“Junk” DNA and its Impact on ID

Evolutionists applauded the “discovery” of “junk” DNA, which they thought represented leftover and now non-functioning DNA from our evolutionary ancestors. After all, why would an Intelligent Designer pack our genes with worthless DNA? No, a Designer would never have done such a thing! Only the undirected processes of evolution could explain this.

However, the Encore project (2012), a consortium of 400 international scientists, found little evidence for junk or leftover DNA:

• “These data [of their research conducted over the year] enabled us to assign biochemical functions to 80 percent of the genome, in particular outside of the well-studied protein-coding regions [and into what had once been regarded as ‘junk’].” Ewan Birney, ENCODE’s lead analyst, explained in Discover Magazine that since ENCODE studied 147 types of cells, and the human body has a few thousand cell types, “it’s likely that 80 percent will go to 100 percent. Another senior ENCODE researcher noted that “almost every nucleotide is associated with a function.” A headline in Science declared, “ENCODE project writes eulogy for junk DNA.” (Casey Luskin, Salvo Magazine, Winter 2014, 52-53)
  

What is the significance of their findings? It’s a major blow to the theory of evolution and support for Design (ID)!

However, it is not just IDers who regard these findings as vindication. Atheist and biologist Dan Graur also admits their profound impact:

• If the human genome is indeed devoid of junk DNA as implied by the ENCORE project, then a long, undirected evolutionary process cannot explain the human genome. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, then all DNA, or as much as possible, is expected to exhibit function. If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong. (54)

Graur understands that the stakes are high, but is hoping – perhaps even praying - that ENCODE will eventually be proved wrong.

Dogs, “Junk” DNA and Design

Intra-species variation doesn’t mean evolution. To put it another way, even though we find tremendous variation among dogs – this includes wolves, coyotes and foxes – it doesn’t mean that all of the assembly information (DNA) evolved through random mutation. In fact it couldn’t have! Bruce Malone, Search for the Truth Ministries (TRUTH@SEARCHFORTHETRUTH.NET), writes in his newsletter:

• All biologists and geneticists now know that every dog on the planet originated less than 10,000 years ago as a result of the selection of information contained within the genetic code of a wild grey wolf…Absolutely no evolution of information has happened – just a sorting of the many characteristics needed to produce the various breeds of dogs and wild canines of today.

This means that the great variation noted within various emerging sub-species does not require a lengthy process and a macro-evolutionary explanation. Instead, variation – as in the case of the canine family – can be explained as a product of the design and genetic inheritance of the original wolf. If so much information can be packed into one genome, perhaps Noah’s Ark was big enough!

Within the same newsletter (Winter 2012) Malone writes about the fallacy of “junk DNA”:

• For over twenty years, it has been widely reported that less than 2% of the coded information on the human DNA molecule is used to produce proteins…Thus 98% of the DNA sequence was assumed to be useless leftover junk from our evolutionary past. This was accepted evolutionary dogma for many years…Even within the last 5 years, Dr. Francis Collins (head of the human genome project), stated in his book, The Language of God, that roughly 45% of the human genome is made up of repetitive flotsam and jetsam and that this junk provides “compelling” evidence for the evolutionary origin of humanity. Yet we can now conclusively show that essentially all the DNA’s coded sequence (including repetitive sections) serves multiple purposes and functions.

If the presence of “junk” DNA – leftover non-functioning DNA from ancestral life-forms – argues in favor of evolution, then the lack of such should argue against evolution! This absence of junk DNA should also argue that we aren’t the result of a mindless, purposeless process but of Intelligent design!

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