Junk DNA: goodbye! (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 21:54 (3770 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: No-one is claiming that bacterial intelligence is the same as human consciousness. The parallel lies in the capacity for processing information, communicating, and taking decisions.
DAVID: Agreed, but with the proviso that those processes are automatic.-As I understand it, automatic intelligence entails no autonomous decision-making. It has to be preprogrammed, and you have agreed that adaptations and innovations are not preprogrammed. No deal. (But see “Cell Memories”.)-dhw: Either detailed plans for adaptations and innovations are already present in all life forms (= preprogramming), or they have to be worked out by the organisms themselves as and when the need or opportunity arises (= autonomous intelligence). Even the tiniest details must work perfectly or the response will fail.
DAVID: Again, agreed, with the proviso that while the organisms are adapting they are doing it automatically within certain genetically provided guidelines of response.-I can accept that all forms of intelligence, including our own, may be “within genetically provided guidelines of response”, since all forms of intelligence appear to be limited by physical capacity. That does not make them automatic. (But see “Cell Memories”.)-dhw: You have been quoting ENCODE on this thread, which is what I meant when I said “scientists themselves can't agree”. ENCODE scientists claim 80% function, Oxford scientists claim to have found very different figures. So long as there is no scientific consensus, how can the layman believe or disbelieve the claims of the different researchers, let alone the conclusions they draw from them?
DAVID: "How" is by following what I report of continous findings since ENCODE of more and more functions by other researchers. It seems never ending and all the while junk shrinks. The patern is obvious. Look to the future. -I am not prepared to say that the Oxford researchers are all fakes and charlatans following their own junky agenda. My point is that if scientists disagree, the neutral layman cannot make a choice.
 
DAVID: The exact %age of junk is continuously shrinking. At some point we will find the right figure representing junk, but the Darwinists use junk as a proof of evolution by pointing to discarded DNA from the past. Only much of it is not discarded. Junk =s Darwin-type evolution, and loss of junk suggests Darwin-type evolution is not correct.-Atheist Darwinists use junk to prove that DNA was not designed, or at best was badly designed. Junk = whatever you want it to =. Both sides are so desperate to find evidence for their God / anti-God theories that they simply ignore anything counter to their entrenched beliefs. If junk DNA is junk, it doesn't alter the fact that the mechanism is still too complex for us to understand, let alone reproduce, and what is junk now may have served an essential purpose earlier. On the other hand, Darwin-type evolution stresses the idea that natural selection preserves whatever is useful. And so if junk DNA is not junk, a Darwinist evolutionist can perfectly reasonably point out that natural selection has preserved what is useful. It's also worth reminding ourselves that a Darwinist evolutionist does not have to be an atheist.