At a loss for words

In today's post I look at the latest attempt to rescue Darwinian theory from the scrap heap.

Quotes and comments;

1. “Key to humanity is in missing DNA.”
The key changes are not in bits of DNA that humans acquired as they evolved – extra genes that we have but chimps and other animals do not – but in chunks of DNA that we lost.
What’s more, the chunks in question are not even genes at all, but sequences of DNA that lie in between genes and act as switches, orchestrating when and where specific genes are turned on and off through the course of an animal’s development." [1.]

- It looks like Darwinian biologists are finally taking to heart critics of evolutionary theory, who point out how impossible it is for random processes to add complex (specified) information to a genome.

- This is an interesting if desperate notion. This is a bit like saying you can make a computer better by severely reducing its memory and its processing power.

- I'm at a loss for words, stumped by how anyone can think this can work. Is it loss all the way down guys? Wouldn't that involve ending up with nothing? Are we too believe this process of attrition led to the spectacular genome project we call the human being? How can you make the progress from rock to rock star by a process of attrition, by a process of losing information? This doesn't make sense to me.

2. 'The researchers identified 510 genetic regions present in chimpanzees but missing in humans. Only two of these have been tested so far for function.'

- This 'new' idea seems to be based on the assumption evolution (M2M) is true. i.e. since we know E. is true, what does this mean? It can only mean that the chimp (i.e. proto chimp or whatever you want to call the postulated common ancestor) became human by losing information. It's taken for granted apparently that 'proto man' once had these 510 regions... and that he progressed up the tree of life by losing them. (This would be akin to becoming a better climber by losing most of your fingers and toes.)

3. 'The other genetic loss involves the brain: the removal of a factor ostensibly limiting brain size. According to the authors and reporters, this somehow led to the expansion of the human brain, instead of a tumor, and by implication, our intelligence and rationality. That idea would appear to only make sense if brain structure and function were already pregnant with intellectual and rational possibilities. In that case, why would a factor evolve to restrict expression of such a valuable asset in lower primates?'

- All of these ideas (which seem to sprout continually) are based on the assumption E. is correct. They only 'make sense' if you assume the theory Has to be correct. Without this assumption they don't prove anything. We could just as easily look at the differences and ask what they mean if E. isn't true.

- As the commentary points out; human brains aren't merely bigger than chimp brains. If size was all that mattered whales would be many times more intelligent than humans (and birds would be idiots compared to cows).

4. “Hats off to them,” says Ewen Birney of Cambridge University. “It has long been thought that evolution would work by deleting as well as creating things...''

- If we accept this kind of reasoning we could make humans much smarter by eliminating another 510 DNA regions. Does anyone think that would work.

If this reasoning is correct we should be able to turn a chimp into a human by eliminating these regions. Anyone think that would work?

Notes;
1. Evolution by Loss Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/10/2011
March 10, 2011 — Evolutionists have added a counter-intuitive notion to their explanatory toolkit. It surfaced this week in Nature, then reverberated around the media: our ancestors became human when they lost genetic information from ape-like ancestors.'
2. 'The original paper mentioned loss of information a dozen times, but gain of information only once – and that just as a possibility:
“Deletions of tissue-specific enhancers may thus accompany both loss and gain traits [sic] in the human lineage, and provide specific examples of the kinds of regulatory alterations.”
- Did a rodent become a chimp by losing DNA?
- All this seems speculative at best, if you don't know what that supposed common ancestor was.