Another poor response to ERV evidence for common ancestry by a creationist.

Loudmouth · Oct 27, 2011

Doveaman said:
You believe that they are beliefs.

Since they are not facts that would make them beliefs.

They are facts.

Then you should be able to demonstrate that they are facts with evidence. Where is the evidence?

If God can produce anything, this means your explanation can be wrong since God could have done it differently (miraculously), and you would be unable to tell the difference.

[They say] "We do not know how this is, but we know that God can do it." You poor fools! God can make a cow out of a tree, but has He ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so. --William of Conches

If every conceivable observation was created by God then every conceivable observation would be evidence of God.

If If every conceivable observation was created by Leprechauns then every conceivable observation would be evidence of Leprechauns.

If this argument does not convince you that Leprechauns exist then please don't use the same argument to show that God exists.

Actually, it is how science has been defined that does not allow for God.

False. You have decided that God's actions are unfalsifiable and untestable. You. Not me. Not science. You. If you think I am wrong, then read your own posts. You are the one keeping God out of science, not I.

If God did something like enable a donkey to talk, science is not allowed to accept that God did it even though He did it.

Read this sentence very carefully. You start out by saying "If God did something . . ." and then at the end you state "even though He did it". Don't you think you first have to show that God actually did it before you can claim that God actually did something?

They either come up with a ad hoc, naturalistic explanation, or simply ignore the observation all together, because God is not allowed to do anything in your myopic method.

You would need to show us a talking donkey before making such claims. I fully agree that science can not test your fantasies, but that is an obvious strength of science. It ignores fantasies.

And if its not scientifically testable and falsifiable, does this mean its not real?

Can you name a single thing that is verifiably real but is not testable of falsifiable? Let's see . . . atoms? Yep. Testable and falsifiable. Germs? Same. Gravity? Same.

None of us are keeping God out of science; the very definition of science does that.

Science is not the one who has decided that God is untestable and unfalsifiable. That is you.

Loudmouth · Oct 27, 2011

Greg1234 said:
Methodological naturalism woukd have had catapult stones as the ultimate cause.

Ultimate cause of what?

Earthism woukd have us on earth.

Earthism? Now you are just making up words.

In current events, naturalism denying the mechanism, inquiry once again takes over. See ID.

Denying what mechanism?

Naraoia · Oct 27, 2011

Astridhere said:
Oh yeah..you believe in multiple dimensions and half uterus and placentas and that makes you all scientific does it ??????????????

What's wrong with half placentas again? To my knowledge, a large number of live-bearing vertebrates have placenta-like organs. Eutherian mammals just took them a few steps further than most.

Astridhere said:
How about you check out your post 407.

Here is what you said.

"Introns are not ERVs" =/= "introns have nothing to do with ERVs".

Clue: "=/=" means DOES NOT EQUAL. This is the same thing I've been saying all along. Seems you just misunderstood it.

That said, the rest of you post is just nonsense.

I'll take that as a compliment

You lot have found 200,000 so called 'same' ervs in chimps and human. For a start you lot have no idea what 'similar' means, and stretch the imagination and your algorithms in desperation.

As it happens, I do, in fact, have an idea what "similar" means. Most of my undergrad project was about finding similarities in sequences. (Granted, in protein sequences, not DNA. Then again, it's not my experience that's relevant to ERV discussion, seeing as I didn't write those papers.)

See bold below. So these researchers excluded any sequences that did not fit their predetermined assumptions and therefore we are meant to take this rubbish as credible.

Um... how does the fact that only a few chimp (or human) ERVs possess all the components of a retrovirus contradict evolution?

(And look how you bolded "underestimate". What were you trying to say with that?)

This research also identified that there are likely many more of these ervs.

Which everyone has been saying all along...

Then there is this

Recent evaluation of the human genome sequencing data revealed that about 9% of the human genome is comprised of elements with long terminal repeats (LTRs) (LTR retrotransposons) comprising over 200 families. The majority of these LTR elements, however, lack sequence similarity to retroviral genes within their internal region or constitute solitary LTRs. About 40 families identified so far have at least some members that show discernible homology to coding regions of retroviruses, but most of them have not yet been analyzed in depth These families are grouped into three classes based on the sequence homology of their pol regions with the pol genes of exogenous gammaretroviruses, betaretroviruses, and spumaviruses. They comprise around 200,000 entities including about 230 full-length proviruses. Around 8,100 elements contain pol-related sequences, 3,661 of these with full or partial open reading frames (J. Blomberg, personal communication)

Seriously all this is psychobabble. You invent a system of category based on a hand full of enzymes and use the same system to demonstrate relationships then explain away 'disimilarities' with more unfalisfiable storytelling.

Lolwut?

Psychobabble? You do know that the prefix "psycho-" is generally used in connection with, you know, minds, not molecular genetics. Do you mean technobabble? Either way, your lack of understanding doesn't make it "babble".

