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The 'just-so' stories of modern "science"

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  • #16
    Jorge, perhaps you don't know that theorists don't just summarize the data. Quite often they will create a theory that they hope will "explain" the data. An example is Einstein's postulate that the speed of light in vacuum is the same for every observer in an inertial reference of frame and does not vary with time. When he published that, people thought that ether drift would make the speed vary in some predictable way. What would you think of Albert A. Michelson, who disagreed with Einstein? Suppose Michelson derided the postulate as a just-so story. Or do I misunderstand you somehow?
    The greater number of laws . . . , the more thieves . . . there will be. ---- Lao-Tzu

    [T]he truth I’m after and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance -— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

    Comment


    • #17
      Originally posted by Truthseeker View Post
      Jorge, perhaps you don't know that theorists ...............
      Do you believe theory of evolution really is religion?

      .... because
      You seem to assume that if somebody doesn't *believe* a thing, it's because they must not "know" it.

      It's possible to understand somebody's claim, and simply not believe it.

      Unless you're ascribing religious quality to ToE (if you only knew it then you'll believe it)
      To say that crony capitalism is not true/free market capitalism, is like saying a grand slam is not true baseball, or like saying scoring a touchdown is not true American football ...Stefan Mykhaylo D

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by jordanriver View Post
        Do you believe theory of evolution really is religion?

        .... because
        You seem to assume that if somebody doesn't *believe* a thing, it's because they must not "know" it.

        It's possible to understand somebody's claim, and simply not believe it.

        Unless you're ascribing religious quality to ToE (if you only knew it then you'll believe it)
        Only an idiot would think that evolution is a "religion".

        Evolution is the name given to a process describing how nature works.

        I guess meteorology and dendrology are religions too.

        On the other hand only an idiot would ignore the vast database of consilient data for cosmic, geologic, and biological evolution over billions of years in favor of a primary Sundee-Skool interpretation of a short ambiguous story written to the culture of the ANE.

        Why you ask? 'Cuz the latter is "history" and the former is a theory of the "lost".

        But then you're pneumatic, while I am a hopelessly lost hylic.

        Open your eyes and wonder at Creation itself.

        K54

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by jordanriver View Post
          Do you believe theory of evolution really is religion?
          Beat that nonsense into a fine pink mist in an earlier thread
          Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
          IMHO one of the sillier claims made by opponents of evolution is that evolution, or more properly, evolutional theory, constitutes some sort of religion in that the fact of the matter is that evolutionary theory really does nothing more than attempt to describe a part of nature.

          Now while evolution and evolutionary theory may be important to a large number of people does not some how transform a scientific theory into a religion. The only conceivable way that evolutionary theory could be construed as a religion would be to accept an overly-expansive definition of "religion" as being anything pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion. Unfortunately this so cheapens the definition of religion that it opens it up to practically any activity. Literally anything from stamp collecting to being an avid sports fan (even my girlfriend shopping for shoes) could thereby be considered a religion.

          IOW, calling evolution, or evolutionary theory, a religion makes the term religion effectively meaningless.

          For instance, many folks are interested in astronomy and following the course of the stars. This has been used as the part of several religions such as Zoroastrianism and Mithraism as some have even imagined how they influence people. And yet that doesn't somehow miraculously transform the science of astronomy into a religion.

          Moreover, there are numerous glaring differences between a scientific theory, such as the Theory of Evolution, and a religion that more than makes it more than obvious that evolutionary theory is not a religion of any shape or form.

          To start, unlike science, religions seek to explain ultimate reality as well as attempt to describe humanity's place and role within it.

          OTOH, evolutionary theory merely tries to explain how life changes and adapts over time and our biological background. And in spite of confused assertions to the contrary, evolution does not even seek to explain how life originated (that is an entirely different scientific field). Nor has it anything to say about the origin or destiny of souls.

          Secondly, religions provide moral guidelines and structure for its adherents. In contrast, evolutionary theory (like all scientific theories) does not say anything about values or meanings. Evolution is descriptive, it is not prescriptive meaning that it attempts to describes things, not prescribes how things should be.

