85% of our DNA is JUNK, Hardly 'Intelligent design'

Another Creationist Buster string that the godist Trolls wouldn't touch with a ten foot poll, even if they had 3-digit IQs. They can't discuss Science strings, only TROLL the section with their own garbage: goofy boobtubes and empty claims, that we are happy to debunk.

DNA: optimised source code?
by Matthew Cobb
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/dna-optimised-source-code/

<......>This isn&#8217;t right. DNA is NOT subject to &#8216;the most aggressive optimisation process in the universe&#8217;. Our genes are NOT perfectly adapted and beautifully designed. They are a Horrible, historical Mess. That is partly what distinguishes biology from physics and maths &#8211; it is the outcome of historical processes &#8211; evolution and natural selection* &#8211; which leave their past traces in the genome.

For reasons we don&#8217;t understand, many eukaryotic genes (that is, genes in organisms with a nucleus &#8211; so all multicellular organisms and some single-celled forms, too) are sometimes split up, interspersed by apparently meaningless sequences, called &#8216;introns&#8217;. Although the average intron is only 40 bases long, one of the introns in the human dystrophin gene is more than 300,000 bases long! In some rare cases, the intron of one gene can even contain a completely separate, protein-encoding gene.

This isn&#8217;t the result of &#8216;optimisation&#8217;: it&#8217;s due to the fact that, as François Jacob put it, evolution does not design, it tinkers. It fiddles around with stuff to hand, and as long as it works, that&#8217;s all that matters.

We know that only 5% of the human genome encodes proteins (when Francis Crick was working on the meaning of the genetic code in the 1950s, he assumed that&#8217;s all that a gene would ever do). We now know that another 5-10% is regulatory DNA, which produces RNA that regulates the activity of other genes. As to the remaining 85% &#8211; around 2.7 billion base pairs &#8211; it appears mainly to be &#8216;junk&#8217;,
which has No apparent function &#8211; if it were deleted, it would Not affect the fitness of the organism at all.
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I disagree, I believe we can't make the assumption it's junk until we understand DNA fully, this is still some way off. There have been discoveries of junk dna not being junk... just googled and found it here

Not 'junk' anymore: Obscure DNA has key role in stroke damage

don't have the time now but I'm pretty sure this happened quite a number of years ago also, this is not an isolated case

 

One man's junk is another man's treasures?

So the process of evolution is not design, but something tinkering. What is tinkering? Evolution it tinkering? Why would evolution tinker? Is it bored? What drives the tinkering? Is that some purpose here? Why a purpose? Isn't it easier to have nothing, instead of something?

Why not a universe in utter disorder? Why order? What sees order? Consciousness? What exactly is consciousness? There is great order involved, just for consciousness to exist. How can that consciousness know that it is conscious? And then that consciousness have the ability to understand the universe which it arose in?

Can reality, the universe ever be totally understand by making the assumption that matter is all there is? Or is materialism nothing more than a tool in which we can break the universe, reality up into greater number of bits, for this is the only way a brain made of matter, can get a handle on it? Is reality really mechanistic, or is that just the way the brain has to understand it? For being matter, of matter, it is limited, in this understanding? Does this limitation that cannot see outside of that limitation mean that nothing else outside of matter exists? Or does it mean, matter cannot touch what is not matter? If matter is the tool, but it is insufficient, does not mean nothing outside of matter exists?

There is an assumption that is at the foundation of materialism. That assumption is not subject to science. It is a wall that science cannot penetrate. But we make that assumption, and from that assumption we look at the universe using an assumption. And we look at dna in a way that is based upon that assumption. But is the assumption fact? We do not know, but we then forget that the way of looking at matter, at dna is an assumption. That assumption is, there is only matter. There is nothing outside of matter, and there is no intelligence, outside of matter, time, space, that has something to do with it. We assume there is only matter. So the parameters are created, based upon an assumption. Then we act like no assumption was ever made. And then we get arrogant about it.

 

Afraid not.
It says "mainly Junk".
You finding One bitsy example for one gene of billions does NOT disagree with "Mainly."
I'm sure there'll be scores, perhaps hundreds, more, which still won't.
And you obviously have plenty of time, but couldn't could Not find a substantial number, re 2.69+ Billion Gene pairs.

Holy BS!
Look at that rant.
Paragraphs full of aimless philosophizing Junk: ("Materialism", "consciousness") And assorted other aimless garbage.

"Tinkering" is trial and error random mutation, with only the very rare one being of use.
Leaving lots of little messes from a Billion years of common descent.
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Think of DNA the same way you'd think of a computer program. Over time, the code of that program is updated, expanded, and improved. But remnants of the old code still remain even if they aren't used. You'll find this in software that hasn't been rewritten, but instead has been patched and updated. World of Warcraft the PC game is a good example. The game engine itself is over 10 years old and is still used to run the game even though it's systems have been updated and improved over time. DNA is not guided with the intent and precision that human created software is, so it's natural to find a bunch of stuff in there that the specific species it belongs to may not be using anymore.

Intelligent design is simply the attempt to make sense of the complexity we see. Some humans assume that complexity could not happen on it's own but really they have no idea whether it could or not because it's hard for a human being who have lives usually measured in less than 100 years to believe that life, given thousands to millions of years, would never change into something different. Our lives are too short to see the changes happening so we assume they must be guided somehow. ID also allows an argument for intent. Things are the way they are because they're supposed to be that way rather than it just being the result of cause and effect. It's an attempt to add an artificial order to the world so that things are easier to understand. For some, it's just a way to get their religion into arguments where it very much does not belong.

But all of it can be summed up with one short sentence.

Human beings are afraid of the dark.

 

The term junk dna was coined I believe in the 1960’s, that’s horse and cart when we talk about genetic science.

In May 2016 this study was published by the University of Toronto

Shedding light on the 'dark matter' of the genome
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160519120935.htm

You can also go to science daily and search “junk dna”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/search/?keyword=junk+dna#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=junk%20dna&gsc.page=1

You’re going to find at least 5 pages of links to numerous studies contradicting your claim on junk dna, too many to list here

I believe until we have a full understanding of human dna, it's premature labelling any of it junk in fact with all the evidence to the contrary the word "junk dna" just makes me cringe.

 

here here...excellent reprisal

the term "junk" refers to non-coding areas of DNA.

It is absolutely poor semantics, because there are hidden treasures to even the non-coding parts.

Call it what it is...non-coding. This does not therefore render it effectively useless to an organism.

Case in point.

Scientific American: The ENCODE project has revealed a landscape that is absolutely teeming with important genetic elements&#8212;a landscape that used to be dismissed as &#8220;junk DNA.&#8221; Were our old views of how the genome is organized too simplistic?

source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hidden-treasures-in-junk-dna/

 

The problem is largely one of definition, but the OP remains substantially correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENCODE#Controversy

....The ENCODE project's claim that 80% of the human genome has biochemical function[17] was rapidly picked up by the popular press who described the results of the project as leading to the death of junk DNA.[37][38]

However the conclusion that most of the genome is "functional" has been criticized on the grounds that ENCODE project used a liberal definition of "functional", namely anything that is transcribed must be functional.

This conclusion was arrived at Despite the widely accepted view, based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics, that many DNA elements such as pseudogenes that are transcribed are nevertheless non-functional. Furthermore, the ENCODE project has emphasized sensitivity over specificity leading possibly to the detection of many false positives.[39][40][41].....​

Thank you!
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