Here, have a retrovirus or two:

These are genome structures of an active, functional retrovirus, namely the two main varieties of human immunodeficiency virus (image from Dan Stowell's hypertextbook on HIV).

The whole thing is thousands of base pairs. (In this case, around 10 thousand). There is plenty of diagnostic stuff in a retroviral genome, even if you strip away some of its components. The LTRs are several hundred bp each, and as far as I can tell they are not called "repeats" because they are made of repetitive DNA, but because there is one at each end of a complete retrovirus. So a "solitary LTR" can still be quite recognisable. (You know, like you can probably still recognise your mother if you only see half her face.)

I don't really understand why it's a problem that most LTR retrothingies lack viral genes...

I am telling you this kind of complicated nonsense will never be seen by me as evidence of anything more than you researcher like to mess around with algorithms and can adjust them to produce the results they want.

What are your specific problems with their specific algorithms? It would be even better if you showed us an example. You know, the stuff commonly called "evidence".

On the occasion they abslutely cannot make the results align with current thinking a non plausible ridiculous and unfalsifiable scenario ensues to save the day..like oh it must have got there through HGT, it must mean reinfection, it must mean there was a purging.

Non-plausible and ridiculous as in observed all the time? You talk like we've never seen a retrovirus infect a species more than once. Come on, how many HIV positive people live on this planet right now?

Even the ridiculous thought that every one of these 200,000 so called ervs you suggest have some similarity, that have mutated for over 6my or 20my, there are deletions and insertions, nonsense mutations, lack sequence similarity to retroviral genes within their internal region or constitute solitary LTRs, and in the end what you call similar could be as similar as an egg and a coconut.

If you'd ever bothered to learn how sequence comparison is done, you'd be ashamed of yourself. Eggs and coconuts are not labelled "similar" jut 'cause someone wants them to be so.

There was an experiment I did recently, mostly for my own amusement. I took information on amino acid frequencies in real proteins (from here, if you are interested), randomly generated a hundred protein sequences using those frequencies, and ran them all through BLASTp just to see what I'd get. These sequences, being random, were truly and honestly unrelated to anything in the database.

I got... pretty much nothing. None of them scored a match I would call convincing. When I did a conserved domain search on them, only 3 out of 100 matched anything at all, all 3 were only partial matches, and poor partial matches at that. Point being: completely unrelated sequences of a decent length (mine were 300 amino acids) are not bloody likely to deceive us into thinking they are related. If something looks like a piece of retrovirus, there's a good chance that that's exactly what it is.

Then of course there is the great story told of how all these so called 200,000 virus spead through all ancient species. That actually does not happen in the real world only in fables where the story line is able to be fantastic and unbelievable because it is just a story. The door is well open to storytellers when using algorithmic unstable and changing nonsense as evidence.

Retroviruses don't insert in the real world?

Evolutionists problem is that they have been so inculcated into their belief system that they are closed off to any other interpretation that does not support common descent. eg erv's have function. You will believe any non credible story as long as it aligns with TOE.

News for you: the idea of common descent was founded almost entirely on functional traits. Having a function does not preclude being evidence for common ancestry. Function doesn't have to require so much similarity that homology and convergence become indistinguishable. (Cases in point: analogous enzymes, wing anatomies of flying vertebrates...)

Placental mamammals were created with the genomic material to maintain their pregancy. They did not inherit an erv that opened the door to a sort of uterus or half a placenta. You obviously believe some old virus had a plan that was better than Gods?

How about God saw some old virus and thought, "hey, that could work..." ?

(P.S.: I asked you not to write your responses inside a quote. You may have noticed that CF doesn't allow multilevel quoting, so if I wanted to use those paragraphs, I'd have to individually copy-paste them from your post. Sorry, but you are not worth that much effort. If you want me to read and reply to something, put it in a quotable place.)

dad · Oct 27, 2011

Loudmouth said:
Grow up.

Have you never heard of an atomic bomb?

Is that a threat? Well I have never heard of a nuke on the ark, or in Eden. You? What, you think present state reactions would work there?? I don't. Neither will they when the Lord returns, so if you know Dr Strangelove, you can tell him he can't blow up our world after all! Science will have to content itself with polluting the world, and limited warfare I suspect, till it get's sidelined forever. God apparently has a place planned for dangerous offenders.

Now you think nuclear decay is poofing. Again, grow up. The whole point is that the Earth is old. That is why we do not find short lived isotopes. Why is this so hard to figure out? You are pointing to the very evidence that supports an old Earth and constant physical laws.

Look, if you cannot debate honestly, don't post at all. The point is not that decay exists, but that all the claimed decay in the past, and added things, and supposed missing things all result from some same state past flukefest. That is not known, and when we look at the facts, becomes ridiculous.

I am not the one who believes in a different past that is not supported by a single shred of evidence and contradicted by all of the evidence at hand.