          While it is true that evolution has been used (and of course misused) by some as a foundation for morals and values, this is only accomplished by going beyond evolutionary theory (the science of evolution) and forming a separate philosophy which should not reflect on the theory itself -- much in the same manner that astrological musings should not reflect upon the science of astronomy.

          Likewise, while evolutionary theory has been utilized in studying and speculating about any biological basis for morals and values, merely studying religion does not make the study a religion. Sort of like how using archaeology to study the origins of biblical texts doesn't therefore turn archaeology into a religion.

          Third, religion accepts that there is something beyond natural laws, a "supernatural" powers or powers. Religions accept as evidence such things as revealed truth.

          Again, like all scientific endeavors, evolutionary theory, does not take such things into account. That is just the way science works since it is seeking natural explanations for the various phenomena that we observe. It's sort of like how your plumber doesn't explain your clogged pipes by using supernatural intervention but looks for a completely natural answer.

          Also, unlike religion, the explanations that scientists propose must be subject to falsification and vigorous efforts are taken to demonstrate that they are wrong. In fact evolutionary theory, like all scientific theories, not only welcomes these challenges they are open to being changed or even discarded as new evidence is uncovered. In stark contrast, anti-science types often mock this ability to alter theories in light of new contradictory data[/url].


          Fourth, religions tend to have such things as holy texts and laws, prayers, rituals and sacraments, as well as a formal priesthood. This is not the case in science including evolutionary theory in spite of snarky, ill-informed remarks about Darwin being a high priest and his books being scripture. The fact of the matter is they are anything but and many prominent evolutionary advocates have made a name for themselves by challenging Darwin's ideas and showing them to be in need of either modification or correction.

          Folks like Conrad Waddington when he proposed developmental evolution (evo-devo) in 1942. And Motoo Kimura when he proposed the neutral theory of molecular evolution (genetic drift) in 1968. And Lynn Margulis when she proposed Endosymbiotic theory in 1970. And Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould when they proposed punctuated equilibrium in 1973. And Søren Løvtrup when he proposed Epigenetics in 1974. And Carl Woese when he proposed horizontal gene transfer in 1977.

          These are all examples of controversial theories when they first came out in that they accounted for observed biological changes that did not correspond to the expectations of the neo-Darwinian models derived from the New Synthesis (which itself over-turned pure Darwinian thought and theory). In a religion such "trouble makers" are rarely embraced but instead are generally kicked out and form their own church or even start a new religion.

          Fifth, if evolution is some how a religion it must be the only religion that none of its adherents recognize? IOW, if evolution is a religion then why don't any of its adherents recognize it as such? Ask an evolutionist such as Kenneth Miller what his religion is he will tell you that he is a Christian. Likewise for such folks as Francis Collins, Denis Lamoureux, Simon Conway Morris, George Coyne, Richard G. Colling, Keith B. Miller, Karl Giberson, Robert Baker and even the person who co-founded the Theory of Evolution with Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace.

          Even the more militant atheists who have been involved in evolutionary theory such as Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers will inform you that evolution is anything but a religion for them.

          Nobody, whether theist or atheist will identify their religion as evolution.

          What's more, I think some evolution deniers seek to label evolution a religion in a misguided attempt to "level the playing field" but this entire concept is actually implicitly disparaging religion in the process. They don't seem to realize that they are in a sense saying that science needs to be brought down to the level of religion.

          Followed by
          Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
          To add to the above, some evolution deniers like to quote what Michael Ruse wrote in "How evolution became a religion: creationists correct?" in support of their contention that evolutionary theory constitutes a religion:
          “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today ... Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.”

