Discovery Institute: Junk DNA Dismay

We have often pointed out that creationism is constructed in such a way that it always has an answer for whatever evidence may be found. That answer is that the latest research is no surprise to them because their creation science expects such results. Typical of this “we’re always right” behavior are the articles we sometimes ridicule showing that this creature, or that organ — or anything — is the way it is because that’s the way it was created (or intelligently designed).

All such claims have one striking feature in common — they don’t predict anything in advance. The creationists’ “theory” makes no predictions. Instead, it accepts anything and everything as “proof” of creation.

The principle involved is simple: If one begins with the arbitrary and unshakable premise that everything is designed, then whatever is seen must be the product of design — regardless of how odd and unexpected it may be. Nothing could be simpler, and nothing could be more worthless in seeking to understand the world.

Science, of course, functions differently. Facts are observed and hypotheses are developed to explain those facts. No hypothesis is taken seriously unless it makes predictions that can be tested — either in the lab or by observations of nature. If an hypothesis survives such tests, it eventually becomes accepted as a theory. If it doesn’t survive, it’s abandoned. If an idea leads to no testable predictions, it isn’t a scientific hypothesis. For a great example of how evolution theory makes testable predictions, see The Lessons of Tiktaalik.

Palm readers, astrologers, fortune tellers, and all similar charlatans instinctively understand that they should avoid making specific predictions. They always confine their prognostications to the most worthless generalizations: “You will take a journey,” or “You will meet a stranger,” or something equally ambiguous. Whenever they get specific they’re virtually certain to look like idiots. Predicting a date for the end of the world is a good example of this. For other examples, see unfulfilled religious predictions.

Unfortunately for the creationists, they sometimes get carried away and make predictions about what will be found, instead of sticking to post-discovery announcements that whatever has just been discovered was what they expected all along (but which they somehow never mentioned before it became known). Whenever they foolishly make predictions, they have an amazing track record of being wrong.

A great example of the colossal folly of creationist predictions is one we’ve been writing about since the earliest days of this humble blog — that there’s no such thing as junk DNA. The claim is that the genome is perfectly designed, without flaws or redundancies, and every little scrap of it is designed to be functional. This claim comes from the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute‘s creationist public relations and lobbying operation, the Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids, a/k/a the cdesign proponentsists).

Why do the Discoveroids insist on the non-existence of junk DNA? It’s because junk DNA offends their concept of an all-wise supernatural Designer — blessed be he! — who wouldn’t put any non-functional debris in the genome. We note that the Discoveroids’ more honest and forthright creationist cousins, the young-earth creationists, can openly resort to religion to blame such things on the degeneration caused by Original Sin. But the Discoveroids’ litigation strategy requires them to pretend that their motives are purely scientific; thus they’re stuck with their mantra that the genome is intelligently designed by an unknown, but — cough, cough — not necessarily divine designer.

We’re confident that we didn’t write about all the Discoveroids’ posts discussing junk DNA, but these will be sufficient to give you the general idea:

• The first time was Discovery Institute: Astounding Stupidity. It was a bold declaration by Casey Luskin — our favorite creationist — who said:

[I]ntelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function.

• After Casey’s original proclamation that junk DNA didn’t exist, we wrote Imperfect Design: Casey v. Richard Dawkins. That wasn’t about junk DNA, but it was about junky design, in which Casey says, about one of Richard Dawkins’ examples of spectacularly un-intelligent design:

[It has] never been clear to me why “imperfect design” should refute design. … “Imperfect design”… is still design.

• Then we wrote Discovery Institute Battles BioLogos about a Discoveroid claim that the case for Darwinian evolution is literally based on junk DNA. The Discoveroids even invented a new straw-man they called “the argument from junk DNA,” a non-existent argument that depends on the non-existent premise that no function will ever be found for any of it.

• Then we wrote Casey’s Crusade Against Junk DNA about a post by Casey that discusses some research (not done by creationists) showing that some regions of what had been considered junk DNA may play a role in gene regulation. It never occurs to Casey to wonder, if junk DNA is potentially so detrimental to “Darwinists,” why do they keep looking to find functions for it? And if they find some function, why do they publish their findings?

