The more things change the more they stay the same⤒🔗

There was a little ditty that we used to recite as children. It went: "Mother may I go out to swim? Yes, my darling daughter. Hang your clothes on a hickory limb, but don't go near the water!" Obviously the mother's remarks are a mixed message. She says "Yes," but actually means "no."

More serious communications some­times convey mixed messages too. For ex­ample, the editorial in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature, declared:

"With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside."

June 14/07 p. 753

It further declares, "the idea that human minds are the product of evolution is not atheistic theology. It is unassailable fact."

In a final salvo the editorial claims that the human mind came about "without reference to a divine creation."

While regrettable, such remarks are not new. What is different is the fact that the cover story of the same issue discusses a situation where crucial evolutionary assumptions fall like flies. You might imagine the editors would sound much less confident about the sta­tus of human evolution. Instead the issue conveys a mixed message.

98% "junk"?←⤒🔗

Prior to the publication of the cover story in the June 14 issue of Nature, the human genome (genetic information lo­cated in DNA) was believed to consist of about 25,000 useful genes as well as in­credibly long expanses of useless (non­functional) DNA. Termed "junk DNA," the non-functional DNA was believed to rep­resent remnants of information left over from an evolutionary past. This non-func­tional DNA made up 98% of the DNA in our cells. The 25,000 genes, each coding for one protein, thus made up only 2% of the genome.

The non-coding ("junk") DNA in­cluded sections repeated numerous times, and sections which were similar to known genes but which didn't seem to do any­thing, and various other patterns of DNA code. It made sense to scientists that these sections of "junk" DNA were subject to rapid mutation rates. There could not be a right or wrong order for something which does nothing.

Now that the order of the four code letters in the DNA of quite a large number of organisms has been documented, scien­tists can use computer programs to com­pare the arrangements of the letters in these organisms. Assuming that evolu­tion has occurred and that one organism type has changed into another, scientists then expect that differences in the arrangement of DNA letters will reflect the extent of evolutionary change. Not all stretches of DNA, however, are expected to show similar amounts of divergence (pro­gressive change) between organisms. The chances that a random change actually will improve a vital process are so small, that scientists expect very little variation in the controls of major processes. Thus the expectation is that evolution will "con­strain" major sections of DNA or conserve them so that they stay the same.

Evolutionists have thus assumed that as one kind of organism develops into oth­ers, some vital stretches of DNA will stay the same while other less important areas change. The regions that show lots of dif­ferences between organisms are assumed to reflect change over time, while the important stretches stay nearly the same.

ENCODE surprise←⤒🔗

The expectation of the scientists ap­proaching a new much more detailed study of the human genome was that con­strained areas represented the important controls and the wildly varying regions contained junk DNA, the relics of long ago evolution.

This is not what they found. The re­sults were the opposite of what they ex­pected to find, assuming that evolution has occurred.

The present study began in 2003 when an international consortium under­took to carry out an exhaustive search for all biologically functional elements in 1% (30 million letters or nucleotides) in the human genome. The purpose of the pro­ject was to provide an ENCyclopedia of DNA Elements or ENCODE for short.

Some sections of DNA were chosen for study because they are known to be important, but others were randomly se­lected. The study included gene rich areas of DNA and gene "deserts." Stretches of DNA with known function were compared with stretches of DNA controlling similar functions in 14 other mammal species and in 14 other vertebrate species (ani­mals with backbones), including some fish. While animals have some non-coding DNA, humans are unique in that the bulk of the gnome is non-coding DNA. Thus where possible, non-coding DNA was compared between organisms too.

Based on evolutionary assumptions, scientists expected that the ENCODE would further confirm their conclusions that "junk" DNA is left over from an evo­lutionary past, that it changes rapidly and has no function. It was further expected that important genes would all be much the same over a broad range of organ­isms. Scientists further believed that they had a good picture of how the cell con­trols what genes are used, when they are used, and how much product they are al­lowed to produce. These controls were be­lieved to involve mainly coding DNA (the genes themselves).

The right questions get asked←⤒🔗

It is a truism that people ask ques­tions based on what they expect to find. For example, a visitor to your house might ask where the bathroom is, but not where the atomic laboratory is. If you have an atomic laboratory in some al­cove, the guests won't ask about it be­cause they don't expect that you have such a facility.

Similarly, because the non-coding ("junk") DNA shows such variation among individuals, scientists did not be­lieve that it had a function. (Why look for a function when you don't think there is one?) Moreover, since other organisms do not have anywhere near as much non-cod­ing DNA, scientists believed that it must not be very important in humans either.

The unusual feature of the ENCODE study, however, was that it studied everything. On this occasion evolutionary assump­tions did not control the questions asked. All DNA (in the study) was examined for possible function and — guess what? — al­most all of the DNA (at least 93%) was found to be read on one occasion or an­other. That is a big difference from the 2% which the scientists considered relevant even a year ago. But this was just the be­ginning of the surprises.

