biology · DNA · evolution · junk DNA · natural selection · science

Fisking ENCODE

A recent slew of ENCODE Consortium publications, specifically the article signed by all Consortium members, put forward the idea that more than 80% of the human genome is functional. This claim flies in the face of current estimates according to which the fraction of the genome that is evolutionarily conserved through purifying selection is under… Continue reading Fisking ENCODE

Aquinas · Darwin · DNA · evolution · genomics

Aquinas, Evolution and Double Agency

Here again, scientific work on the story of life has shown that it is a narrative permeated with stochastic processes governed primarily by serendipity. To put it another way, evolution is a sequence of chance events, a series of accidental intersections of two causal chains. For instance, a recent scientific paper published in the prestigious… Continue reading Aquinas, Evolution and Double Agency