I am not the one who believes in a same past that is not supported by a single shred of evidence and contradicted by all of the evidence at hand. Even the bible opposes that dream. No evidence contradicts a different state past or future...none. No evidence supports a same state past, literally...zero. The only evidence at hand we have comes from the observations and records of folks that come from the time when our nature was not extant. That all opposes your belief in some 'present state forever just because I say so' business.

There is nothing within the laws of physics that requires a neutron star.

Oh come on, the expected and predicted one. Face it. Need 10 million links??? Then they cowered and scurried and scrambled to cook up any same state law explanation that would not be immediately able to be exposed as of course another fraudulent claim. Some said a black hole then, might fit the bill....of course this is MIA as well! What a farce.

Loudmouth · Oct 27, 2011

dad said:
Is that a threat? Well I have never heard of a nuke on the ark, or in Eden. You? What, you think present state reactions would work there?? I don't. Neither will they when the Lord returns, so if you know Dr Strangelove, you can tell him he can't blow up our world after all! Science will have to content itself with polluting the world, and limited warfare I suspect, till it get's sidelined forever. God apparently has a place planned for dangerous offenders.

Do you know what an atomic bomb is? Perhaps you can answer the question this time.

Also, do you know what a nuclear reactor is? Do you understand how it works? What you call "tooth fairy" is what drives nuclear bombs and reactors, or did you not know that? Do you also know what the half lives are of the different isotopes of uranium? Did you know that one decays faster than the other? Do you understand how half lives can be used to predict how much of that isotope was present in the past?

If you want to discuss these things with me at least try to pretend that this information exists. My guess is that you don't understand any of this. All you can do is type the blustering rants like the one above.

Look, if you cannot debate honestly, don't post at all.

So says the guy who denies that fission occurs.

The point is not that decay exists, but that all the claimed decay in the past, and added things, and supposed missing things all result from some same state past flukefest.

The Oklo reactors are evidence that it did happen and that the decay rates were the same in the past. That is the whole point of me pointing to them. If you can't deal with the facts then that is not my problem.

I am not the one who believes in a same past that is not supported by a single shred of evidence and contradicted by all of the evidence at hand.

And back on ignore for dad. Have fun with your fantasies.

dad · Oct 27, 2011

Loudmouth said:
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Do you know what an atomic bomb is? Perhaps you can answer the question this time.

The question? What you think people will find your annunciation of an atomic bomb revelatory?? Come on now.

Also, do you know what a nuclear reactor is? Do you understand how it works? What you call "tooth fairy" is what drives nuclear bombs and reactors, or did you not know that?

Point?? Did you miss the part about present state decay being irrelevant?

Do you also know what the half lives are of the different isotopes of uranium? Did you know that one decays faster than the other? Do you understand how half lives can be used to predict how much of that isotope was present in the past?

Absurd!!!! The only way we could use it to predict what happened in the far past, is by knowing that is also was under our state, our forces our laws. That should be obvious.

They have resorted to some dream world scenarios, in a no holds barred imagination festival, where all things are possible if they require same state past miracles!! Need to call the elevator, and submerge all 12 sites or whatever number there are, miles down under?? No problem! Push the imaginary button, and presto! The elevator arrives in just the perfect imaginary time when needed to not erode stuff, or whatever else it needs to do or not do......!! It then takes all the sites miles under. Millions of years later we need that magic elevator again, to bring it all too the surface...no sweat! Right on cue, it comes and resurfaces the whole area. Need missing materials? Heck, the fact they do not exist and cannot be proven to have ever existed is no problem...just claim they were there! Etc...ad nauseum.

Loudmouth · Oct 27, 2011

Astridhere said:
You lot have found 200,000 so called 'same' ervs in chimps and human.

For a start you lot have no idea what 'similar' means, and stretch the imagination and your algorithms in desperation.

So your only recourse is to claim that molecular biologists with PhD's don't know what they are doing, but you, with no training in the field, do. Sorry, but your argument isn't worthe pixels it is displayed with.

Recent evaluation of the human genome sequencing data revealed that about 9% of the human genome is comprised of elements with long terminal repeats (LTRs) (LTR retrotransposons) comprising over 200 families. The majority of these LTR elements, however, lack sequence similarity to retroviral genes within their internal region or constitute solitary LTRs.

Do you even understand what this is saying? Obviously not. Do you know what the difference is between LTR retrotransposons, solo LTR's, and ERV's? Again, obviously not. LTR retrotransposons are not ERV's. LTR retrotransposons are retrotransposons that have picked up pieces of LTR's and perhaps pieces of an ERV. These tag along with the rest of the retrotransposon, popping out of the genome and back in at different places. LTR retrotransposons are an example of a chimera transposon. They are NOT ERV'S.

Also, it isn't that hard to see if an ERV in one genome is found at the same spot in another. The only algorithm that is needed is BLAST which even creationists use. All you need to do is use one ERV to search the other genome. You then compare the flanking genomic DNA on either side of the ERV insertion. If they match then it is considered to be orthologous. Very simple. No assumptions of common ancestry are needed. It is a very simple comparison of one genome to the other.