          Essentially his actual position is the same that has been articulated by those who could be described as TEs over the years such as Benjamin Warfield, the biblical inerrantist par excellence and whose influence can be seen in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, who expressed it well during his class lectures on evolution prepared in 1888 and used until at least 1900:
          "The upshot of the whole matter is that there is no necessary antagonism of Christianity to evolution, provided that we do not hold to too extreme a form of evolution. To adopt any form that does not permit God freely to work apart from law and which does not allow miraculous intervention (in the giving of the soul, in creating Eve, etc.) will entail a great reconstruction of Christian doctrine, and a very great lowering of the detailed authority of the Bible.”

          Another influential defender of evangelical doctrine, vocal critic of theological liberalism and a contributor to The Fundamentals, James Orr, also contrasted between naturalistic/materialistic evolution and evolution itself maintaining that God supernaturally guided the evolutionary process leading to humanity (the position advocated by Alfred Wallace -- the co-discoverer of the ToE).

          Similarly when John Paul II issued his statement on evolution in his address, "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth" in 1996 he clearly distinguished between "materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations," rejecting as "incompatible" with Scripture views, for example, that "consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter."

          Even some of those cited as staunch opponents of evolution appear to have held this view when asked to elaborate. For instance Charles Hodge said in "What is Darwinism" that evolution by chance is atheism (p156), but he did in fact allow evolution, "If God made them it makes no difference so far as the question of design is concerned how he made them; whether at once or by aprocess of evolution." (p95). He rejected naturalistic or materialistic views of evolution but accepted that evolution might be established and directed by God.

          It is the purely naturalistic/materialistic views of evolution (such as that promoted by Richard Dawkins) that TEs reject and that Ruse is describing in the quote as being like a religion.

          That Ruse recognizes this distinction is seen in his later works such as "Is Evolution a Secular Religion?" where he distinguishes between evolution and what he termed "Darwinism" (much in the manner that Orr did) and places much of the blame for confusion on Thomas Henry Huxley and his desire for reform in Britain.

          Ruse feels that Huxley saw the Anglican Church as being the primary opponent to social change and reforms in the country and thinks he therefore "saw the need to found his own church" based upon naturalism and employed evolution to this end. This apparently is what he meant when he complained that evolution was "promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality" from the beginning.

          IOW, Ruse clearly distinguished between "professional evolutionary biology: mathematical, experimental, not laden with value statements" and "evolution as secular religion, generally working from an explicitly materialist background and solving all of the world's major problems, from racism to education to conservation." It is the latter view that TEs have consistently rejected.

          This is why Ruse concluded: "if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry" (emphasis added).

          And Ruse also has written more upon how his remarks have been misinterpreted with this being but one example.

          Finally there is another quote often circulated in support of the idea that evolution is a religion and that is one made by L. Harrison Matthews in the introduction of the edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" that was published in 1971:
          …evolution is the backbone of biology and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on unproven theory. Is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation. Both are concepts which the believers know to be true, but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.

          According to Michael Ruse, who asked Matthews about this statement, he meant this comment purely as a jab at the embryologist Sir Gavin Rylands de Beer who he had long argued with and was upset at how creationists had misappropriated it and misrepresented him.

          Further during McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (the U.S. District Court decision concerning the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act) the defense had planned to use Matthews comments as some sort of trump card to link evolutionary theory to "secular humanism" (and actually included them in their original brief) until they got wind of what Matthews told Ruse and quickly decided to drop it like a hot potato. As Ruse said of the entire incident: "of such molehill things are creationist mountains made."

          I'm always still in trouble again

          "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
          "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
          "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
            Beat that nonsense into a fine pink mist in an earlier thread

            Followed by
            All that copy paste missed the point of my QUESTION.

            How about you, rogue06, is it your position that if somebody does not BELIEVE in ToE, it must be because they don't understand how it works
            To say that crony capitalism is not true/free market capitalism, is like saying a grand slam is not true baseball, or like saying scoring a touchdown is not true American football ...Stefan Mykhaylo D

            Comment


            • #21
              Originally posted by jordanriver View Post
              All that copy paste missed the point of my QUESTION.

