PROOF against evolution

Given that Buz may or may not agree with this I do plan to be a little more careful about referring to those stretches of DNA as "junk". He's had that result at least.They don't code for functional proteins, and their sequence may be more or less random, but they're certainly not without advantage.

Not sure why you say this. What advantage are you thinking of? While this could easily change in the future as genetics and microbiology research continues, there is no scientifically established function at present for almost all non-coding DNA sequences, only evidence supporting that some of it may do something. Junk DNA seems a perfectly acceptable, and the most widely understand, way to refer to them at the present time. Am I missing something?--Percy

I guess I was trying to acknowledge that the mere presence of large, non-coding, randomly generated sequences of DNA prevents mutations at more sensitive sites, to a large degree. "Junk" kind of implies that there's no selective advantage at all, which doesn't seem to be true - the presence of that DNA prevents - soaks up, kind of - mutations at more important sites, to a degree.But I'm operating at the fringe of my knowledge here, so you may disagree with my interpretation of the work "junk".

I don't really want to get into the main topic of this argument i.e. Proof against evolution, but I have to agree with crashfrog that "junk DNA" is a horrid term. 9% of the genome is composed of human endogenous retroviruses. Their LTRs serve as promoters, potential promoters, sites likely to recombine (important for evolution), some are transcriptionally active, and some have known function. This is just HERVs...non-LTR retrotransposons and other retroelements make up over 50% of the genome. Some of these are also active. Of the open reading frames identified by the various genome projects (not retroelements) a huge number have no known function....lumping all of this into the term junk DNA is probably part of the reason we don't know why the same medicine affects people differently, to how different developmental pathways are regulated...because most of the genome is considered junk since it cannot be assigned to the few biochemical pathways that are well studied a lot of data is ignored. There are clearly sequences that have no function and are hanging around for the ride like a lot of mitochondrial pseudogenes for example. But a better term would be sequences of unknown function for most of the genome... and reserve junk DNA for the examples where this has been shown to be the case...my two cents.

Buzsaw, Crashfrog and Mammuthus,The points about "junk DNA" being poor terminology make sense to me, and I have no problem abandoning the term here. Unfortunately, despite its drawbacks it seems likely it will remain a term in widespread use elsewhere.Trying to undo the damange I've done by helping bring this thread back on topic, I think the last on-topic point was the one by Buzz that RM couldn't produce life's complexity. I think the points concerning junk DNA (whoops) are not really relevant. Just before that Buzz had commented that the human genome is the most complex, which of course isn't true, and Crashfrog pointed this out.I'm not sure how Buzz's line of argument disproves evolution, anyway.--Percy

Well, I think his point was that NS + RM is an insufficient explanation for the "complexity" of a human being, because you'd need as much complexity in the DNA, and RM can't give you that much complexity.Which is of course not really true. Apparently DNA only has to be so complex to produce animals of varying "complexity" or "advancement". Of course all this still stems from a view of evolution that puts man at the top of a very long ladder, with all other species on the lower rungs.As has been pointed out, evolution is a bush, not a ladder. Man isn't at the top but simply one more branch.I have yet to hear a definition of information that I feel is relevant to DNA in the first place, as well as a definition of "complexity" that's different from total genetic material. Honestly, if this is the best it can do I have to say that so far, "information theory" sounds like a "load of tosh", as they might say. I'm sure it's a great theory but I don't understand its relevance to biology.

I think that information theory can be applied to biology, but it's even easier to misapply than probability theory. Intuitive ideas of "information" can be misleading even without the tricks some creationists play.Generally creationist arguments play on that aspect.An example is Werner Gitt's "information theory" - which is used to sneak in the assumption that DNA is the product of intelligence.

I just see information theory as too simplistic a model of communication. I'm an arty type, so I always see communication in three relationships - the relationship of the artist (or speaker) to the audience (or listener), the relationship of the artist to the work (or the communication), and the relationship of the work to the audience.These aren't equivalent, which is why debate is always possible about what is meant, and what was said, and what this or that "signifies". I just don't see how something as tenuous and open to interpretation as "information" can be the basis for any kind of scientific theory.It's like, how much information is there in a Chinese dictionary if nobody can read Chinese? How do you tell the difference between a Chinese dictionary and a book's worth of random Chinese characters?

The Creationist position confuses meaning with information. In formal information theory, information is an abstract and quantifiable concept representing the capacity of a communications channel, storage medium, etc, to carry or store information. In it's simplest form the capacity is equal to 2 raised to the power of the number of bits, but there are all kinds of coding schemes that can come into play and that improve reliability at the cost of redundancy.As formally defined, the less predictable the next bit in a stream, the greater its information content. A truly random bit stream is the maximum amount of information that a channel can carry.Creationists confuse information with meaning and argue that a random bit stream carries no information, when what they should really say is that a random bit stream has no meaning.Claude Shannon's original paper on information theory is not too hard to follow. In fact, anyone can understand the non-mathematical portions: http://cm.bell-labs.com/...s/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf--Percy

Below is the exchange about RM/NS, Percey, which you suggested I repost for your response. Thanks.quote:
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2. NS is impossible without RM. So the buck stops, so to speak with RM.
Percy:
Yet another meaningless, unsupported bare assertion, and another violation of the guidelines.
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Buz:
As a matter of fact, I used plain old common sense to come up with my conclusion that alleged NS wouldn't happen before alleged RM. So when you debunked it as "unsupported bare assertion", in defense, the support was found very quickly in a search. Consider this from an academic source:Link quote:
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The conventional wisdom suggests that random mutation precedes natural selection, i.e., random mutations that allowed giraffes to reach higher leaves than their competitors fixed in the population.
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Hi, Buzz!First, a quick correction: Percy is not spelled "Percey". Two points in reply:

