Goat wrote: WHy are you misrepresenting what is said? What has been said is that Chimps and humans share a common ancestor.. and therefore are ‘cousin’ species. Trying to say that anybody is saying any differently is a straw man.
I’m not saying that anybody here is claiming that chimps are the forefathers of humans. What I am questioning is the relevance of chimps. If chimps are not in the line of human evolution, then how do chimps show how humans evolved? What would be relevant is evidence of species that are in the direct lineage of humans.
The fact is that nobody knows what is the common ancestor between chimps and humans. Why cannot this evidence be produced? If no evidence can be produced, then it would be a baseless assertion that such an ancestor actually existed. And since this evidence cannot be produced, would producing a species not in the lineage of humans establish how humans evolved?
As for ERV’s and chimps, that information is discussed here.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html
I would ask to not simply just provide a link to a webpage. Provide the relevant points and then only use links to show your source.
It isn’t. It is just that there are vastly MORE similarities between humans and chimps than any other species. And, it isn’t just one or two different ERV’s, inserted in the exact same place, with the exact same gene sequence.. which, while unlikely is possible. It is many of them. There are ERV’s that Chimps and humans share, and then there are ERV’s that all the Great apes share. The number of shared retroviruses just so happens to correspond to the closeness on the family tree we are in.
If ERV are indeed functionless, I can see your point. However, recent studies show that ERV have function.
No, it doesn’t mean that at all. Why are erv’s not support to be functionless. On rare occasions, it might provide a function that gets incorporated later.. or if it is detrimental, it gets filtered out via natural selection. Just like any mutation.
It is only by recent research that ERV are found to have function. Prior to these findings, it was assumed that ERV have no beneficial function as stated by McCulloch – “Eventually, retroviruses are rendered inactive because of these mutations, and they sit quietly in the genome, a testament to an infection that occurred generations in the past.”
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=314336#p314336