McCulloch wrote:
otseng wrote: Also, if ERV are caused by a virus insertion, why should similarities be limited to the chimp? Shouldn’t there also be ERV similarities between humans and other species in the human lineage?Yes. And according to evolutionary theory, the further back the most recent common ancestor is the fewer ERV similarities there will be.
So, there should exist mutated ERV in humans that were originally injected in a distant lineage species?
If you find an ERV common to, for example, Gorillas and Humans but not present in Chimpanzees, you will have falsified the evolutionary model we have for primates.
How about if I find an ERV common to primates (including chimps), but not found in humans? Would it falsify the theory that humans came from primates?
There are two possible explanations:
- Common ancestry
- A creative secretive hidden God who wished to deceive humans into believing that there was a common ancestry.
Again, false dichotomy.
ERVs which do mutate, can become benign.
Yes, this is the basic theory behind ERVs. However, ERVs are not found to just be benign, but to have function.
And, yes, the greater the distance to the infected ancestor, the greater amount of mutations in the ERV.
Then a prediction from this would be that most (if not all) ERV should be functionless. Think of all the ancestor species prior to humans that could’ve been infected by a virus. This would span a period on the order of hundreds of millions of years. Many ERV injections could have taken place in the human lineage during this timeframe. And these ERV would have mutated since then.
A great number of research papers, done by qualified biologists confirm this point of view.
It is not so surprising that evolutionists would confirm their own point of view.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=314343#p314343
GrumpyMrGruff wrote:
McCulloch wrote:Yes. And according to evolutionary theory, the further back the most recent common ancestor is the fewer ERV similarities there will be. The data so far matches exactly with this prediction. If you find an ERV common to, for example, Gorillas and Humans but not present in Chimpanzees, you will have falsified the evolutionary model we have for primates.Really? A HERV-K provirus in chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, but not humans. Curr Biol. 2001 May 15;11(10):779-83.
You stole my thunder.
However, the authors point out that this is consistent with the current understanding of primate phylogeny.
It’s only a problem if one assumes quick fixation for the ERV – that it’s inherited by every member of the population before speciation. In this case, the authors propose that some members of the ancestral species carried the inert ERV (and some didn’t). It was only after the species diverged that genetic drift fixed the ERV in some species and led to its loss in our species.
What this demonstrates is that evolution is unfalsifiable. It can take in any evidence and present an ad hoc explanation for it.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=314346#p314346
nygreenguy wrote:
otseng wrote:
ERV has historically been labelled as “junk DNA” and assumed to have no purpose.Irrelevant. The world was once labeled as flat, new evidence has shown that to not be the case. Do you wish to throw that evidence out?
Now that recent research has shown that ERV can have a function, it falsifies the original assumption that ERV is junk DNA.So what? This statement is irrelevant to the discussion.
I would agree that if ERV is functionless, it would be better explained by some random process of virus DNA/RNA insertion than design. However, since science is now revealing that ERV have function, it is better explained by design.A gene gaining function after being functionless is not some wacky new novel phenomena. We see it all the time in genetics. It is only if you are naive to the science does this sort of stuff seem incredulous.
The original assertion of ERV theory is that “they sit quietly in the genome”. Now you accept that they do not sit quietly. Again, this shows that human evolutionary theory is unfalsifiable. It can assert and assume anything it wants. And if the assumptions are found to be false, it is dismissed and marches on.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=314572#p314572