Religion vs science (junk DNA): a blast from the past

I was checking out the science books in our local bookstore the other day and I came across Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall. It was published in 2015 but I don't recall seeing it before.

The author is an engineer (The Salem Conjecture) who's a big fan of Intelligent Design. The book is an attempt to prove that evolution is a fraud.

I checked to see if junk DNA was mentioned and came across the following passages on pages 273-275. It's interesting to read them in light of what's happened in the past four years. I think that the view represented in this book is still the standard view in the ID community in spite of the fact that it is factually incorrect and scientifically indefensible.

Take the issue of so-called junk DNA, or "non-coding DNA" as it's known today.¹ We are aware that 3 percent of the human genome codes for proteins.² In 1972, a scientist coined the term junk DNA to describe the 97 percent of DNA with no known function.³ Some scientists still maintain that large portions of the genome are useless accretions of evolutionary garbage.⁴

The ENCODE project ("Encyclopedia of DNA Elements") was started in 2003 to find all the functional elements of the human genome. The 'New York Times' announced, "Bits of Mystery DNA, Far from 'Junk,' Play Crucial Role," and went on to say.

The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as "junk" but that turns out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches.⁵

Science magazine's report was entitled. "ENCODE Project Writes Eulogy for Junk DNA." There is no such thing as junk in the trunk when it comes to DNA.⁶

A tiny contingent of diehard junk-DNA advocates, such as Larry Moran of the University of Toronto, insisted that the ENCODE announcement was a "media fiasco."⁷ ENCODE found over 80 percent of the genome is involved in RNA production, DNA expression, or replication, for at least one cell type. ENCODE has expanded into a family of investigations into noncoding DNA functions. ⁸

Do Larry Moran and other junk-DNA advocates also happen to share any particular bias with respect to religion? Check and see for yourself.

If we assume purposelessness in evolution, as is done in the 1.0 version, it's logical to expect a lot of junk. If we assume a designer, we assume there's a purpose to its inclusion, and therefore, look into it until we discover it's not really junk after all. ⁹

...

The people who say parts of DNA are junk say so out of ignorance, not knowledge. They don't know how to build a cell or a genome. They don't know what everything does. The burden of proof that junk DNA is truly junk is on them. Until they understand everything and can explain every nuance of the genome's operation in precise detail—until they can build a cell from scratch—their job is not done.... ¹⁰

Any scientist who takes his work seriously has no choice but to say, "I don't know what it function is, but my job is to fully engage in the systematic study of the structure and behavior of this until I do. So until I have a complete working model that describes the entire system in exact detail, I have no right to assume these stretches of DNA are junk.

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1. Stop Using the Term "Noncoding DNA:" It Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means
2. It's no more than 1%. [What's In Your Genome? - The Pie Chart] [How many protein-coding genes in the human genome?]
3. He's referring to the paper by Susumu Ohno (1972). Ohno did not say that 97% of our genome is junk and he did not say or imply that all noncoding DNA was junk. He estimated that no more than 6% of our genome could be devoted to genes and he knew that some of the noncoding parts include promoters, regulatory sequences, and centromeres. [Required reading for the junk DNA debate]
4. Today, a majority of knowledgeable scientists agree that most of our genome is junk and the number is growing every year as more and more scientists become aware of the overwhelming evidence for junk DNA. [What is the dominant view of junk DNA?]
5. The New York Times is not a reliable source of information about science.
6. Science is usually a reliable source of scientific information but in this case Elizabeth Pennisi gets it all wrong [Science Writes Eulogy for Junk DNA ].
7. [The ENCODE publicity campaign of 2007] [The truth about ENCODE]
8. [ENCODE's false claims about the number of regulatory sites per gene] [What did the ENCODE Consortium say in 2012?]
9. Atheism does not predict anything about the composition of our genome or any other genome. From our knowledge of biochemistry and evolution, we might have guessed that most genomes would be packed with functional sequences because junk DNA is likely to be deleterious. Natural selection should eliminate junk DNA in populations undergoing strong selection. That's what we see in bacterial populations. The discovery of massive amounts of junk DNA in mammals conflicted with this simple understanding of evolution but it was consistent with the view of evolution that was developed in the late 1960s. That view allowed for the expansion of the genome by adding junk DNA in populations that were not under strong selection. With respect to the existence of junk DNA, it doesn't matter whether you are a believer or not. What matters is whether you accept scientific evidence or reject it. Many believers reject science because of their religious bias.
10. Only one side of this debate is basing their view on ignorance and lack of knowledge and it's not the scientists. There is plenty of evidence for junk DNA [Five Things You Should Know if You Want to Participate in the Junk DNA Debate].