RSF: Enyart Exhumes Eugenie Scott

* Bob Debates Ph.D. Evolutionist Eugenie Scott: One of the world's leading anti-creationists vs. Bob Enyart. The debate is decided in the first round, by TKO. That’s after Bob asked the well-known scientist for any evidence that any high level function had ever evolved, like eye sight, or hearing, or flight, or mobility in general? Through the hour-long debate, this evolutionist refused to offer any such evidence.

* JUNK DNA: Eugenie Flubs Genetics Prediction, Creationist Hits the Bull's-eye. The negative evidence that Eugenie did offer was Junk DNA. This scientist, from her Darwinist worldview, made a philosophical argument that a Creator would not fill our DNA with mostly junk. (Unlike the relatively few gene segments that code for the 20,000 proteins in the human body, the widespread evolutionary claim of the 1990s was that the rest of the genome had no function and so was called Junk DNA.) Bob, the Christian fundamentalist, answered from his biblical worldview, that our knowledge of genetics was in its infancy, and that it was too early to make the determination that all those non-coding segments of DNA had no function. After this 1998 debate, the next decade of explosive genetic discoveries overwhelmingly validated this creationist perspective, so much so that aside from coding for 20,000 proteins, it is estimated that the remainder of the genome has approximately one million other functional regulatory segments of DNA. So much for junk. Fulfilled predictions, as the world saw with Einstein, go toward scientific credibility. However, Dr. Scott strongly rejected this creationist prediction making an extraordinary claim, which Bob immediately offered her to retract, that scientists currently knew everything they would ever need to know about genetics to conclusively state that all those regions were useless junk. Bob would love a rematch. But Eugenie Scott, (Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology, leading anti- creationist, and director of the National Center for Science Education), who had just debated evolution on a nation- wide PBS television program, ended this one-hour program with Bob stating, "Well, I don’t debate."

Today’s Resource: Have you browsed through our Science Department in the KGOV Store? Check out especially Walt Brown’s In the Beginning and Bob’s interviews with this great scientist in Walt Brown Week! You’ll also love Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip), and Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)! You can consider our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; Bob's debate about Junk DNA with famous evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott; and the superb kids' radio programming, Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins! And Bob strongly recommends that you subscribe to CMI’s tremendous Creation magazine!

Post-show Note: Illustrating this nicely the Wikipedia article on transposons states, ironically that transposition elements, "are often considered 'junk DNA'. In Oxytricha... they play a critical role..." And from Scientific American, "The term "junk DNA" repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding genetic material for many years."