              How about you, rogue06, is it your position that if somebody does not BELIEVE in ToE, it must be because they don't understand how it works
              What an informative question! Generally, the more depth of understanding of any scientific theory one has, the more likely they are to accept it AND the more likely they are to really understand what it covers and what it does not. But there is a qualitative difference between accepting that one understanding fits the evidence better than any other proposals yet made, and "believing in" a theory. Accepting the validity of a proposal really has nothing to do with faith.

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by phank View Post
                What an informative question! Generally, the more depth of understanding of any scientific theory one has, the more likely they are to accept it AND the more likely they are to really understand what it covers and what it does not. But there is a qualitative difference between accepting that one understanding fits the evidence better than any other proposals yet made, and "believing in" a theory. Accepting the validity of a proposal really has nothing to do with faith.
                I dunno, phank.

                What was the point of bringing up the possibility of non-human primate ancestors.

                article: "...Like most other mammals, monkeys that lived 30 million to 60 million years ago had just two opsin genes encoding the photopigment proteins that tune cone photoreceptor cells in the retina to absorb light in a range of wavelengths. Then, an allele of one of the opsin genes mutated, producing a pigment protein that responded to previously unseen wavelengths of light..."

                how do they know there was a mutation?

                is this how?: "...Such a profound expansion of our visual experience actually required very minor genetic alteration. In 1991, Neitz, working with his wife Maureen and their postdoc advisor Jerry Jacobs of the University of California, Santa Barbara, demonstrated that just three amino acid substitutions account for the 30 nm difference in peak absorption between the modern-day red and green cones in humans, with each change shifting the photopigment’s color spectrum by 5 nm to 15 nm......"

                So, is MUTATION "...one understanding fits the evidence better than any other proposals yet made..."

                What about alternative splicing?
                NATURE
                "Alternative splicing was the first phenomenon scientists discovered that made them realize that genomic complexity cannot be judged by the number of protein-coding genes. During alternative splicing, which occurs after transcription and before translation, introns are removed and exons are spliced together to make an mRNA molecule. However, the exons are not necessarily all spliced back together in the same way. Thus, a single gene, or transcription unit, can code for multiple proteins or other gene products, depending on how the exons are spliced back together. In fact, scientists have estimated that there may be as many as 500,000 or more different human proteins, all coded by a mere 20,000 protein-coding genes..."
                http://www.nature.com/scitable/topic...complexity-437



                With epigenetic ENVIRONMENT-DRIVEN regulation, (need to distinguish ripe raspberries as the article pointed out), and genes that have ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS (500,000 options to 20,000, a possible 25 to 1 ratio) .......

                iow, looks like A PLAN to me.
                To say that crony capitalism is not true/free market capitalism, is like saying a grand slam is not true baseball, or like saying scoring a touchdown is not true American football ...Stefan Mykhaylo D

                Comment


                • #23
                  This is off-topic but had to get this in and didn't want to start a new thread.

                  A while back I had made a prediction regarding "junk" DNA. Here's another recent discovery that goes towards proving my prediction. Soon the Bozos here will be back-pedaling and denying that such a conversation ever took place. Hey, that's just the way their ethics are.

                  Enjoy!

                  "The game-changing discovery was part of a study led by Texas A&M biology doctoral candidate John C. Aldrich and Dr. Keith A. Maggert, an associate professor in the Department of Biology, to measure variation in heterochromatin. This mysterious, tightly packed section of the vast, non-coding section of the human genome, widely dismissed by geneticists as "junk," previously was thought by scientists to have no discernable function at all."

                  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1007091753.htm

                  Many Evolutionists are now saying, "Oops ... what story can we concoct NOW?"


                  As the guy in the article says, we aren't there "yet" but we are a step closer.
                  Jorge will be there to joyfully remind the Bozos when that day arrives.

                  Jorge

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    What's the Jorgian/JordanRiverine "scientific" explanation for these phenomena?

                    I'd like a little more than you two epistemic nihilists saying it's not "operational" science, and "wuz you dere, Charley?"