• Then we wrote Discovery Institute: There’s No Junk DNA about a new book by Jonathan Wells (a Discoveroid “Senior Fellow”) titled The Myth of Junk DNA, which was published by the venerable Discovery Institute Press. But the Discoveroids make no attempt to explain what may be the best example of how the genome is jammed full of junk. It’s something we wrote about before: A Japanese Plant Has the World’s Biggest Genome. That plant’s genome is 50 times longer than the genome of a human being. [Addendum: Hey -- wouldja believe it? -- the amoeba has a genome ten times larger than ours.]

Why do the Discoveroids spend so much time on this silly prediction of theirs? Because it’s their only pretense of having a scientific theory. They’ve made a prediction based on their “theory,” so it must be true — notwithstanding the vast abundance of evidence to the contrary. Without that prediction, all they’ve got is poor old William Paley’s 1802 theological argument, the watchmaker analogy. Well, they’ve also got the claim that because of their spiritual purity and scientific superiority they are able to detect design when the rest of us cannot.

After all that background, let’s briefly discuss the latest gem at the Discoveroids’ blog: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: HuffPost Reviews The Myth of Junk DNA. It’s about an article at the Huffington Post by John Farrell about Jonathan Wells’ The Myth of Junk DNA. This is the article the Discoveroids are writing about: Intelligent Design: Struggling with Junk DNA.

Before we get to what the Discoveroids say, it should be noted that Farrell writes:

Genomes with no junk … do not necessarily imply intelligent design; they would fit quite well with the view of those biologists, like Richard Dawkins, who argue that natural selection really is the prime driver of evolution — because if junk DNA really were functionless, presumably natural selection would have weeded out those organisms that have too much of it. Indeed, this has been the default assumption for many biologists since the discovery of DNA that does not encode proteins.

On the other hand, the presence of copious amounts of junk DNA fits well with those biologists who think the other mechanisms of evolution, such as genetic drift or the spread of transposable elements, are major drivers of genome evolution, and that much apparently useless DNA would pass on from one generation to the next, as long as it was not overly harmful to reproductive fitness.

Right. No one could have predicted how junk-laden DNA would turn out to be. We can easily predict that anything truly detrimental to survival won’t be present in the genome, but it wasn’t known whether natural selection could tolerate such a vast amount of non-functional material. Obviously it can or we wouldn’t be here. As we’ve learned, that accumulated debris is useful — it’s a source of material that can, occasionally, mutate into something of value. As a bonus, it’s helpful in tracing ancestry.

Although evolutionary biologists couldn’t have known in advance that the genome would contain so much ancient debris, the creationists had their faith in the magic designer to guide them. An entity of such power and wisdom allows for only one prediction — no junk. That’s what their “science” predicts and they’re sticking with it.

Okay, now let’s get to the Discoveroids’ reaction to Farrell’s article. Incredibly, they’re criticizing the theory of evolution as being unscientific because it accepts any results at all — just as creationism does. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:

Farrell claims that whether the genome turns out to be clutter-free or lousy with junk, it’s all good. Either way, the Darwinian model would be confirmed: [then they quote what we quoted from Farrell].

Well, no. Farrell didn’t say that Darwin was “confirmed” either way. It’s simply the case that neither observation would contradict Darwin. What the Discoveroids don’t say, however, is that junk DNA definitely contradicts their claims about the celestial workmanship of their magical designer. Then they really pour it on:

Yes, it’s the venerable principle of Darwinian theory that says: Whatever turns out to be the case is retrospectively recognized as having been exactly what the theory predicted. So the genome is mostly junk? Just what we always thought. Or rather, the genome is not junk at all? Yes, again, just exactly what we always told you. … Darwinists want to have it both ways.

Amazing, isn’t it? Hey, there are loads of things that could have worked out other than the way they did. Does evolution predict that insects would have six legs? Why not eight? Why not four? There are successful organisms with all those configurations. Evolution doesn’t predict such things. We see that they happen, and we can see how they happened, but no one could have predicted that they would happen. Nor does the theory of evolution predict that the genome would be junky or clean — only that if it did contain junk that the junk wouldn’t be an impediment to survival. It’s the creationists who predict that DNA won’t be junky — not for functional reasons, but because of the sublime perfection of the Designer.

Here’s how the Discoveroid article ends:

Heads I win, tails you lose. It becomes, at a certain point, rather frustrating to try to argue with these people, even the better ones among them.

The creationists are getting frustrated? Well, why not? It must be very frustrating for them to deal with the screaming fact of junk DNA.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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