Using the procedure described above, we identified a total of 425 full-length chimpanzee endogenous retroviruses. This is certainly an underestimate of the number of endogenous retroviruses in the chimpanzee genome because we consciously excluded any sequences that could not be unambiguously identified as an endogenous retrovirus. The majority of these endogenous retroviruses (395/425 or 93%) were identified directly by LTR_STRUC or by homology to LTR_STRUC-identified elements.

Identification, characterization and comparative genomics of chimpanzee endogenous retroviruses

LTR_STRUC will only find full length ERV's by the authors full admission. It will not find solo LTR's or ERV's missing one LTR. Their algorithm is incapable of finding all ERV's by their very own admission.

Even the ridiculous thought that every one of these 200,000 so called ervs you suggest have some similarity, that have mutated for over 6my or 20my, there are deletions and insertions, nonsense mutations, lack sequence similarity to retroviral genes within their internal region or constitute solitary LTRs, and in the end what you call similar could be as similar as an egg and a coconut.

And yet they did find them. If you can't handle the facts then just say so.

This research also identified that there are likely many more of these ervs. However you lot are only interested in what supports evolution, not the truth.

Then here is the perfect opportunity for creationists to do their own research and show that ERV's do not fall into a nested hierarchy. I wonder why they aren't doing this research?

I am telling you this kind of complicated nonsense will never be seen by me as evidence of anything more than you researcher like to mess around with algorithms and can adjust them to produce the results they want.

It is not my job to remove your blinders. That is your job.

Astridhere · Nov 1, 2011

Naraoia said:
What's wrong with half placentas again? To my knowledge, a large number of live-bearing vertebrates have placenta-like organs. Eutherian mammals just took them a few steps further than most.

Clue: "=/=" means DOES NOT EQUAL. This is the same thing I've been saying all along. Seems you just misunderstood it.

I'll take that as a compliment
As it happens, I do, in fact, have an idea what "similar" means. Most of my undergrad project was about finding similarities in sequences. (Granted, in protein sequences, not DNA. Then again, it's not my experience that's relevant to ERV discussion, seeing as I didn't write those papers.)

Um... how does the fact that only a few chimp (or human) ERVs possess all the components of a retrovirus contradict evolution?

(And look how you bolded "underestimate". What were you trying to say with that?)

Which everyone has been saying all along...

Lolwut?

Psychobabble? You do know that the prefix "psycho-" is generally used in connection with, you know, minds, not molecular genetics. Do you mean technobabble? Either way, your lack of understanding doesn't make it "babble".

Here, have a retrovirus or two:

These are genome structures of an active, functional retrovirus, namely the two main varieties of human immunodeficiency virus (image from Dan Stowell's hypertextbook on HIV).
These 2 genome structures are the result of erraneous algorithms, that use assumptions and are erraneous eg...Similar indels produced by horizontal insertion. There is plenty of research I can quote that shows many erraneous assumptions your algorithms are based on.
The whole thing is thousands of base pairs. (In this case, around 10 thousand). There is plenty of diagnostic stuff in a retroviral genome, even if you strip away some of its components. The LTRs are several hundred bp each, and as far as I can tell they are not called "repeats" because they are made of repetitive DNA, but because there is one at each end of a complete retrovirus. So a "solitary LTR" can still be quite recognisable. (You know, like you can probably still recognise your mother if you only see half her face.)
Again..a solitary LTR may be recognizable but being a remnant of a bigone engogenised virus is an assumption backed by erraneous algorithms and supported by more erraneous algorithms.
I don't really understand why it's a problem that most LTR retrothingies lack viral genes...
Don't worry, your researchers do not understand most stuff. They guess alot though!
What are your specific problems with their specific algorithms? It would be even better if you showed us an example. You know, the stuff commonly called "evidence".
I have, but you ignore it and request it over and over. That's why I had a few days off here. It is truly a waste of time talking science to an evolutionist.

I'll have another go so that you can ignore it and carry on as if evolutionists belong in biology labs...

However, the inference that shared intron positions reflect evolutionary conservation is complicated by the fact that intron insertion does not seem to be a strictly random process. A simple form of such non-randomness was taken into account in the parsimonious reconstruction of intron evolution by Monte Carlo simulation with intron insertion allowed only in a fraction of a gene's sequence (e.g. 10%). The results suggested a relatively small contribution of independent insertion in the same position in different lineage (parallel gain) to intron evolution (4,5).
Nevertheless, a greater role of parallel gain due to non-random intron insertion cannot be ruled out. The short sequence stretches flanking introns have significantly biased nucleotide frequencies which led to the notion of protosplice sites, the target sites for intron insertion (6,7). However, it remained unclear whether the consensus nucleotides flanking the splice junctions were remnants of the original protosplice sites or evolved convergently after intron insertion.
Conservation versus parallel gains in intron evolution

It is not about whom is right or wrong or is the latest right. The point is.. it is all no more credible than flavour of the month. This is another point you are unable to assimilate.