                    K54

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Jorge View Post
                      ...
                      Many Evolutionists are

                      As the guy in the article says, we aren't there "yet" but we are a step closer.
                      Jorge will be there to joyfully remind the Bozos when that day arrives.

                      Jorge
                      What story can you concoct?

                      That's right -- you don't have to. "God done diddly did it this way" always works.

                      As the old bromide goes "That which explains everything explains nothing."

                      K54

                      P.S.

                      Hey, Boss -- you want I should start posting some photos of geologic structures and ask you to explain them?

                      Beagle already did this with the Barringer crater, but you ran like a country boy caught stealing chickens

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by klaus54 View Post
                        What's the Jorgian/JordanRiverine "scientific" explanation for these phenomena?

                        I'd like a little more than you two epistemic nihilists saying it's not "operational" science, and "wuz you dere, Charley?"

                        What story can you concoct?

                        That's right -- you don't have to. "God done diddly did it this way" always works.

                        As the old bromide goes "That which explains everything explains nothing."

                        K54

                        P.S.

                        Hey, Boss -- you want I should start posting some photos of geologic structures and ask you to explain them?

                        Beagle already did this with the Barringer crater, but you ran like a country boy caught stealing chickens

                        .......... Oh, look ... one of the Bozos that I had alluded to rears his ugly head.

                        Jorge

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Jorge View Post
                          .......... Oh, look ... one of the Bozos that I had alluded to rears his ugly head.

                          Jorge
                          So, Boss -- what's your explanatory paradigm for "historical" phenomena like genomic similarities and all that darned geologic history?

                          Cough it up, Son.

                          K54

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by Jorge View Post
                            This is off-topic but had to get this in and didn't want to start a new thread.

                            A while back I had made a prediction regarding "junk" DNA. Here's another recent discovery that goes towards proving my prediction. Soon the Bozos here will be back-pedaling and denying that such a conversation ever took place. Hey, that's just the way their ethics are.

                            Enjoy!

                            "The game-changing discovery was part of a study led by Texas A&M biology doctoral candidate John C. Aldrich and Dr. Keith A. Maggert, an associate professor in the Department of Biology, to measure variation in heterochromatin. This mysterious, tightly packed section of the vast, non-coding section of the human genome, widely dismissed by geneticists as "junk," previously was thought by scientists to have no discernable function at all."

                            http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1007091753.htm

                            Many Evolutionists are now saying, "Oops ... what story can we concoct NOW?"


                            As the guy in the article says, we aren't there "yet" but we are a step closer.
                            Jorge will be there to joyfully remind the Bozos when that day arrives.

                            Jorge
                            The article implies only that mutations in the region have the capacity to affect other, coding, regions. I'm not sure that quite lifts it out of the 'junk' category in the sense that it has necessary function. It sounds more like it just isn't completely inert.

                            Jim
                            My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

                            If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

                            This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by jordanriver View Post
                              I dunno, phank.
                              Maybe, with more study, you might? I dunno.

                              how do they know there was a mutation?
                              As opposed to what?

                              So, is MUTATION "...one understanding fits the evidence better than any other proposals yet made..."

                              What about alternative splicing?
                              ??? I don't understand this question. Mutations are changes. There are many many different causes of mutations. Alternative splicing is one of them. But variation in opsins result from SOME mutation mechanism.

                              iow, looks like A PLAN to me.
                              So? Presumably, mutations happen every generation in every species. Most are neutral, some are helpful, more are harmful. The helpful mutations are more likely to be conserved. Regardless of the exact mechanism (sexual recombination, imperfect copying, cosmic rays, whatever) that caused the mutations.

                              I suppose I could look at lots of different watersheds, and notice that while every one is different in detail, they are all the same in principle - water flows downhill. And I could point out the countless non-downhill ways water could have run, and infer a Grand Plan. I could call it "gravity". When we're looking at color vision, we call the Grand Plan "evolution".

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Jorge View Post
                                This is off-topic but had to get this in and didn't want to start a new thread.

