Junk DNA goodbye!: the battle with Dan Graur continues (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 13, 2020, 12:22 (1656 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "[…] If ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong." (David’s bold)

dhw: We have discussed this over and over again. If ENCODE is right, and there is no junk, any self-respecting atheist should be able to say: there you are, natural selection ensures that only useful things survive[/i].
[…]
DAVID: The bold in my original statement should read "if encode is right, then any theory that evolution was naturally caused is wrong." Your bolded comment is correct but off the point also.

dhw: Then what on earth was the point of raising the subject of Graur and ENCODE in the first place? You are trying to prove that atheists have got it wrong. Now please tell me what is wrong with my bolded response.

DAVID: The problem is you. I told you it was off the point of the so-called importance of junk DNA to a small group of very vocal atheists who must have junk DNA to support their atheism. It shows the fanaticism involved. They should become reasoned agnostics like you.

dhw: I’m not sure why this makes me a problem, but I presume that your kind compliment means you accept my reasoning and we can now put to bed the argument that ENCODE disproves Darwinian evolution.

DAVID: It leaves us with the conclusion that DNA looks like a designed code, which throws out the Darwin insistence on chance mutation. All we have left from Darwin definitely is common descent and the probabilistic theory about natural selection, which logically sounds good, but is not proven as a sorting mechanism to somehow advance evolution through its choices. Since it is a judge looking at what organisms appear on the scene, the arrival of new forms is not explained by Darwin. All of this lies behind the junk or almost-no-junk argument. You should agree with this analysis.

Yes, I do, but you have left the ENCODE argument far behind and have focused on the overall argument for design! ENCODE is strictly limited to proving that there is no junk. That would demolish the atheists’ argument that a designer would not have left any junk behind. But it does not demolish the atheists’ belief in Darwin’s theory of chance mutations, because no matter what caused the changes leading to speciation, they can argue that natural selection would have removed any unnecessary material.