Non-plausible and ridiculous as in observed all the time? You talk like we've never seen a retrovirus infect a species more than once. Come on, how many HIV positive people live on this planet right now?

If you'd ever bothered to learn how sequence comparison is done, you'd be ashamed of yourself. Eggs and coconuts are not labelled "similar" jut 'cause someone wants them to be so.
Yeah well your researchers use 40% & 60% similar as represented in algorithms as 'the same'. Now you say this is rubbish to the forum just so I can show you evidence that I am correct.

Here is a little taste...
Specifically, 3,644 pairs (95.2%) among 3,828 possible pairs of these 88 sequences have <25% sequence identity. Within our dataset, the group with the highest sequence identity is the Mt plasmid group (mean 61.2% identity ± 41.8% s.d.), and the group with the smallest sequence identity is the telomerase group (mean 17.9%)
Phylogenetic profiles reveal evolutionary relationships within the âtwilight zoneâ of sequence similarity

Eggs and coconuts was an excellent comparison of what evolutionists call 'the same', actually...

There was an experiment I did recently, mostly for my own amusement. I took information on amino acid frequencies in real proteins (from here, if you are interested), randomly generated a hundred protein sequences using those frequencies, and ran them all through BLASTp just to see what I'd get. These sequences, being random, were truly and honestly unrelated to anything in the database.

I got... pretty much nothing. None of them scored a match I would call convincing. When I did a conserved domain search on them, only 3 out of 100 matched anything at all, all 3 were only partial matches, and poor partial matches at that. Point being: completely unrelated sequences of a decent length (mine were 300 amino acids) are not bloody likely to deceive us into thinking they are related. If something looks like a piece of retrovirus, there's a good chance that that's exactly what it is.

Retroviruses don't insert in the real world?

News for you: the idea of common descent was founded almost entirely on functional traits. Having a function does not preclude being evidence for common ancestry. Function doesn't have to require so much similarity that homology and convergence become indistinguishable. (Cases in point: analogous enzymes, wing anatomies of flying vertebrates...)
Absolutly
How about God saw some old virus and thought, "hey, that could work..." ?

(P.S.: I asked you not to write your responses inside a quote. You may have noticed that CF doesn't allow multilevel quoting, so if I wanted to use those paragraphs, I'd have to individually copy-paste them from your post. Sorry, but you are not worth that much effort. If you want me to read and reply to something, put it in a quotable place.)

My multi qoute is broke or something

Darls, you are missing a huge point all this phychobabble you have spoken to is based on the nonsense of algorithms that are biased and erraneous. They are supported by more algorithmic results that are again based on the same assumptions.

You lot suggest monotremes are 'in between'. That is a nonsense. These do not have an internal uterus. Half an internal uterus is useless. What do you lot reckon developed first? the uterus or the feotus' ability to attach via a placenta. Or rather which theoretical non plausible scenario do you favour the most?

Endogenous_retrovirus

This link speaks to the dilemma of viviparous mammals. Maybe you can help them out seeing as so many here pretend all this nonsense is cut and dry evidence for evolution with more credibility than flavour of the month. The news is evolutionary evidence is not credible at all, neither in relation to ervs, genomic comparisons, fossils or anything else you care to mention.
http://www.somosbacteriasyvirus.com/retrovirus.pdf

Now you evos are trying to tell us, we are 8-10% viral remnants and virus are responsible for mammal evolution. It is seriously getting too ridiculous to even warrant a serious discussion.

Researchers just keep making up more and more nonsense to cover over the obvious...So called ervs are simply other forms of functional genomic material created by God and placed where they all need to be to perform the function they were designed and created to do.

This is supported by the fact that this so called junk material is being found to be functional and is implicated in mammalian pregnancy re non rejection of the feotus and must have been a functional genomic material at the creation of mammal kinds. Why, you ask? Because there is no such thing as half an internal uterus, nor would natural selection have any reason to select for a useless non functioning 'evolving uterus'.

You seriously need to be able to ignore the obvious and have faith in the ridiculous to be of the TOE faith!

British Bulldog · Nov 1, 2011

Astridhere said:
Darls, you are missing a huge point all this phychobabble you have spoken to is based on the nonsense of algorithms that are biased and erraneous. They are supported by more algorithmic results that are again based on the same assumptions.

You lot suggest monotremes are 'in between'. That is a nonsense. These do not have an internal uterus. Half an internal uterus is useless. What do you lot reckon developed first? the uterus or the feotus' ability to attach via a placenta. Or rather which theoretical non plausible scenario do you favour the most?

Endogenous_retrovirus

This link speaks to the dilemma of viviparous mammals. Maybe you can help them out seeing as so many here pretend all this nonsense is cut and dry evidence for evolution with more credibility than flavour of the month. The news is evolutionary evidence is not credible at all, neither in relation to ervs, genomic comparisons, fossils or anything else you care to mention.
http://www.somosbacteriasyvirus.com/retrovirus.pdf

Now you evos are trying to tell us, we are 8-10% viral remnants and virus are responsible for mammal evolution. It is seriously getting too ridiculous to even warrant a serious discussion.

