A few years ago my college alma-mater conducted a public conference extolling what the organizers saw as the scientific certainty of Darwinian Evolution (DE) and the foolishness of creationism. When I found out about the symposium I wrote an email letter to the science faculty members who were listed as the event’s hosts. Though I knew what the answer would be, I asked them if, in fairness, they were going to include any scientists on the lecture program who might question DE. I inquired as to whether any scientist would present evidence for Intelligent Design (ID) theory, such as those associated with the Discovery Institute.
Needless to say, I never heard from anyone in the science departments, but I did get a terse response from a professor in the university’s Law School. I’m not sure why, but I guess someone had forwarded my email to him. His answer was that since ID was, in his opinion, not science and just another form of Creationism, it had no place even being acknowledged by the scientific community. So, he said, of course they had not invited an ID proponent to speak.
He also offered one piece of evidence that he contended proved conclusively that evolution was true. He asserted that biologists had found that most of human DNA genetic material was not used in the cell or the body for any known purpose. Thus, he indicated, this “Junk DNA”, as some scientists have called it, is nothing more than a useless vestige of earlier stages in our evolutionary progress and is incompatible with ID theory.
Well, I wonder if my evolutionist lawyer friend has read any of the world’s major newspapers this week. For instance, the New York Times online had a headline yesterday saying this: “Bits of Mystery DNA, Far From ‘Junk,’ Play Crucial Role.” The story indicates that biologists have unexpectedly discovered that nearly all the DNA in our cells serve important purposes for the sustenance of life.
The respected UK Guardian newspaper went so far as to put it this way: “Long stretches of DNA previously dismissed as “junk” are in fact crucial to the way our genome works, an international team of scientists said on Wednesday. … For years, the vast stretches of DNA between our 20,000 or so protein-coding genes — more than 98% of the genetic sequence inside each of our cells — was written off as “junk” DNA. Already falling out of favor in recent years, this concept will now, with Encode’s work, be consigned to the history books.” (Alok Jha, “Breakthrough study overturns theory of ‘junk DNA’ in genome,” UK Guardian (September 5, 2012).
(For a complete analysis of this finding visit the Discovery Institute’s website at http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/09/junk_no_more_en_1064001.html)
The point to all this, I believe, is that the incredible complexity of life, even at its most basic level, flies in the face of DE’s assertions that life is the product of pure time and chance. It seems that every new discovery only enhances the notion that life is the product of an Intelligent Designer/ Creator, who we as Christians call God. Maybe someday, as the evidence grows, Naturalists will be forced to come to grips with the truth.