                                A while back I had made a prediction regarding "junk" DNA. Here's another recent discovery that goes towards proving my prediction. Soon the Bozos here will be back-pedaling and denying that such a conversation ever took place. Hey, that's just the way their ethics are.

                                Enjoy!

                                "The game-changing discovery was part of a study led by Texas A&M biology doctoral candidate John C. Aldrich and Dr. Keith A. Maggert, an associate professor in the Department of Biology, to measure variation in heterochromatin. This mysterious, tightly packed section of the vast, non-coding section of the human genome, widely dismissed by geneticists as "junk," previously was thought by scientists to have no discernable function at all."

                                http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1007091753.htm

                                Many Evolutionists are now saying, "Oops ... what story can we concoct NOW?"


                                As the guy in the article says, we aren't there "yet" but we are a step closer.
                                Jorge will be there to joyfully remind the Bozos when that day arrives.

                                Jorge
                                I don't think you're off-topic at all.
                                From what little I have read about so far, it all seems to be connected.
                                (like one of those Hawking Theory of Everything, but biology instead of cosmology)

                                The process described from your OP might not have just been a mutation in the sense of 'mistake' that was merely 'natural selected'

                                The so-called junk DNA might have REGULATED ON PURPOSE.

                                ...ok, first, disclaimer, I only cite secular papers (IOW, based assumption of natural-selection evolution, IOW, as Jorge put it in OP, (BSP, --background "scientific" premise),
                                I cite papers with that "BSP" in order to save time from having to defend papers by people who happen to believe in Jesus' endorsement of Moses' writings.


                                ...therefore, the papers I cite will base their assumption that it was evolution that caused things to be the way they are, (the point is, to only show THE WAY THINGS ARE, (whether it was evolution or not)
                                , ...IOW, the point IS NOT about explaining how things came to be the way they are)
                                ........that is some other debate, right now , how about the hear and now, not the how


                                ok where was I,
                                oh, yes, so-called junk DNA may be what REGULATES genome activity

                                ScienceDaily May 9, 2009
                                http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0520140408.htm

                                'Junk' DNA Has Important Role, Researchers Find
                                "The term "junk DNA" was originally coined to refer to a region of DNA that contained no genetic information. Scientists are beginning to find, however, that much of this so-called junk plays important roles in the regulation of gene activity. No one yet knows how extensive that role may be."


                                Barbara McClintock predicted back in 1965 that junk DNA might not just be useless:

                                http://www.nature.com/scitable/topic...-junk-dna-1211

                                NATURE 2008
                                Transposons, or Jumping Genes: Not Junk DNA?

                                "For decades, scientists dismissed transposable elements, also known as transposons or “jumping genes”, as useless “junk DNA”. But are they really?"
                                Transposable elements (TEs), also known as "jumping genes" or transposons, are sequences of DNA that move (or jump) from one location in the genome to another. Maize geneticist Barbara McClintock discovered TEs in the 1940s, and for decades thereafter, most scientists dismissed transposons as useless or "junk" DNA. McClintock, however, was among the first researchers to suggest that these mysterious mobile elements of the genome might play some kind of regulatory role, determining which genes are turned on and when this activation takes place (McClintock, 1965).
                                At about the same time that McClintock performed her groundbreaking research, scientists Roy Britten and Eric Davidson further speculated that TEs not only play a role in regulating gene expression, but also in generating different cell types and different biological structures, based on where in the genome they insert themselves (Britten & Davidson, 1969). Britten and Davidson hypothesized that this might partially explain why a multicellular organism has many different types of cells, tissues, and organs, even though all of its cells share the same genome. Consider your own body as an example: You have dozens of different cell types, even though the majority of cells in your body have exactly the same DNA. If every single gene was expressed in every single one of your cells all the time, you would be one huge undifferentiated blob of matter!
                                The early speculations of both McClintock and Britten and Davidson were largely dismissed by the scientific community"


                                the regulation IS EPIGENETIC:

