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Quote of the week

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

“To be sure, there’s still much we don’t know about the [human] genome.  But the more we study genetics, the more function we discover.  Evolution’s love affair with viewing our bodies as clumsy accidents is hindering science.  In contrast, when we view DNA as intelligently designed, we can make useful predictions that bear good scientific fruit, advancing our knowledge of how cells work.”

      Casey Luskin, PhD scientist and associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Comment: Back in 1972, renowned Japanese scientist Susumu Ohno introduced the term “junk DNA” into the scientific lexicon and proposed that “at least 90% of the mammalian genomic DNA appears to represent nonsense.”  Then, in 2003, well-known atheist and microbiologist Richard Dawkins reinforced this notion in his book A Devil’s Chaplin – stating that “genomes are littered with nonfunctional junk.”

Theistic evolutionists – i.e., Christians who believe God created life through evolution – were chiming in, although to a lesser degree.  In his 2006 book The Language of God, theistic evolutionist Francis Collins said that about 45% of the human genome is little better than “genetic flotsam and jetsam.”

Meantime, proponents of intelligent design (ID) were encouraging scientists to search for function in all the DNA material that was considered junk.  Indeed, to establish that 100% of DNA material is functional is to establish virtually incontrovertible proof that our body structure was not evolutionary random chance but the result of a supernatural intelligent designer – i.e., God.  The idea is that an intelligent designer of anything does not throw in parts that are useless.

Now, an ongoing genetic project called ENCODE, which involves hundreds of scientists, has published findings in a top journal (Nature) that show biochemical activity (function) for over 80% of the human genome.  Most of the newly discovered DNA functioning involves production of RNA (ribonucleic acid), which plays a key role in protein synthesis, gene regulation, and cellular communication.  One lead ENCODE researcher predicted that as more human cell types are studied, that 80% will go to 100%. 

That was in 2012.  Three years later, Francis Collins more or less threw in the towel by admitting: “In terms of junk DNA, we don’t use that tern 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.”

But many evolutionary biologists are not moved by these discoveries.  For example, Professor Dan Graur at the University of Houston admitted that if ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong.  However, his answer was not to “surrender” but to propose that if most or all the human genome is producing RNA, then it is randomly producing “junk RNA.”  Essentially, all he did was move the goal posts farther down the field.

Amid all this discovery of DNA function, I recently read that atheism is on the rise in this country and abroad.  So isn’t it interesting that just as science is coming closer to proving the existence of an intelligent designer (God) of the universe, many people are looking the other way?  Funny how that works. 

But scientifically or otherwise, if you seek God, you will find Him.  And if you don’t, you probably won’t.  Meanwhile, science may be forcing the issue.