am in control of my consciousness
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> dhw: let me point out that if the different “life plans” of the fruit flies were not preprogrammed, the cell communities of which the fruit flies are composed must have cooperated in making all the decisions that led to their particular life plan. If those decisions were not preprogrammed, they cannot have been automatic. -Let me point out that we both accept evolution, and in my concept of it, life and body forms respond to various challenges of nature. Life forms are designed to contain the information to make appropriate responses, and that response can be inheritable as shown in recent epigenetic research. They have plans of adaptation, not pre-programming to the tinest degree. 
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> dhw: Incidentally, the article - like many you have recently quoted on this thread - emphasizes that so-called junk DNA is not junk. An article in today's Guardian reports on the claim by researchers at Oxford University that: “More than 90% of human DNA is doing nothing very useful, and large stretches may be no more than biological baggage that has built up over years of evolution.” As is so often the case, scientists themselves can't agree. Back to the picket fence, everybody!-You have quoted the atheistic version of the battle about junk, and in my opinion the Guardian always represents that side. You have forgotten ENCODE with its consortium of hundreds of scientists who showed function in 80% of DNA.