We know that evolutionary processes can increase the amount of non-coding DNA
What we know is that increases in the amount of non-coding DNA happen.
The term “evolutionary processes” has to do with random mutation and natural selection. Random mutations are of the genome and related reproductive processes, and would be the primary cause of diversity between organisms.
Evolutionary processes would be active once life exists. Before that atoms are imagined to come together as molecules, whose particular shapes provide for their structural and/or functional activity. An unprovable hypothesis is that this happened through no law or principle or Cause than that which governs matter, the four fundamental forces of nature and related constants.
The term primordial soup has been bandied about so often that its difficult to see the utter impossibility of it. It is also a convenient “truth” we may choose to accept in order to justify living a secular life. Very intelligent people believe it and stories about alien spores and such. But, this is all neither here nor there with respect to whether any of it is true. What it is not, is a scientific truth - it has not and cannot be proven. What we have then are science fantasies, wrapping up what we know of matter and its workings and creating a picture of the world and its beginnings.
Once life exists, the random changes that would be happening within the cell would be of a chemical nature. The DNA changes its arrangement through some glitch in reproduction, perhaps gains a part of virus DNA, or loses functionality through radiation or the effects of a toxin - all would be happening at a molecular level, by chance. It is counter-intuitive, reflecting on the reality of being here involved in this discussion, but that does not mean it could not be, Here again though, it is not empirically derived. It is merely one rather fantastic way of putting together stuff we know, in order to believe we know something about what we don’t.
Natural selection, the other component to evolutionary processes, on a molecular level boils down to an ongoing sequence of overwhelmingly complex reactions that would span the globe and cover billions of years. But, to understand it requires we go beyond the molecular to include things that are closer to what we experience directly like living organisms themselves and concepts like species in their environment.
In some respects it is the shadow of processes at work in nature, not actively selecting one creature or species over another, but representing the mopping up of things that don’t work. It is also used in the active sense, as some principle that actually selects. This is in keeping with certain understandings of eastern philosophies, pantheism and naturalism. It’s sort of like the the Force in Star Wars. Rather than morality, there’s the karma of nature and hints of reincarnation in the perpetuation and developmental growth of life in time.
In other words,“evolutionary processes” is not scientific fact, but is rather a religious concept that uses science to support its philosophical underpinnings.
