Junk DNA goodbye!: neutral DNA is shown as smaller (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, October 29, 2018, 21:12 (2217 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Extinctions are the natural consequence of organisms not having the necessary equipment to cope with changing conditions. But we are talking about so-called “junk DNA”. Why do you find it so difficult to accept the idea that something useful is more likely to survive than something which is of no use?

David: The point of the poorly thought out 'junk DNA' theory is that the junk was supposed to have survived despite being useless. It appears 80% of DNA has some form of function.

TONY: This is a big rub for me with evolution. 'Random mutations' have to magically hit on not one, not two, but hundreds, if not thousands' of proper permutations for even some of the least complex adaptations before 'natural selection' can passively filter it.Yet, many such adaptations would be useless, in a two way fashion, without each other. Call it biological codependency.

You are preaching to the converted. Both David and I have long since jettisoned the whole concept of random mutations as the generator of evolution, and what you call biological co-dependency is what Lynn Margulis called cooperation. (She was also a firm believer in cellular intelligence.) I agree with you and her.

TONY: This mindset of negating biological codependency has led, I believe, to a fundamental misunderstanding of how genetics work. Further, because of the chaotic nature of life, and the random nature of misfortunes, I do not think 'survival of the fittest' has any real explanatory power. The fittest may have been called by sheer dumb luck, thus reducing natural selection as nothing more than random chance.

dhw: Biological cooperation is central to my whole hypothesis. And I agree that natural selection, or “survival of the fittest” has no explanatory power if we are discussing how evolution progresses, because nature can only select from what already exists. However, you have raised a crucial point with your “chaotic nature of life and the random nature of misfortune”. This is a major problem if you want to discuss your God’s purpose for creating life. David’s anthropocentric view of life’s history hardly fits in with chaos and randomness, and so it raises the whole question of the extent to which his God remains in control of events and environmental changes. I don’t know your views on this. Was Chixculub, for instance, due to random chance, or do you think your God threw it at the dinosaurs?

TONY: All of the mad scrambling to recover from one fire after another about evolutionary theory should clue them in, but they see their marginal successes as grand victories, impressing themselves with their own cleverness, and become blind to the evidence in front of their eyes.

dhw: How many fires are you talking about in relation to evolutionary theory, i.e. the theory that all life is descended from a few forms or one? I myself do not accept Darwin’s explanation of how the process works, but he himself forecast that new discoveries would result in new approaches. He also left wide open the problem of the origin of life itself (he was an agnostic). To be blind to evidence means the evidence is there, so (let me put on my atheist’s hat) please tell us what evidence there is for a sourceless supermind which produces species out of thin air.

TONY: It makes me sad, not angry, though it used to make me angry as well. If only they (research scientist) could ever set their ego aside, along with their own preconceived notions. I know DHW will likely chime in and say we all have our preconceived notions, including me, and he would be right. But a person can learn to let go of those.

dhw: A true and honest perception. Most of our discussions revolve around those preconceptions (or around notions which we have come to regard as more believable than others), but I would like to think that none of us are trying to impress the others with our own clever ego. The object of this forum is to question all the notions to see which ones, if any, make sense to us. I can quite understand your sadness and earlier anger at atheistic insistence that life and speciation is all a matter of chance. This indeed is what prompted me to start the website in the first place. But why would you be sad or angry at the suggestion that your God (let me put on my theist's hat) may have created a mechanism which enabled living organisms to diversify autonomously from the original few forms or one?

I'll enter here to note we have had long discussion about the possibility that God gave organisms an inventive mechanism to cause designed advances. My version contains God's guidelines.