We are clearly deviating from Ardipithecus ramidus here..
IgoFan wrote:You're still not understanding how an overwhelmingly crucial conclusion from these articles destroys your argument.
Those articles prove nothing but a certain viewpoint, that's all.. And you still haven't addressed our questions posted by Age and Byblos. Again what you have here are assumptions..
Please answer the following..
Byblos wrote:To expand a little on AoK's post, here's a list of questions (from this
link) scientists need to answer before ERV's can be accepted as such:
How Did ERV Related Elements Insert Themselves into Germ Cells Thousands of Times Without Fatalistic Damage to the Host?
How is it that ERVS are Considered Copies of Disease Producing Exogenous Retroviruses but None Have Been Proven to Directly Cause Disease?
What Made ERV Elements Change From Viral Activities to Cellular Activities and Create New Essential Genes?
How Could ERVS Create a Specie-Specific Regulatory Network that Controls the Expression of Cells in a Collective Manner?
What Made Unrelated ERVS in Unrelated Species Create Almost the Same Gene (Convergent Evolution)?
What Made Two Unrelated ERV LTRS Evolve Independently in Creating the Same Regulatory Roles for the Same Gene (Convergent Evolution)?
What Made ERV LTRS Immediately Turn into Essential Gene Regulators Upon Insertion?
What Made LTRS Acquire Transcription Abilities for Essential Genes?
Where is the Proof that ERV LTRS can “Self-Replicate” and Why Don't We See them Doing it Now?
What made the same erv transcribe differently between supposedly closely related species?
What made the same erv transcribe differently among different cell types within the same organism?
There's a few more but you get the gist, too many questions, too many assumptions.
IgoFan wrote:Do a million infections of a specific retrovirus. You'll have close to (more likely, exactly) a million different integration sites spread over different chromosomes.
Remember that between humans and chimps, a shared ERV has the exact same integration site on the same chromosome.
But also remember that "apes do not have a fused chromosome. The human chromosomal fusion argument focuses on a fusion event that is specific to the human line, and therefore provides a highly limited form of evidence for human / ape common ancestry."
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/sh ... hp/id/1392
IgoFan wrote:But I'll even spot you the spectacularly ridiculous optimistic odds of an exact location match for a specific ERV as 1 in 10, instead of 1 in 1000000. Now, raise that 1 in 10 chance to the power of the number of different shared ERVs between just humans and chimps. Do you see how, as you say, "possible" that is? If that isn't close enough to zero for you, then raise to the power of the number of shared ERVs among all apes. Still not good enough? How about among all mammals?
Right, so now you have to make up the rules so that you can bend them in your favor… Being is that you have no rules. The fact here is more research is needed to prove these hypothesis and the reason is because we know very little about retroviral DNA. Thus it is still “growing” as your sources say..
IgoFan wrote:After seeing the word "non-random", you prematurely stopped reading and understanding, in order to start your end zone dance against evolution.
And that is exactly what the article stated.. Please stop denying it. Before you keep insinuating how retroviruses are random junk viruses, you seem to forget the fact that when scientific knowledge increases the amount of junk DNA decreases.. There are many genes that were considered pseudo genes however when further research was made these genes turned out to be useful.. This is true in both ERV's and “so called” junk DNA. As an example the ERV's that are only present in mammals are actually essential for reproduction. Others guide a system that helps the mother to accept the embryo or prevent pathogens to infect the placenta. In other words, they perform a specific function in reproduction and are useful to the organism. So it's no wonder why humans and other mammals share ERV's because they reproduce in a similar way..
But not all mammals reproduce this way. Monotremes, as an example, lay eggs. Why? Because they are a different spieces..
IgoFan wrote:What is confusing you is that the retrovirus articles talk of "preferential" integration locations. Before DNA analysis became so quick and cheap, scientists initially saw from their few data points that the same retrovirus inserted itself over all the chromosomes, and throughout the length of each chromosome.
What is confusing you is that you only have a hypothesis.. This is an idea or an assumption.. Hardly a slam dunk for evolution.
IgoFan wrote:Now with vastly more retrovirus insertion location data, scientists (and not creationists, who don't do science)
Oh so only the evolutionary scientists are real scientists? I see.. I think you should also be aware that the public scientific communities are in no way going to admit that Darwinian evolution is unscientific or false. Keep in mind that many of these institutions rely heavily on public funds to operate. No way would they ever admit that evolution was false... They would literally loose their budgets or shoot themselves in the foot. In fact, when they make a supposed scientific claim for Darwinism, they actually get more money or more grants to continue their research...
IgoFan wrote:saw that insertion location was not simply a uniform random variable, i.e., insertions were not spread evenly across each possible DNA location on each chromosome. Rather, retrovirus insertions generally tend to land somewhere in the vicinity of very common features, e.g., the start of a gene, a region of high gene density.
But the overall conclusion is still the same. The creationist hypothesis of location-identical ERV insertions happening independently in both humans and chimps is inconceivably improbable. The evolutionary hypothesis of ERV insertions in the human-chimp common ancestor is breathtakingly consistent with the data.
Do you remember the PtERV? This is one of thew ERV's that was present in chimps and gorillas but not in humans falsifying evolution.. However, it turned out that PtERV prevents chimps and apes from getting HIV. In fact it is hypothesized that some ERV's serve as a natural vaccine against retroviruses or the cure for cancer or HIV and other retroviruses depend on ERV. Again it performs a certain function..
IgoFan wrote:Please, I beg you, don't take my word for it. Say this to a scientist or researcher at your local university. Ask her to rate your statement on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being "the most inexplicably bizarre as related to science". No need to report back on your results, UNLESS she rates it less than a 15.
The problem here is that many scientists are evolutionists and since evolution predicts that retroviral “has” to be junk DNA, many scientists assume the research in retroviral DNA is pointless.. They are biased against it. Now some ERV's may not show an apparent function, however, based on the evidence, we can conclude that retroviral DNA is not junk, some ERV's have or had a function that is yet unknown.
More here:
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... hFRivSphWH
The fact that at least some ERV's have a function contradicts the claim of random insertions because proteins like ERV's can only be useful or functional if they are in a specific location of the genome, in other words the insertions where not random.
Look at the
link we provided.. It is also a fact that most ERV's do not have an infectious counterpart suggesting that maybe most ERV's did not come from retroviral insertions, but rather that most ERV's had always been part of the genome from the very beginning..
Sorry..