Researchers just keep making up more and more nonsense to cover over the obvious...So called ervs are simply other forms of functional genomic material created by God and placed where they all need to be to perform the function they were designed and created to do.

This is supported by the fact that this so called junk material is being found to be functional and is implicated in mammalian pregnancy re non rejection of the feotus and must have been a functional genomic material at the creation of mammal kinds. Why, you ask? Because there is no such thing as half an internal uterus, nor would natural selection have any reason to select for a useless non functioning 'evolving uterus'.

You seriously need to be able to ignore the obvious and have faith in the ridiculous to be of the TOE faith!

You would save yourself a lot of angst if you just admitted that you don't understand the evidence being presented to you.

Naraoia · Nov 1, 2011

Astrid, I told you not to reply within quotes. I guess you don't mind if I ignore your points?

Astridhere said:
Darls, you are missing a huge point all this phychobabble you have spoken to is based on the nonsense of algorithms that are biased and erraneous. They are supported by more algorithmic results that are again based on the same assumptions.

WHICH ALGORITHMS AND WHAT ARE THEIR PROBLEMS?

Put up or shut up.

You lot suggest monotremes are 'in between'. That is a nonsense. These do not have an internal uterus. Half an internal uterus is useless. What do you lot reckon developed first? the uterus or the feotus' ability to attach via a placenta. Or rather which theoretical non plausible scenario do you favour the most?

Seriously? The what use is half a wing argument?

Do me a favour and read a developmental biology textbook. This is not my expertise, but I would hope that Scott Gilbert and his sources know what they're talking about. From the online companion to the 9th edition of Developmental Biology (I think this is free stuff):

While the monotremes are oviparous, the quantity of yolk in the moroblastically cleaving eggs is not sufficient to provide all the nutrients needed for the completion of embryonic development. The small egg (4.4 mm diameter) develops to form a rapidly dividing outer cell layer ("epiblast", "trophoblast") that envelops the egg to form a "bilaminar" blastocyst. The uterus of the monotreme secretes a double-layered shell about the embryo. This shell is porous and allows uterine secretions to enter the region between the outer and inner layers. The uterus then secretes a third layer of shell. The shell is still porous to oxygen and nutrients (Figure 1).

So one, monotremes do have uteri, and two, they feed their babes with uterine secretions before laying their eggs. Transitional stage numero one.

Marsupials, it seems, do largely the same except in some of them the yolk sac or other extraembryonic membranes attach to or even invade the wall of the uterus. Remind you of something?

A uterus is just a fancy extension of the oviducts. (IIRC, it's even paired in marsupials.) A placenta is just a fancy extension of the membranes found in every amniotic egg.

Now you evos are trying to tell us, we are 8-10% viral remnants and virus are responsible for mammal evolution. It is seriously getting too ridiculous to even warrant a serious discussion.

They look like viruses and quack like viruses. How about you show us a few examples that scientists are certain came from viruses, but you can demonstrate this isn't necessarily the case? That might gain you a smidgen of credibility.

FWIW, if memory serves, syncytin-type sequences were co-opted several times independently, and not all placental mammals use them, but I could be misremembering. I'm fairly certain not all placental mammals do the syncytium trick.

Is it also ridiculous if I say less than 3% of your genome codes for proteins? That you probably have around 20 500 protein-coding genes? That almost half your genome is made of Alu elements? These are just statistics. The human genome is one of the (if not the) best studied genomes in the living world. There's not much controversy about its overall composition.

This is supported by the fact that this so called junk material is being found to be functional and is implicated in mammalian pregnancy re non rejection of the feotus and must have been a functional genomic material at the creation of mammal kinds. Why, you ask? Because there is no such thing as half an internal uterus, nor would natural selection have any reason to select for a useless non functioning 'evolving uterus'.

There is such a thing as half a uterus*. And there is such a thing as half a placenta. As there is such a thing as half a pregnancy and half viviparity. Just ask those weirdos down under. You're not too far...

*Why "internal"? Is there any other kind of uterus?

Doveaman · Nov 1, 2011

Loudmouth said:
Since they are not facts that would make them beliefs.

We believe because they are facts.

Then you should be able to demonstrate that they are facts with evidence. Where is the evidence?

The predictive power of Scripture serves as evidence supporting its claims.

The myopic-scientific method makes predictions based on what is observed in Mother Nature.

The theo-scientific method makes predictions based on what is observed in Human Nature.

“The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14).

Your atheistic response to anything God related is confirmation of this theo-scientific prediction.

Prediction confirmed.

