Sandwalk: An IDiot Software Developer Opines About Junk DNA

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

An IDiot Software Developer Opines About Junk DNA

Randy "I want to believe" Stimpson is a software developer who thinks he understands biology. He has written a post where he claims Most DNA is not Junk. Doppelganger has already pointed out the most obvious faults with Randy's point of view [Software developer PROVES that there is no junkDNA*... and other stuff].I just want to comment on one small paragraph in order to clear up any confusion.

A bacterial genome has 4 million base pairs of DNA and according to Professor Larry Morgan, a bacterial genome doesn’t have junk. So I think it is safe to say that there is at least 1MB of information in the human genome.

I'm pretty sure he's referring to me. I'd like to point out for the record that bacterial genomes range in size from about 10⁶ bp up to 10⁷ bp.

All bacterial genomes have junk DNA consisting mostly of defective transposons and defective prophage. In most cases the amount of junk DNA is only a few percent of the genome.

The views expressed by Randy Stimpson are typical of those who desperately want to believe in intelligent design creationism. Junk DNA is not compatible with intelligent design creationism no matter how you cut it.

6 comments :

Optimistix said...: While I can understand all the other criticism, I don't understand what the basis for calling him an IDiot is. Where did he say anything that betrays a creationist outlook?

I think "intelligent designer" as a pseudonym refers to his work as a software engineer. Of course, this is based soley on the two posts and several comments that I've seen - but based on that, it seems like a case of misunderstanding .; Wednesday, February 20, 2008 7:48:00 PM
Chris Harrison said...: Rileen, if you browse his other posts you'll find delicious nuggets such as this:

"As I have explained in many of my blogs, evolution is not compatible with hard science. It is simply the religion of athiests(sic)."; Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:35:00 PM
Eamon Knight said...: Oh gods, the stupid on that blog makes my head hurt (read the post about "10 Pennies". On second thought, don't).; Wednesday, February 20, 2008 11:55:00 PM
Optimistix said...: Thanks, Chris - I hadn't read most of his posts, just one or two besides the two in which he talks about junk DNA.; Thursday, February 21, 2008 6:39:00 PM
Randy Stimpson said...: Hi Larry “I want to believe 97% of DNA is junk” Moran,

Sorry about misspelling your name. Luckily I didn't I didn't misspell it as Moron. Indeed I was quoting a comment you made on your blog. Not because it was accurate but because your a hostile witness against junk DNA. By the way, you never did answer my last question in that exchange.

So why is it that you think I am so desperate to believe?; Wednesday, February 27, 2008 8:48:00 PM
Unknown said...: I'm a believer and I will state that I believe God is intelligent.

However, God is a LISP hacker dammit and any software developer who can't comprehend the idea that DNA is a self-modifying program needs to go back to Visual BASIC.

Now when I say self-modifying I'm not refering to the actual code being rewritable at run time (sorry but thems is still atoms and atoms don't have high energy nuclear reactions within the cell) but rather two specific things:

1. What the code produces in successive readings
2. and as others have said, whether the same genes are turned on at different read times which affects #1.

I do however think it's very possible that there are redundancies and fault management features and perhaps some error correction features.

Yet, the suggestion that complexity requires a massive spaghetti code is disappointing, if not depressing.; Friday, May 01, 2009 6:31:00 AM

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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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

An IDiot Software Developer Opines About Junk DNA

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