Roller

Hi!

I've heard creationists talk about evidence for "common ancestry" as evidence for "common designer". Those DNA similarities between humans and chimps are just that. Since we all live from the same sources of food, there would be no way for humans to survive if we would be totally different from everyone else.

My question: Did any of you hear creationist fit endogenous retroviruses into this story?

RufusAtticus

"The fall did it."

Of course this doesn't explain how they are shared amongst the homonids.

I never got a creationists to explain to me whether they were the product of God-design (common design flaws) or the Fall (common descent flaws).

Roller

But of course! Silly me... "The fall did it."
As I said on one of the previous topics: "Evolution is change in frequency between sin and the Curse in population."

He can't admit to common design flaws, and he can't admit to common descent flaws. He loses both ways.

(edit: edited some quoting errors)

KnightWhoSaysNi

I've heard two ways:

Some YEC's think that viruses were produced from "the Fall" when degenerate DNA actually produce them (they believe viruses originate from the DNA rather than inserted into it):

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3985.asp

I've also heard OEC's give arguments (Fuz Rana of Reason to Believe):

http://www.reasons.org/resources/mul...cu20020604.ram (go to about 1h 43 min. into the program)

His argument was along the lines that retroviruses in the DNA aren't really viral insertions, but created genetic material that only looks like a retrovirus and have a function to protect against other viral infections. He also speculated that prior genetic creations (along with their retroviruses) were used as spare parts to create Adam and Eve.

In my opinion, both these arguments completely throw parsimony out the window with such ad hoc untestable supernaturalistic explanations. I'll leave it someone here with a much better knowledge of biology than I to discredit these "explanations".

Jason

Roller

Well, none of these address the fact that humans and chimps share viral insertions on the same loci in a chromosome. Both answers are dancing around the problem. Perhaps because all of their answers are?

Thank you Rufus and Nightshade for your replies. I hope this thread will receive some more input.

Coragyps

Uh, Bonzo was standing next to Eve in the Garden, and some of that Almighty Zap splattered on him?

Jayjay

I think they do address that... well, in the generic "common designer" way. If God put the virii in there for a purpose, it stands to reason that he puts them in the same place in all the species.

Of course, there's absolutely no evidence that endogenous retrovirii have any function, or that they have "escaped" the genome, and it doesn't explain why the various virii look as if they were inserted in a nested hierarchy, but those are altogether different points.

Roller

Do these insertions have any purpose? (Well... who am I to question Gods plans...) And specific ERV's are not on the same loci in chromosomes in all the species. Curiously, they are on human-chimp chromosomes (and I think partially with gorilla).

On the brighter side, was this your 500th post JayJay?

Jayjay

Ah, I was just pointing out that if ERVs have some function or purpose, then it stands to reason that the same ERVs might as well be in the same loci, courtesy of the common designer. Just like all the other genes are...

You lost me on "specific ERVs are not on the same loci in chromosomes in all the species". Are you saying there are specific ERVs that are in different loci in different species? Or that they're not present in all species?

Gosh, I wouldn't have noticed! I don't pay attention to the post count that much... Do I get cake or something? Anyway, I think it might have been 499th.

pangloss

Well, many of them are pretty geeked out over the fact that some pseudogenes have been found to have regulatory functions. They declare the entire argument dead, failing to realize that whether or not pseudogenes have a function, they still exhibit mutation accumulation higher than functioning genes, and so provide lots of phylogenetic information which defies any "IDer done it" rationale...