I’ve heard that before and seen it discussed many times. What do you know about ‘junk DNA’, the historical original of the term, connections to neutral theory, mutational load and the long discussions in journals about it? Knowing that would really help in understanding if Intelligent Design theories really provide something differentiable.
And how does one predict what proportion of a genome should be ‘junk’ from a design perspective? I’ve never seen a quantitative argument from design but some proponents have suggested near 100% functionality. Do you agree? Why?
I guess when I say I’m looking for a positive idea of design, I need to clarify that I’m not asking about inspirational thoughts but rather concrete tests and ideas.
I certainly do not accept quote mining as evidence. Junk DNA as a term means different things in particular contexts. It doesn’t mean what ID wants it to mean.
It’s obvious that it didn’t mean what Francis Collins thought it meant, either. So, what exactly is your point? What misunderstanding do you think I have? @pnelson , @Agauger , can you help straighten this out?
Unfortunately, when Joshua split off the thread some of my later edits got stuck. Could’ve been a problem with my phone’s browser as well. Back to the PC…
Guy, how does one predict what proportion of a genome should be ‘junk’ from such a design perspective? I’ve never seen a quantitative argument from design but some proponents have suggested near 100% functionality. Is that reasonable? Do you agree? Why?
I guess when I say I’m looking for a positive idea of design, I need to clarify that I’m not asking about inspirational thoughts but rather concrete tests and ideas. For example, in YEC with its special creation by kinds, a rather bold claim would be that kinds represent very distinct groups separated by large, unbridgeable, genetic and biochemical gaps. And that’s a reasonable proposal, based on specific ideas of how God created the kinds. This didn’t turn out to be the case but it was a positive proposal that would likely distinguish itself from common descent. A global flood would also have left rather distinguishable marks on land. Back to ID… Dembski made a go at something with ‘Specified complexity’ and Behe with ‘Irreducible complexity’. They didn’t get far and I feel there’s been a dry spell since then.
I would agree that we do not yet have 100 % function mapped out, and that some on the jury might still be out. My statement was that this was a positive prediction of ID, in which direction the ball has now moved. It was not a mere negation, the gist of which I agree with you about. But, even this much was called a false history by a specialist I admire, after citing how even Francis Collins walked his own claims back! For students of irony, this seems to be case history material.
At this point, I think we may all of us be tapping each other on the shoulder, and I may be accused of starting “Groundhog’s Day” again… just when I’m, to my perspective, livening things up!
Colloquially, we could say “God doesn’t make junk,” but that sets off alarm bells. So, we can ask, “why would an intelligent designer leave junk lying around; maybe it isn’t junk?”
OK. And now some web references about ‘Junk DNA’. These are links to bloggers/scientists that have a pretty good grasp on the history of the terms involved:
Perhaps 15-20 years ago, a bioscientist (I don’t recall his specific area of expertise) posting under the pseudonym of Mike Gene said that design considerations lead him to deduce a connection between cell components that hadn’t been previously characterized. There were two lines of questioning that followed. The first area was whether specific knowledge about design necessarily led to this conclusion. Mike answered that his conception of ‘design thinking’ inspired him to search this way. The second line of discussion was whether what was found was distinguishable from ‘evolutionarily inspired’ thinking. That turned out to be negative: There was nothing to differentiate the results. Mike Gene never suggested that this proved design, only that he thought ‘design thinking’ lead him to results he wouldn’t have expected otherwise. So, that was a bit of a weak connection. It also turned out that other scientists, working with no ‘design thinking’ heuristic found the connections a bit earlier, as the result of basic biochemical characterization studies.
@T.j_Runyon , or, maybe it isn’t junk. It’s not unlikely, given I was “made” by that intelligent designer, that we do have similar psychology.
In your scenario, @Argon , it turns out both “sides” benefitted from “design thinking,” no matter how they characterized the rest. That would hardly seem to be positive evidence of a negation.
The presence of junk DNA (aka Nonfunctional DNA) is perfectly compatible with Design. In fact, if a designer is not going to constantly repair the genomes of existing species in order to keep them viable over the long term, I don’t think species can maintain genome sizes are large as we find without much of the DNA being non-functional. It’s also a natural consequence of genome evolution and common descent. I can’t understand why some of the biologists who are ID proponents would say that numbers approaching 100% of the human genome should be functional.
The genome already has functional components to edit out accidental changes. It’s part of the “design,” whether one characterizes that as “accidental” or not.
In my short stories the characters i create are often absolutely nothing like me. So I don’t know how you can say it’s not unlikely. Every designer, artist etc. do things in different ways. We have no good reason to expect or not expect junk DNA. Certain ID proponents may have predicted no junk but that is not a legitimate prediction of ID.