“[They say] "We do not know how this is, but we know that God can do it." You poor fools! God can make a cow out of a tree, but has He ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so.” --William of Conches

"You poor fool! The myopic-scientific method is incapable of establishing an empirical link between the supernatural God and the natural universe. Therefore, the theo-scientific method (the method that relies on the observations in Scripture and in nature, with Scripture taking precedence) is required." -- Doveaman

If If “every conceivable observation” was created by Leprechauns then “every conceivable observation” would be evidence of Leprechauns.

That’s correct. “If”.

If this argument does not convince you that Leprechauns exist then please don't use the same argument to show that God exists.

If billions of people had a personal experience of Leprechauns then that personal experience would be proof to those people that Leprechauns exists. Your lack of that experience would not change this fact.

No one has had such an experience with Leprechauns, but billions do have such an experience with God, including myself, and your lack of that experience does not change this fact.

False. You have decided that God's actions are unfalsifiable and untestable. You. Not me. Not science. You. If you think I am wrong, then read your own posts. You are the one keeping God out of science, not I.

God is falsifiable and testable using the theo-scientific method. Your myopic-scientific method is short-sighted. It is not even capable of seeing the visible universe for what it is. The universe is 96% unknown using your myopic-scientific method, so how do you expect to find God using such a pathetic method?

Read this sentence very carefully. You start out by saying "If God did something . . ." and then at the end you state "even though He did it". Don't you think you first have to show that God actually did it before you can claim that God actually did something?

“If God did it” presents my scenario as a mere possibility, not as a factual claim.

You would need to show us a talking donkey before making such claims.

Even if I showed you a God inspired talking donkey you will still not be able to use your myopic-scientific method to verify that God inspired the donkey. There would be no way of establishing an empirical link between the supernatural God and the natural donkey using your myopic-scientific method. That’s the point.

Can you name a single thing that is verifiably real but is not testable of falsifiable? Let's see . . . atoms? Yep. Testable and falsifiable. Germs? Same. Gravity? Same.

I can name a “thing” that is verifiably real, but is not scientifically testable of falsifiable: God.

Science is not the one who has decided that God is untestable and unfalsifiable. That is you.

The supernatural God is testable and falsifiable, but not by using your myopic-scientific method that is designed to only test the natural. You need a different method, the theo-scientific method.
_________________

_________________

Doveaman · Nov 1, 2011

Naraoia said:
How about God saw some old virus and thought, "hey, that could work..." ?

I like that idea. It supports my re-creation theory.

Loudmouth · Nov 1, 2011

Doveaman said:
We believe because they are facts.
The predictive power of Scripture serves as evidence supporting its claims.

So where did scripture predict that ERV's will fall into a nested hierarchy among humans and other apes?

The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Click to expand...

(1 Cor 2:14).

Your atheistic response is confirmation of this prediction.

This is really sad. This is not a prediction. This is propoganda. It is sad that you can't tell the difference between the two.

Big surprise here. A religious text stating that people who do not believe in this religion are fools. Wow.

The myopic-scientific method is incapable of establishing an empirical link between what is done and the God who did it.

Yes, for the same reason that the scientific method can not establish a link between rainbows and leprechauns. The ability of the scientific method to push fantasies to the side is one of its strengths.

If billions of people had a personal experience of Leprechauns then that personal experience would be proof to those people that Leprechauns exists. Your lack of this experience would not change this fact.

Then the lack of people experiencing Leprechauns does not change the fact that Leprechauns are real, right? Again, your method is useless. The theo-scientific method takes a fantasy, pretends it is real, and then protects it from any criticism through unfalsifiable statements. This is only a method for tricking yourself into believing in fantasies.

God is falsifiable and testable using the theo-scientific method. Your myopic-scientific method is short-sighted. It is not even capable of seeing the visible universe for what it is. The universe is 96% unknown using your myopic-scientific method, so how do you expect to find God using such a pathetic method?

So what empirical observation, if made, would falsify the existence of God?

Even if I showed you a God inspired talking donkey you will still not be able to use your myopic-scientific method to verify that God inspired the donkey. There would be no way of establishing an empirical link between the supernatural God and the natural donkey using your myopic-scientific method. Thats the point.

Even if I showed you an observed, testable, falsifiable, and well documented natural mechanism that produces biodiversity you would not accept it. That is my point. Instead, you would cling to your fantasies, which you have done.

Astridhere · Nov 1, 2011

Naraoia said:
What's wrong with half placentas again? To my knowledge, a large number of live-bearing vertebrates have placenta-like organs. Eutherian mammals just took them a few steps further than most.
We can all see the expected side stepping and ridiculous responses creationists get to simple points that challenge evolution. You do know what a mammalian uterus looks like, don't you? For this organ to form it must have had a start point or are you suggesting it just suddenly appeared fully functioning and gave birth to the first placental mammal? It is ridiculous.
Clue: "=/=" means DOES NOT EQUAL. This is the same thing I've been saying all along. Seems you just misunderstood it.

