Saturday, January 31, 2004

Evolutionary "Just-so" Stories, part 1 of n...

Evolutionists will sometimes accuse Creationists of positing "just-so" stories to explain God's actions in the history of life on planet Earth. For instance they will accuse us of tailoring our explanation to fit with the data provided - in other words - however it appears in the record of nature is how God must have done it. I have argued that a properly understood Testable Creation Model does not do this. But what of the Evolutionary Model? Are they completely innocent with regards to "just-so" stories? Let's take a look at DNA. As research has continued in the field of molecular biology we have learned much about the enormous complexity of the double helix of DNA. Initially there was supposedly cause for celebration in the evolutionary camp. The reason? - Junk DNA. In decoding the structure of DNA scientists ran into a great deal of non-coding DNA - what was referred to as Junk DNA. Aha!, they exclaimed. Here is evidence for the random, chance driven mechanism behind evolution. How else do you explain such waste in the strand of DNA? It is not what one would expect from a Designer is it? In fact, as some had said, it is what you would expect if the evolutionary paradigm is correct. Score 1 for Evolution, 0 for Creation? Not quite. There's that welcome activity called additional research. As research has continued we are discovering that the so-called Junk DNA really does have function! Whether it is used to facilitate DNA folding or whether it used in complex processing of chromosome sequencing, what is now being understood is that it's not so junky after all. As the Creation Model predicts, the more research we perform on structures such as DNA, the more evidence we will acquire that these structures were designed. But don't expect the evolutionists to roll over and play dead with these new findings. In fact, expect them to now say that this is exactly what we should expect from the evolutionary scenario. After all, small mutations over great periods of time are sure to produce finely tuned structures well-adapted to their environment - the DNA genome is testament to that. It's "just-so."

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