1. I meant meaningless in the context of my post, which was about your misinterpretation of the Washington Post article, and never mentions RM or NS. Perhaps irrelevant would have been a better choice of words. Maybe your point was intended to be interpreted in terms of your earlier discussion with Crashfrog?
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2. Your statement is incorrect. NS only requires a storehouse of variation within the population's genome upon which to draw. RM adds to the storehouse. Your later clarification that "NS wouldn't happen before alleged RM" I find no fault with, assuming you mean that RM is necessary to building up a storehouse of variation.

Perhaps we can return to the original point of my Message 61, which explained at length and with references to two much more clear descriptions of the same research from Science News and Scientific American how you had misinterpreted the Washington Post article. Is the proper meaning now clear?Or perhaps we can return to the discussion about information in the genome in light of the clarification about information theory that I offered in Message 84. Is it now clear how the Creationist position on information erroneously confuses meaning with the concept of information as defined by information theory? You might find it helpful to first read and understand Claude Shannon's paper: http://cm.bell-labs.com/...s/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdfThere is no urgency to reply. Please take all the time you need.--Percy

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First, a quick correction: Percy is not spelled "Percey".

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My apologies for this oversight.

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I meant meaningless in the context of my post, which was about your misinterpretation of the Washington Post article, and never mentions RM or NS. Perhaps irrelevant would have been a better choice of words. Maybe your point was intended to be interpreted in terms of your earlier discussion with Crashfrog?

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I guess with so much to respond to so quickly, things have just gone to fast for me to really clarify the points I wish to make.1. The point I wanted to make with Nancy Pearcey's (her name spelling, i.e. "cey" is what messed me up on your's) link was that RM must proceed NS in the process of NS and to do so, RM would have to provide the information for NS to progress/and advance the alleged evolution of life. But as Nancy's link states, RM does not produce lots of information.2. With the new Dec 5/02 discovery concerning mice/human genomes, there would have to be far more advancement of information by RM to produce the amount of information being discovered in the genome.

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Your statement is incorrect. NS only requires a storehouse of variation within the population's genome upon which to draw. RM adds to the storehouse. Your later clarification that "NS wouldn't happen before alleged RM" I find no fault with, assuming you mean that RM is necessary to building up a storehouse of variation.

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Of course, that's what I meant. To have it, it must be built up first by RM. Right? What else could it mean? I just assumed that that could easily be understood by the reader.

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Perhaps we can return to the original point of my Message 61, which explained at length and with references to two much more clear descriptions of the same research from Science News and Scientific American how you had misinterpreted the Washington Post article. Is the proper meaning now clear?

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I don't think I missinterpreted it at all. The point I intended to make and did make with it was that what scientists had long thought of as relatively useless in the DNA is now very significant and in fact the article compared it to the discovery of the Rossetta Stone, so far as human knowledge goes in genetics.

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If you go to the Washington Post site for the article ('Junk DNA' Contains Essential Information) you'll see that Justin Gillis is a staff writer, not a science writer. He seems to have incorrectly focused on junk DNA as the significant finding. Crashfrog correctly notes that though the opening paragraph seems to be saying that it's been discovered that most junk DNA actually has a purpose, if you read the rest of the article you'll see that all they've done is discovered that some junk DNA *may* have a purpose. Hence, as crashfrog says, less DNA may be junk than we previously thought, but just a little less, not a lot less.

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"A little less?" Then why this in the article?

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Scientists have always known the instruction book would be important, but few of them imagined it would be so large a proportion of the genome--the implication being that the instructions, and the machinery for interpreting them, may matter as much or more than the genes themselves. Key scientists said the new discoveries were likely to force them to abandon the term "junk DNA" and send them back to the drawing board to come up with sweeping new models for how nature builds and maintains organisms.

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I don't see your argument that a staff writer is incapable of reporting scientific news accurately. If he can't do that they'd better replace him. Are you saying he added his own views to it? Also, your cited mouse/man link from the Scientific American never mentioned the new discovery and evidently didn't factor that in the statement about the non coded protein.I'm not being able to bring up the Shannon link.

Percy, I got in to the Shannon report, but don't see how this 1948 report adds much to our discussion??

If you read on the Washington Post article says this:

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The big surprise in the research, however, was that about 5 percent of the genetic material of mice and people is highly conserved, and matching genes alone can account for only about 2 percent of it. That means as much as 3 percent of the genetic material is playing a critical but mysterious role--one so important nature has kept that genetic information largely intact for 75 million years.

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Well that is clear enough. Only 3% of the supposed "junk" is included and 95% of the genome is neither genes nor the sorts of sequences discussed in the article.Now tell my why Percy should have to prove that a staff writer must make mistakes when the mistakes are clearly there ? And why you are ignoring parts of the article you are trying to use as evidence ?

Despite the title, this topic did start out as an "Origin of Life" topic. Might this "Junk DNA" discussion be better served elsewhere?I gave the pre-existing "Junk DNA" topic a bump - but it was also badly off-topic, so I closed it. In the closing message, I gave a link to another "Junk DNA" related topic. Perhaps either it, or a new "Junk DNA II" topic would be a good thing.Adminnemooseus