Originally Posted by xXNERDXx 
woa woa woooa i wasn't saying that web site. i don't think i've ever been there before. i'm just saying that when i see or hear about a website that has an atheistic point of view it makes me weary of even visiting.
You should also know that evolution is a theory adhered to by both theists and atheists - hence talkorigins is not exactly atheistic. It doesn't make much mention at all of God (or the lack of God) even when the opportunity comes up.
And, while I agree with the others that "argument by link" isn't great, it's often worth at least skim-reading what people link to, even if it
is an atheist website directed at a theist.
and also to be completely honest and transparent, i don't understand what they're saying. would you be so kind as to explain it to me please? 8-D
Okey kokey. You presumably know what a virus is, right? It's a little tiny "organism" that's not technically alive. Some of them make us ill.
A retrovirus is a specific kind of virus which carries its genetic material as RNA and uses what's called a reverse transcriptase to turn this into DNA. I won't bore you with details, but this basically allows the retrovirus to replicate in a host cell (such as one of our cells) because the cell just replicates the newly converted DNA along with its own.
In the usual course of things, a retrovirus might infect one of our cells, produce the DNA, the cell will replicate it, and then the cell will start creating more viruses (because the DNA that the retrovirus produced codes to create more viruses) our immune system notices this, and goes along to kill off the infected cells.
In the case of an endogenous retrovirus, the virus actually managed to infect a "germ line" cell. (As opposed, in the above case to a "somatic" cell) all this means is that these cells are possibly going to eventually produce offspring - so they might be eggs, sperm, or one of the cells that produces eggs or sperm. Imagine a retrovirus infects one of these cells, which then reproduces. Further imagine that, when the cell replicates, there is a copying error - as if the photocopier got a smudge on your document that wasn't there on the original. This error - a mutation - purely by chance "knocks out" the retrovirus. The code for producing the virus is nearly all there, but that smudge has made it non-functional.
This means that new cell doesn't produce more viruses, and isn't attacked by the immune system. Now, remember that this is a germ line cell - so imagine that this germ line cell produces a sperm, which fertilises an egg, which grows into a new offspring.
Because the sperm cell which gave rise to this new offspring had the broken retrovirus, now
every single cell in the new creature also has the broken retrovirus. In fact, every single descendant that this offspring ever his also has the retrovirus.
You also need to know that each retroviral insertion is random - it could go anywhere. This means that you can distinguish one insertion from another by where they are in the genome. They might come in chromosome number 3, 180 kilobasepairs in. Wherever they come, that's a unique identifier - it's a vanishingly small chance that another retrovirus might come in and write over the top of it.
That tells you what endogenous retroviruses are - broken bits of the genetic code for a virus, inside another organism's genome, passed down from generation to generation. You might be beginning to get an idea of what this is all about, by now, but read on.
When scientists began being able to sequence the genomes of organisms, they noticed that all the ERVs a monkey has, gibbons orangutans, gorillas chimps and humans also have. Why might that be? Well, we already know that ERVs are passed down, so it
could be that we are all descended from the same thing that monkeys are descended from. There is, however, another few explanations. It could just be chance. Or, we might be misinterpreting these ERVs - they might be something crucial to all of life - that's why we all share them.
So, scientists looked further. On that image Punchy linked to (
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comd...etrovirus.gif), take a look at humans, chimps and gorillas. We share 11 of the ERVs that are shown - the final 3 are unique to humans. But when you look at other species, say orangutans or monkeys, some of those ERVs
aren't shared. This means that ERVs can't be crucial to life - leaving only chance behind.
But lets take another look. For
every single ERV that humans and monkeys share, you can guarantee that gorillas, chimps, orangutans and gibbons will also share it.
For
every single ERV that a monkey and an orangutan share, gibbons will also have it - no exceptions.
It can't be chance. There's only one possibility, other than descent with modification (evolution) and that is that God, or some grand joker, decided to put them there. Why did he decide to put them there? Well, the only sensible reason could be to confuse us into thinking that we evolved from a common ancestor, because that sure is what the evidence looks like, wouldn't you agree?
ERVs (along with a whole load of other genetic evidence of the same idea - take a look at the vitamin C gene, or human chromosome number 2) are some of the
most compelling evidence for universal common descent and for evolution. There is simply
no satisfactory explanation other than evolution - have a go, by all means - we'll listen. But I very much doubt you (or anyone else) can find an explanation better than evolution.
Linear Mode
