Junk DNA: goodbye!: Review article (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, March 12, 2015, 23:12 (3544 days ago) @ David Turell

DHW:I neither skip nor reject the design argument. I am pointing out that atheists will still find a means of incorporating new discoveries into their scenario, just as theists do. In the days before ENCODE began to unravel the purposes of so-called junk, I don't recall theists getting into a mighty panic over the then prevalent view that DNA was not 100% functional. I repeat: "You can twist any scenario to fit your hypothesis...But I still maintain that “both sides will always find an answer to any discovery”. The very fact that life exists defies all the odds, and that was true even before the discovery of DNA. My point is exemplified by the fact that Francis Crick was an agnostic with a strong inclination towards atheism and James Watson is an atheist.-TONY: This is not a case of trying to fit anything to a theory. This is a case of either something is possible, or it is not. Saying that it must have happened because we are here is a cop out that ignores the fact that it is, by sciences/maths own definitions, impossible. They don't even stand by their own definitions of what makes something impossible.-I am as ill at ease representing atheism in discussions with you as I am representing theism in discussions with atheists, but I will put my own atheistic case. (George, can you not be tempted to join in the junketing?) Firstly, if I were an atheist, I would point out that it is only theist scientists who claim the odds are impossible. I find it perfectly feasible that either this universe has existed for eternity, or first cause energy has spawned an infinite number of universes throughout eternity. That offers an infinity of combinations of matter, and if you have an infinity of combinations, anything is possible.-Secondly, the argument that life is too complex to have come about by chance is counterbalanced by the argument that there is no evidence for a universal mind capable of creating life and universes. To maintain that such a mind must exist though we don't know how it could have come into existence is just as huge a cop-out as the argument that we are here but we don't know how we got here.
 
Thirdly, if I were an atheist, I would suggest that once chance (or some sort of panpsychist evolution) had assembled the mechanisms for life and evolution (no more of a miracle than an infinite, eternal consciousness that came from nowhere), the survival of every beneficial change would have increased complexity, whereas any unsuccessful change would have disappeared. And so if DNA does prove to be 100% useful, that is because any non-useful component would have been jettisoned in the process known as natural selection. You don't have to accept the argument. I don't accept it either. But I don't find it any less acceptable than the case for an infinite, eternal consciousness without a cause.
 
DAVID: Crick and Watson's opinions are just that, individual human opinions, not adding any thing factual. Darwinists twist any finding beyond recognition to fit their agenda. the story of junk DNA is that it fits the idea of uncontrolled chance evolution which results in many discarded elements of DNA because of the chance advance producing junk along the way.-Of course those are just individual opinions and add nothing factual. Your belief in God comes under exactly the same category. I am merely pointing out that as the scientists who discovered DNA they were not exactly ignorant of life's complexities, and yet like so many other specialists in so many other fields of science, they see no reason to believe in your God. Do you take them all for fools? I have pointed out that both sides can twist any scenario to fit their hypothesis, but you can only see one side doing it. I am well aware of the atheist argument concerning junk, but just as theists have changed their argument to accommodate evolution, atheists can change their argument to accommodate functioning DNA, as I have pointed out in my response to Tony.