Far more complex and wondrous←⤒🔗

Not only did the ENCODE project dis­cover that nearly all the DNA in the hu­man genome was read, but also the whole DNA system seems to be interconnected in an incredibly complicated network. A given region of DNA is read and copied multiple times in overlapping fashion and then edited into countless different products. DNA sequences (arrangements of letters) which contain information on when and how much of a product to pro­duce, are often located far from the in­formation for the product itself. Most of the controls seem to be written into the non-coding formerly junk DNA. This in­formation seems to be connected in a com­plex network which extends throughout the genome.

The metaphor which springs to mind to describe this integrated system is that of a supercomputer. It is difficult enough for evolutionists to try to explain how the genome could have been built up over time, but it is much more difficult to ex­plain the origin of such an integrated unit.

The system has all the hallmarks of design. It takes a wonderful mind to de­sign a code (four letters arranged into groups of three), it takes an amazing mind to devise the complicated language which conveys information written into the DNA code, and it takes an astonishing mind to devise the system of switching, splicing and silencing of information which so closely resembles computer controls.

Evolutionary predictions fail←⤒🔗

The most surprising discovery of the study was that the pattern of "con­strained" DNA (similar in a wide range of organisms) and unconstrained (wildly dif­ferent) was not what they expected it to be, based on evolutionary views. As the authors of the technical article on the EN­CODE project declared, lack of evolution­ary constraint on functional elements was perhaps the "greatest surprise" (Nature June 14/07 p. 813) of the project. Most of the DNA which showed only slight varia­tion among organisms, was found in the non-coding (formerly thought of as "junk" DNA) section of the gnome. In addition, half the sections with known function showed wild differences among the various organisms examined.

Both these results are the opposite of what was expected. One commentator asked plaintively how major components of the mammalian gnome could change essentially randomly over time. She fur­ther reflected: "the idea that important DNA might be unstable is newer and in­triguing because it undermines the as­sumption that biological function requires evolutionary constraint." In other words, this finding is directly con­trary to evolution theory.

Another evolutionary expectation was that the important functional elements would occur in the other mammals as well as in people. However, scientists found that more than half the stretches of DNA with known function, are unique to peo­ple. Where did these genes come from if not from ancestral organisms? Lead author Ewan Birney, in an interview reported in the Washington Post, called the unique func­tional elements "gate-crashers" (June 14/07). He suggested that they appeared by chance in the course of evolution and were neutral in their effects. Both he and Francis Collins, director of the National Hu­man Genome Research Institute, suggested that many functional elements might be like clutter in the attic, present but not par­ticularly helpful. Such a suggestion does not make sense. Any extra component of a cell requires the expenditure of energy to maintain it. Useless elements definitely have a negative impact on an organism. Descendants without these features will do better than those which possess them, so useless features tend to be lost in further generations.

Birney calls the idea of gate crashers "quite an interesting shift in per­spective for many biologists."

Washington Post

Shift indeed. Evolutionists are modi­fying their views once again in the face of contrary results.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

If evolution were a real process, there should be few useless features in an or­ganism. The idea that the genome consti­tutes a warehouse of useless features waiting for a useful application, is directly contrary to evolution theory. Of course the results of this study present no problems for the creation model. The various mam­mals and other vertebrates represent sepa­rately created kinds. God designed the organisms according to His will. He is able to produce similar results from very dif­ferent or very similar pieces of genetic code. The comparisons tell us only about designer choices. Similarities or differ­ences are each equally to be expected.

The ENCODE research was carried out on two kinds of human cells in cul­ture. The first was the famous HeLa cell line. This came from the cervical cancer of an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951). Medical researcher GeorgeGey created a culture without per­mission of the patient or her family. Much research on human biology has been carried out on the HeLa culture. Some chromosomes in these cells how­ever show abnormalities. There are pieces missing and some chromosomes are ab­normally represented several times. As a check to see if the DNA in the HeLa cells acts properly, a normal cell line of lym­phocytic (white blood) cells, was also used in the study. The results for both cell lines were similar.

The study of DNA should reveal the evolutionary process at its most basic level if evolution has indeed occurred. Changes in appearance or function are merely the result of changes in information contained in the DNA. The results of this study, di­rectly contrary to evolutionary expecta­tions, call the evolutionary process into serious question. Nevertheless, in a recent issue of a prominent science journal, where these results were documented, the editors arrogantly tried to rule God out of His creation. One might have imag­ined they would feel a little tentative about evolution after such results. The situation reminds us of Psalm 14:1 where we read:

The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

We should certainly feel sorry for individuals who are so blind to the creation which in all aspects declares the glory of God.