Sandwalk: Google AI references a "Biblical Genetics" video in claiming that junk DNA is no longer considered junk

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Google AI references a "Biblical Genetics" video in claiming that junk DNA is no longer considered junk

Today I did a routine search for "junk DNA" "2025" to see if misinformation is still dominating the web. It is, but that's not the most surprising thing I discovered. Here's what Google AI told me at the top of the search page.

In 2025, "junk DNA" is no longer considered junk, as new studies show it plays vital roles in gene regulation and development. Research from 2025 indicates that these sequences, many of which come from ancient viruses, can act as "genetic switches" that influence how genes are turned on or off and how cells respond to their environment. This has led to potential breakthroughs in regenerative medicine and cancer treatment by providing new therapeutic targets.

This video explains how what was once considered junk DNA has been found to contain thousands of new genes:

The video is by Robert Carter who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology. His site is called Biblical Genetics. He also posts on creation.com

Carter sounds like he knows what he's talking about but he's just parroting all the misinformation that permeates the scientific literature. The main message of this video is that scientists were shocked to discover that the human genome only had 20,000 protein coding genes but we now know (no, we don't) that each gene makes many different proteins and that accounts for the "missing" complexity that all the experts had expected.¹

We also "know" (no, we don't) that scientists have discovered tens of thousands of new protein coding genes that make small proteins. He references a Science article by Elizabeth Penissi who has been spreading misinformation about the human genome for more than 25 years.

It's not surprising that Robert Carter wants to discredit the idea of junk DNA. What's surprising is that Google AI is directing readers to a creationist video.

1. The knowledgeable experts predicted that the human genome would have fewer than 30,000 genes and that's exactly what was found when the human genome sequence was published.

3 comments :

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...: Not that it would be any better to cite one of Nature's or ENCODE's absurd propaganda videos in this respect. They contain the same stupid misinformation.; Tuesday, October 21, 2025 3:03:00 PM
Steve Watson said...: It's not surprising at all that AI references a creationist video. Unfortunate, yes, but not surprising.; Tuesday, October 21, 2025 4:07:00 PM
Mitchell said...: The answers of the Google search AI are based on the first page or so, of ordinary search results. The AI (Gemini) is more skeptical when you ask it something directly.; Tuesday, October 21, 2025 4:25:00 PM

Quotations

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.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

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.1339
The 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.335
The 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

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Google AI references a "Biblical Genetics" video in claiming that junk DNA is no longer considered junk

3 comments :