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

by dhw, Thursday, May 14, 2020, 12:40 (1655 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: What causes my confusion is your bolded and oft repeated comment. Natural selection removes failed species, but does not affect DNA code. ENCODE says there are very few chance mutations.

A very sudden switch of argument! I’m not going to pretend to understand the science, but I strongly object to the suggestion that “natural selection” can only be applied to species. It works in any number of contexts. As I understand it, ENCODE’s task is to find out the functions of all the different parts of the genome. Since the genomes of different species have different numbers/sequences/ functions, and you believe in common descent, I can’t see any reason why you should assume that the inner workings of the cell communities of which all organisms consist have not undergone a continuous process of changing numbers/sequences/ functions, which survive or don’t survive according to natural selection. Unless you can prove otherwise, our atheists can carry on using natural selection as a reason for the absence of junk.