Does Darwinism Make the Same Predictions as ID? – Discovery Institute

Photo: Richard Dawkins, by Anders Hesselbom, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Editors note: We are delighted to present a series by geologist Casey Luskin on The Positive Case for Intelligent Design. This is the ninth entry in the series, a modified excerpt from the new bookThe Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos.Find the full series so far here.

One potential objection to the positive case for intelligent design, developed in this series, is that Darwinian evolution might make some of the same predictions as ID, making it difficult to tell which theory has better explanatory power. For example, in systematics, ID predicted reuse of parts in different organisms, but neo-Darwinism also predicts different species may share similar traits either due to inheritance from a common ancestor, convergent evolution, or loss of function. Likewise, in genetics, ID predicted functionality for junk DNA, but evolutionists might argue noncoding DNA could evolve useful functions by mutation and selection. If neo-Darwinism makes the same predictions as ID, can we still make a positive argument for design? The answer is yes, and there are multiple responses to these objections.

First, not all the predictions generated by positive arguments for design are also made by Darwinian theory. For example, Michael Behe explains that irreducible complexity is predicted under design but predictednotto exist by Darwinism:

[I]rreducibly complex systems such as mousetraps and flagella serve both as negative arguments against gradualistic explanations like Darwins and as positive arguments for design. The negative argument is that such interactive systems resist explanation by the tiny steps that a Darwinian path would be expected to take. The positive argument is that their parts appear arranged to serve a purpose, which is exactly how we detect design.1

The same could be said of high-CSI features like protein sequences, which require rare and finely tuned sequences of amino acids to function. These are predicted by ID but are not expected under a blind trial-and-error process of mutation and selection.2

Second, the fact that a different theory can explain some data does not negate IDs ability to successfully make positive predictions. After all, a positive case means that the arguments for design stand on their own and do not depend merely on refuting other theories. While refuting competing hypotheses can certainly help solidify a theorys status as the best explanation, a positive argument must be able to stand on its own. IDs fulfilled predictions show there is positive evidence for design, regardless of what other models may or may not say.

Third, its not clear that in any of these cases neo-Darwinian evolution (or other materialistic models) makesexactlythe same predictions as ID. For example, in systematics, neo-Darwinism may predict the reuse of parts in different organisms, but it predicts that the distribution of parts will generally conform to a treelike pattern (or a nested hierarchy). Intelligent agents are not bound to distribute parts in a tree, and thus reuse of similar parts may be found even among very distantly related organisms. We can test among these different models. A 2018 paper by software engineer Winston Ewert in the journalBIO-Complexityproposed a model of common design called adependency graph, which was based on the technique used by software developers to reuse code among different software projects.3He compared the distribution of gene families reused in different organisms to a treelike pattern predicted by neo-Darwinismversusa dependency graph distribution used by computer programmers and predicted by ID. After analyzing the distribution of gene families in nine diverse types of animals, Ewerts preliminary analysis found that a common design-based dependency graph model fit the data 103000times better than a traditional Darwinian phylogenetic tree.4His ID-based dependency graph model predicted reuse of parts much better than neo-Darwinism.

Ewert tested the data against common descent. But even convergent evolution struggles to explain reuse of parts. Richard Dawkins acknowledges it is vanishingly improbable that exactly the same evolutionary pathway should ever be traveled twice,5yet we often find striking similarities across distantly related organisms, such as the camera-like structure of the vertebrate eye and the octopus (cephalopod) eye. What evolutionary biology calls extreme convergence is better explained by common design.

