Junk DNA Poll
If you haven't answered the junk DNA poll question in the margin then now's the time! There's only one week left.
The results so far are surprising—very different from my previous poll on this topic. It looks like one side is wining.
Strolling with a skeptical biochemist
The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly
seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.
The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84
It looks like one side is wining.
ReplyDeleteOr the structure of your readership is changing.
My meta-vote on the change in answers to this second poll compared to the first is: it's now easy to find a recent post that summarizes how much of a human genome is almost certainly junk and how much is clearly functional. If you can do basic arithmatic, you can vote in this poll based on the evidence.
ReplyDeleteSo far it seems that 2/3 of respondents believe Larry is wrong.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this is a "junk" poll that is completely unscientific.
@Atheistoclast - what percentage think you're wrong?
ReplyDeleteI don't think it makes any claim to be 'science', either way.