                                http://www.nature.com/scitable/conte...ation-of-26513

                                NATURE April 2007
                                (have to open PDF)
                                Transposable elements and the epigenetic regulation of the genome R. Keith Slotkin ,Robert Martienssen

                                "Genome sequencing has revealed that transposable elements (TEs) of various classes constitute a large frac- tion of most eukaryotic genomes, including nearly 50% of our own1. Active TEs are highly mutagenic, often targeting protein-coding genes for insertion, and also causing chromosome breakage, illegitimate recombina- tion and genome rearrangement. TEs can also influence neighbouring genes by altering splicing and polya- denylation patterns, or by functioning as enhancers or promoters2. TEs are often considered as ‘selfish’ or ‘parasitic’ ele- ments, because their success (that is, an increase in copy number) is negatively correlated with the fitness of the host. However, most TEs are not actively transposing or duplicating. Although in most cases this is due to muta- tions and deletions that abolish transposition, some full-length autonomous TEs remain intact but silent in host genomes, in the form of cryptic elements. To combat the potentially harmful effects of active TEs, the genome has evolved epigenetic ‘defense’ mechanisms to suppress their activity. An epigenetically inactive TE retains the coding potential to mobilize itself but does not produce the necessary proteins owing to a repressive chromatin environment."

                                ....ok, it says "to combat the potentially harmful effects..." That implies the "evolved" was directed (IOW, ON PURPOSE)

                                anyone can disagree, but that's what it looks like to me.


                                here is another paper, makes it plainer how epigenetics with so-called junk DNA is cooperative (combined) mechanism

                                http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17223284

                                April 2007
                                Combinatorial epigenetics, "junk DNA", and the evolution of complex organisms.
                                Zuckerkandl E, Cavalli G

                                (Abstract only)
                                "At certain evolutionary junctures, two or more mutations participating in the build-up of a new complex function may be required to become available simultaneously in the same individuals. How could this happen in higher organisms whose populations are small compared to those of microbes, and in which chances of combined nearly simultaneous highly specific favorable mutations are correspondingly low? The question can in principle be answered for regulatory evolution, one of the basic processes of evolutionary change...."
                                "......The described epigenetic/genetic partnership may well at times have opened the way toward certain complex new functions. Thus, the presence of "junk DNA", through co-determining the (higher or lower) order and the variants of chromatin structure with regulatory effects at a distance, might make an important contribution to the evolution of complex organisms."


                                if its evolution, ITS REGULATORY, ....again, sounds like a plan to me...

                                Mutation with natural selection is based on the DNA GENOME.

                                But researchers are discovering, the DNA GENOME is just a tool operated by something else,

                                ***The EPIGENOME***

                                to an alien investigating Earth, it appears all the work is done by just a tiny portion,
                                in a large office of hundreds of cubicles, the work seems to come from tiny hard drives in cases, surrounded by large lumps of some carbon-based flesh organisms who don't seem to be important, but are selfish (always going to feed themselves from vending machines in the breakroom) probably just JUNK!

                                A computer, like in the NOVA video I cited a couple weeks ago

                                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WEHoCA1hpo

                                (transcript) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcr..._sciencen.html

                                (at 4:00 of the video shows the regulation process --methylation)
                                (at 5:00 of the video)
                                Duke University's Randy Jirtle: "....the genome is being like a computer, the hardware of a computer, the epigenome would be like the software that tells the computer when to work, how to work, and how much

                                Neil DeGrasse Tyson: "in fact, it's the epigenome that tells our cells what sort of cells they should be
                                ....skin, hair, heart,
                                You see, all these cells have the same genes. But their epigenomes silence the unneeded ones to make cells different from one another. Epigenetic instructions pass on as cells divide, but they're not necessarily permanent. Researchers think they can change, especially during critical periods like puberty or pregnancy.
                                To say that crony capitalism is not true/free market capitalism, is like saying a grand slam is not true baseball, or like saying scoring a touchdown is not true American football ...Stefan Mykhaylo D

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