With junk DNA, its true that neo-Darwinian evolution predicts that functionality could sometimes evolve for noncoding DNA, and that finding function in a given case does not necessarily refute that model. Yet a major prediction of modern evolutionary theory is that neutral (neither harmful nor beneficial) mutations occur frequently and accumulate as useless genetic junk in genomes. For example, in 1972 the pioneering molecular evolutionary biologist Susumu Ohno published an article titled So much junk DNA in our genome. Writing in a volume titledEvolution of Genetic Systems,he argued that at the most, only 6% of our DNA is functional genes, with the rest being untranscribable and/or untranslatable DNA representing extinct genes or natures experiments which failed akin to fossil remains of extinct species.6

Biologists soon envisioned additional evolutionary mechanisms for filling our genomes with junk. In his influential 1976 bookThe Selfish Gene,Richard Dawkins predicted that a large fraction of our genomes has no function, because, The true purpose of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA.7In 1980,Naturepublished two papers by influential biologists furthering the concept of selfish junk DNA. The first article, Selfish Genes, the Phenotype Paradigm and Genome Evolution, by W. Ford Doolittle and Carmen Sapienza, maintained, Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only function is survival within genomes.8A second paper, Selfish DNA: the ultimate parasite, was by Francis Crick, who won the Nobel Prize for determining the structure of DNA, and the eminent origin-of-life theorist Leslie Orgel. They concluded that much DNA in higher organisms is little better than junk, and it would be folly in such cases to hunt obsessively for its function.9Since that time, Darwinian thinkers have been seduced by the idea that parasitic DNA and random mutations will spread junk throughout our genomes. In 1994,Kenneth Miller published an article claiming that the human genome is littered with pseudogenes, gene fragments, orphaned genes, junk DNA, and so many repeated copies of pointless DNA sequences that it cannot be attributed to anything that resembles intelligent design.10Many similar quotes could be given showing that the idea of junk DNA was born, bred, and flourished from within an evolutionary paradigm.

As might be expected from such statements, the literature admits that evolutionary thinking has hindered research into functions for junk DNA.A 2003 article inScientific Americannoted that introns, a type of noncoding DNA found within genes, were immediately assumed to be evolutionary junk a view that the article later called one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.11That same year, a paper in the journalScience observed that [a]lthough catchy, the term junk DNA for many years repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding DNA.12A striking admission came in a 2020 paper inNature Reviews Geneticstitled Overcoming challenges and dogmas to understand the functions of pseudogenes, which argues that dogma in biology causes demotivation into exploring pseudogene function by the a priori assumption that they are functionless. According to the paper, [t]he dominant limitation in advancing the investigation of pseudogenes now lies in the trappings of the prevailing mindset that pseudogenic regions are intrinsically non-functional and there is an emerging risk that these regions of the genome areprematurely dismissedas pseudogenic and therefore regarded as void of function.13

The ID communitys view of junk DNA stands in stark contrast to the typical evolutionary view. Going back to some of ID theorys early days in the 1990s, ID theorists have been predicting that noncoding DNA would turn out to have functions. In 1994, pro-ID scientist Forrest Mims submitted a letter toSciencethat warned against assuming that junk DNA was useless.14In 1998,William Dembski wrote that on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit functionDesign encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.15Many other ID theorists have made similar predictions over the years. What might have happened if their predictions had been heeded?

In 2021, the journalNatureacknowledged that prior to the Human Genome Project (HGP), which was completed in 2003, there was great debate over whether it was worth mapping the vast non-coding regions of genome that were called junk DNA, or the dark matter of the genome. The article noted that over 130,000 genomic elements, previously called junk DNA have now been discovered, and highlighted how important these junk segments have turned out to be:

[I]t is now appreciated that the majority of functional sequences in the human genome do not encode proteins. Rather, elements such as long non-coding RNAs, promoters, enhancers and countless gene-regulatory motifs work together to bring the genome to life. Variation in these regions does not alter proteins, but it can perturb the networks governing protein expression With the HGP draft in hand, the discovery of non-protein-coding elements exploded. So far, that growth has outstripped the discovery of protein-coding genes by a factor of five, and shows no signs of slowing. Likewise, the number of publications about such elements also grew in the period covered by our data set. For example, there are thousands of papers on non-coding RNAs, which regulate gene expression.

Under an ID paradigm, debates over whether to investigate junk DNA would have ended much sooner with an emphatic Yes!, furthering our knowledge of genetics and medicine. When it comes to junk DNA, ID has made superior predictions.

Next, Does Intelligent Design Make Predictions or Retrodictions?

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Does Darwinism Make the Same Predictions as ID? - Discovery Institute