First, let’s see what Darwinian evolutionists predict about junk DNA, before we look at what the experiments show.
Here’s biologist John Timmer to explain the orthodox Darwinian view of DNA from 2007:
Personally, I fall into the “it’s all junk” end of the spectrum. If almost all of these sequences are not conserved by evolution, and we haven’t found a function for any of them yet, it’s hard to see how the “none of it’s junk” view can be maintained. There’s also an absence of support for the intervening view, again because of a lack of evidence for actual utility. The genomes of closely related species have revealed very few genes added from non-coding DNA, and all of the structural RNA we’ve found has very specific sequence requirements. The all-junk view, in contrast, is consistent with current data.
Got that? According to Darwinists, DNA is almost entirely junk – this is what is consistent with the view that creatures have evolved through a process of random mutation and selection. The estimates that I’ve seen from evolutionary biologists range from 95% to 99% junk. Now let’s compare the religion with science, and separate mythology from reality.
Now let’s compare that with intelligent design theorist William Dembski’s view of “junk” DNA, from 1998:
Even if we have a reliable criterion for detecting design, and even if that criterion tells us that biological systems are designed, it seems that determining a biological system to be designed is akin to shrugging our shoulders and saying God did it. The fear is that admitting design as an explanation will stifle scientific inquiry, that scientists will stop investigating difficult problems because they have a sufficient explanation already.
But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term “junk DNA.” Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as “junk” merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function… Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.
Now let’s look at the experimental evidence and see whose prediction was proven right by the progress of science.
Science Daily reports on a recent study that confirms the previous study that falsified Darwinian predictions about junk DNA.
Excerpt:
Researchers from the Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program at Sydney’s Centenary Institute have confirmed that, far from being “junk,” the 97 per cent of human DNA that does not encode instructions for making proteins can play a significant role in controlling cell development.
[…]Using the latest gene sequencing techniques and sophisticated computer analysis, a research group led by Professor John Rasko AO and including Centenary’s Head of Bioinformatics, Dr William Ritchie, has shown how particular white blood cells use non-coding DNA to regulate the activity of a group of genes that determines their shape and function. The work is published today in the scientific journalCell.
“This discovery, involving what was previously referred to as “junk,” opens up a new level of gene expression control that could also play a role in the development of many other tissue types,” Rasko says. “Our observations were quite surprising and they open entirely new avenues for potential treatments in diverse diseases including cancers and leukemias.”
Now, this is yet another falsification of Darwinism, to go with the other papers that I keep posting about new research that falsifies Darwinism. How many papers do we need to falsify Darwinism? I think if you are in an argument over Darwinism, and you produce these articles, then you win, so long as the other person cannot produce anything. It’s also a good idea to couple these pieces of evidence with a positive case for intelligent causes operating during the origin of life and the Cambrian explosion.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Your last paragraph nails it, WK. Thank you for compiling this. I have been using your postings in this area to expose the myth of Darwinism with a number of people – almost all unbelievers, but a few uninformed believers as well. You are changing hearts and minds – keep up the good work!
I was stunned to find out that one strong Darwinist has switched completely based on these postings and also your postings on global warming. He figured that if liberals could commit scientific fraud in one area (global warming), they might just do it with Darwinism. He did a complete flip – thanks to you.
Strangely, I am getting the most resistance to discarding Darwinism from believers in many cases. :-( Why might that be? One Darwinist believer is definitely a Christian believer, but I guess hasn’t considered the theological implications of Darwinism? Maybe it is because she doesn’t want to admit that her liberal government school teachers could have lied to her? She is strong Biblically, but obviously weak in apologetics.
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Read what you quoted again. When they had no evidence the stuff was meaningful, they thought it probably wasn’t. When they saw the evidence, they changed their minds.
Science (real science, not Michael Mann) proceeds by improving their approximations. Creationists fundamentally do not grasp what science is. You start with a conclusion. Science starts with observed data, guesses at a conclusion, and starts over when they get better data. Climate hoaxers do it your way; scientists don’t.
Some scientists claim to have all the answers already, but if they do their jobs honestly, they are part of the system that replaces approximations with better ones.
Science isn’t faith. Faith claims to have the final answer now (real faith does — progressive fake churches make up a new final answer every six months. Progs get faith as wrong as they get science ). If they were the hoaxers you think they are, this reassessment stuff would never happen. That fact falsifies your claims about them.
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“Creationists fundamentally do not grasp what science is. You start with a conclusion.”
