There have been a number of news items and articles recently (last year – I collect them) on how “junk DNA” is now known to not be junk. Here’s an example. As genetic research continues to advance, this previously-assumed junk DNA (called so because it had no discernible function or role) is revealing that it has significant roles to play in what we know as HUMAN life. And that’s the point for this blog. I can recall several Coast to Coast AM hucksters over the years promoting their ancient astronaut theories on the basis that this “mystery DNA” was alien. It was bunk then, and it’s bunk now.
Note that the above link points our that knowledge of junk DNA is very damaging to a Darwinist understanding of evolution. I word it that way because junk DNA has been used as an argument against intelligent design and a creator (“why would an intelligent creator put a bunch of useless junk in our genetic code?”). Intelligent design does not deny evolution; it denies *purposeless and undirected* evolution.
One last note. I just finished Leslie Kean’s book on UFOs. Outstanding. I will be posting a review here soon.
Structure or lack of structure of junk DNA does not imply anything about intelligent design or evolution.
Intelligent designs could include random junk DNA … why not? If financial mathematicians draw billions of random numbers to estimate well defined integrals over 360 dimensions (because sadly, Mathematics does not yet offer efficient ways to integrate arbitrary functions in high dimensions, see Monte Carlo quadrature), why can’t junk DNA be an intentional design decision? Maybe junk DNA could serve in some sort of stochastic optimization (Genetic algorithms use evolution ideas to solve hard problems).
On the other hand, why should otherwise structured junk DNA be damaging to the theory of evolution? Why should random mutations imply that a majority of DNA ought to be random junk?
Furthermore, it isn’t really fair to suggest that Darwinian evolution is somehow purposeless. Indeed, random mutations could be said to lead to purposeless offspring, but it is ultimately how well said offspring respond to the environment. Good mutations survive and thrive. This process can be said to solve some sort of optimization problem for which we don’t know the underlying problem. Evolution would be like a random walk. How can that overall process be said to be purposeless?
There is a misconception that lack of structure, randomness, chaos, etc… is useless. It is not. These concepts can be used in intelligent ways to solve hard problems.
agreed, but I am not the one who called Darwinism purposeless. Darwinists do that (many of them make it a point of dogma). But there are theistic evolutionists who embrace Darwin and certainly do not view it as purposeless.