Re: [asa] Biologic Institute

I'm not sure it's a foundational problem, but it's a pretty big one for at least two reasons.

1. The DI ID people have made the "junk DNA" thing a big deal. It is easy to find claims by the DI crowd that function for "junk DNA" is a central prediction of ID. Jonathan Wells, quoted by Casey Luskin: "From an ID perspective, however, it is extremely unlikely that an organism would expend its resources on preserving and transmitting so much 'junk'." Hugh Ross has foolishly adopted non-coding DNA as a keystone argument as well. This means that ID proponents have publicly asserted that non-coding DNA should have a function and that this is a major prediction of ID. My conclusion is very similar to Rich's: ID apologists have staked quite a lot on function in non-coding DNA. Scientifically, I think it's one of their bigger mistakes.

2. The C-value paradox is devastating to any design-oriented account of genomic function, and would be devastating to an ID view of genomes even if no one at the Biologic Institute ever mentioned it. The marbled lungfish has a genome 40 TIMES THE SIZE of the human genome. The genome of the mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus) is at least 25 times the size of the human genome. Onions and grasshoppers have genomes many times the size of ours. I can't begin to imagine how someone would assemble a design-based explanation for observations like these. At the very least, the design theorist would have to confess that, at this point, the C-value paradox is an enormous barrier to the articulation of a minimally rational ID theory of genome structure and function. That vast stretches of the human genome (and scores of genomes like it) consist of repeated elements known to be related to (or identical to) mobile genetic elements is merely an exclamation point on an already hopeless situation for the current ID movement. If you don't see this as a huge problem for ID, then you probably aren't fully grasping the magnitude of the diversity of genome sizes and the stunning lack of correlation with any measure of anything even related to "complexity."

David, I don't know what you mean by the question below (simple/complex codes...huh?) but I assure you that assembling a meaningful design argument based on "complexity" with regard to genome size is practically impossible. That's the whole point of the C-value paradox.

Steve Matheson
  
>>> "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com> 05/12/08 4:28 PM >>>
Why is this a foundational problem? If even "simple" organisms have
"complex" genetic codes, couldn't that also support a design argument based
on complexity?

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 4:21 PM, Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I need to correct a typo.
>
> >
> >
> > 1. ID nowhere admits that there is a lack of correlation between DNA and
> > organizational complexity. Why are not the lay people told there is such a
> > foundational problem with Intelligent Design?
> >
> >
> It should be organismal and not organizational.
>
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck 
Associate Professor of Law 
Seton Hall University Law School 
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology 
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