No, both creationism and evolutionism are metanarratives – frameworks for interpreting data. They are both a story about what might have happened. Neither one can be directly investigated. The best one can do in either case is to see which framework best fits the evidence. So, creationists don’t start with a conclusion. We start with a framework for interpreting data. And so do evolutionists. Science then proceeds within that framework and individual conclusions are made for specific studies and experiments. But all the actual science – the nuts and bolts of experimentation – is the same for both views. The only difference is the interpretive framework – neither of which is strictly science.
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>>Creationists fundamentally do not grasp what science is. You start with a conclusion. Science starts with observed data, guesses at a conclusion, and starts over when they get better data.
Lindsay makes a good point in response. I want to approach it from a different angle.
First, a correction about how science operates. Scientists can’t just start with observed data. There is either too much observable data to get started in any meaningful direction or else there isn’t any observable data immediately at hand. Let’s say you have observable data that you want to start with. Which data is relevant and which is just noise? The data itself can’t provide you with that information. You have to make decisions and conjectures right from the start.
Second, let’s take it for granted that creationists start with a conclusion. At one level isn’t that what virtually every scientist does when running experiments within a theoretical framework (which would be every scientist today)? For instance, how many scientists today set out to re-establish theories of electromagnetism before performing some test which takes that theory for granted? None. They start with that as a conclusion and seek to build on top of it. Now you might say in response that these scientists are at least in principle open to having that conclusion over-turned. Okay. But maybe some creationists are open to that too. Or you might say there was a time when electromagnetism wasn’t a conclusion. Okay. But it’s still a conclusion today. So you would have to say people who take it as a conclusion today aren’t doing science.
Third, let’s take it for granted that some creationists start with a conclusion in the strongest possible sense. This would probably be young earth creationists. Perhaps many (all) young earth creationists (YEC) believe the conclusion “the earth is young” in a way that can’t be overturned by further scientific evidence. Granted. Does that make it not science? Well maybe on some definition of science. But I don’t see why we should care to adopt such a definition. The YEC doesn’t have to be committed to a principle like “it’s acceptable to take just any conclusion for granted in the scientific enterprise”. They could be committed to a more nuanced philosophy of science which says that if one has very strong warrant for an idea, they may take it as a conclusion to which the science must conform. This would mean that not just any belief can legitimately be held as a conclusion in science. Further, I would say that some scientist (who are not YEC) already do operate with this sort of philosophy. For instance, PZ Myers has said that even if he witnessed something like the stars aligning and spelling “Hi, I’m God” or something along those lines he would dismiss it as an illusion or having some natural explanation.
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P.S. I was just perusing Sean Carroll (well known atheist physicist at Caltech) and this is what he recently wrote on his blog:
“Every year we look forward to the Edge Annual Question, and as usual it’s a provocative one: ‘What scientific idea is ready for retirement?’ […] My answer was ‘Falsifiability.’
[…]
Modern physics stretches into realms far removed from everyday experience, and sometimes the connection to experiment becomes tenuous at best. String theory and other approaches to quantum gravity involve phenomena that are likely to manifest themselves only at energies enormously higher than anything we have access to here on Earth. The cosmological multiverse and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posit other realms that are impossible for us to access directly. Some scientists, leaning on Popper, have suggested that these theories are non-scientific because they are not falsifiable.
The truth is the opposite. Whether or not we can observe them directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets.”
This comports with what I said above about how science operates in relation to observation and data, and it’s coming from a well-respected scientist who is also an atheist. Thought you might like to hear it from the “horses mouth” so to speak over some random dude over the internet.
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Wow. That is really interesting. So in order to prefer these speculative theories that leave God out, they are willing to give up a cornerstone of the scientific method. Isn’t it amazing… they used to make fun of religion for not being falsifiable, and now they are preferring speculations to facts. 2 Cor 10:5 is coming true.
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I know this post is two years old, but I think this is an interesting addendum:
Francis Collins walks backs claims on junk DNA.
Collins claimed… that huge chunks of our genome are “littered” with ancient repetitive elements (AREs), so that “roughly 45 percent of the human genome [is] made up of such genetic flotsam and jetsam.” In his talk he claimed the existence of “junk DNA” was proof that man and mice had a common ancestor, because God would not have created man with useless genes.
Last year, though, speaking at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Collins threw in the towel: “In terms of junk DNA, we don’t use that term anymore because I think it was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome, as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional. … Most of the genome that we used to think was there for spacer turns out to be doing stuff.”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/07/on_junk_dna_fra103008.html
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This will make a nice post for tomorrow!
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