I'll take that as a compliment
As it happens, I do, in fact, have an idea what "similar" means. Most of my undergrad project was about finding similarities in sequences. (Granted, in protein sequences, not DNA. Then again, it's not my experience that's relevant to ERV discussion, seeing as I didn't write those papers.)
Well then, you'll be pleased to learn you have just wasted your time learing the pplication of myth to produce required results.
There was an experiment I did recently, mostly for my own amusement. I took information on amino acid frequencies in real proteins (from here, if you are interested), randomly generated a hundred protein sequences using those frequencies, and ran them all through BLASTp just to see what I'd get. These sequences, being random, were truly and honestly unrelated to anything in the database.

I got... pretty much nothing. None of them scored a match I would call convincing. When I did a conserved domain search on them, only 3 out of 100 matched anything at all, all 3 were only partial matches, and poor partial matches at that. Point being: completely unrelated sequences of a decent length (mine were 300 amino acids) are not bloody likely to deceive us into thinking they are related. If something looks like a piece of retrovirus, there's a good chance that that's exactly what it is.
I'll take up this point which I missed in my last reply...a football looks like a coconut in the dark.
Retroviruses don't insert in the real world?
Again you misrepresent what I said which was virus do not spread to every single person or animal in the population. This is one of the myths your algorithms are based on.

News for you: the idea of common descent was founded almost entirely on functional traits. Having a function does not preclude being evidence for common ancestry. Function doesn't have to require so much similarity that homology and convergence become indistinguishable. (Cases in point: analogous enzymes, wing anatomies of flying vertebrates...)
News for you, your phylogenies are rubbish. eg birds did not evolve from dinosaurs as modern bird footprints were dated to 212mya with the resulting non plausible scenario of some dinos had modern bird feet. Many of your researchers do not accept the bird from dino theory and challenge it. Stop pretending your evidence for evolution is any more than flavour of the month.
How about God saw some old virus and thought, "hey, that could work..." ? God did it is more plausible than suggesting evolution has intelligence and thought oh let's make a mammalian uterus and use this genomic material to make a placental mammal. A powerful and knowledeable God did it, is also more plausible than flavour of the month. Junk DNA was evidence for evolution and against creationism, and now functioning genomic material found in non coding dna is also evidence for evolution. Wake up!

(P.S.: I asked you not to write your responses inside a quote. You may have noticed that CF doesn't allow multilevel quoting, so if I wanted to use those paragraphs, I'd have to individually copy-paste them from your post. Sorry, but you are not worth that much effort. If you want me to read and reply to something, put it in a quotable place.)

Look rather than listen to me perhaps you'll listen to some of your researchers.

Phylogenetic bias, by which ‘‘incorrect’’ models
can give ‘‘correct’’ answers, has been identified in simulation
studies. Why this bias occurs is a question that
remains unsolved. Here, we report an empirical example
of this bias. The causes of it are probably complex and
dependent on several factors. One possible factor contributing
to the bias is most likely a problematic alignment,
in which sequences belonging to the same group
(genus) are easily aligned, whereas the opposite is true
for sequences belonging to different groups. Complex
models might be confounded when trying to extract information
from the bad intragroup sequence alignment,
while simpler models use basically the observed patterns.
This would warrant a word of caution for the estimation

of phylogenies from highly divergent data sets.
http://crandalllab.byu.edu/Portals/20/docs/publications/retrovirusmodelsMBE01.pdf

Thus, we found that RepeatMasker and Retrotector did not routinely sort the same element into the same class. For example, among ERVs classified as class I by the Retrotector method, 64.72% were classified as ERV1 and 35.28% were classified as ERVL by RepeatMasker.
One explanation for the different distributions of ERVs across bovine chromosomes could lie in the target elements employed by the methods used to identify ERVs. In the analysis of the chromosomal distribution of the elements detected, the various methods showed different chromosomes that did not follow any homogeneous distribution. The nature of the elements detected by each method could be a good reason for this discrepancy.
Genome-Wide Detection and Characterization of Endogenous Retroviruses in Bos taurus

I have heaps of these. Much research pooheys other research as inaccurrate, simplistic or erraneous in comparison to some latest model.

I have posted heaps of examples and you still plod along with the same old story line.

All these computations are nonsense. You lot will never ever be able to reflect the complexity of the human genome into numbers accurately. It is no more than fluffing around in the dark.

These algorithms of yours could show an egg evolved from a coconut if that is what evolutionists wanted them to demonstrate.

You will come back with more of this nonsense as a support for your view. You are welcome to it. You are welcome to have faith in the blind leading the blind also. However, don't you or other evolutionists dare to ridicule creationists who suggest these algorithmic results are nonsense. Don't you dare suggest that there is any credibility at the base of any of your comparative genomics. There isn't!

Loudmouth · Nov 1, 2011

Astridhere said:
Look rather than listen to me perhaps you'll listen to some of your researchers.

Phylogenetic bias, by which incorrect models
can give correct answers, has been identified in simulation
studies. Why this bias occurs is a question that
remains unsolved. Here, we report an empirical example
of this bias. The causes of it are probably complex and
dependent on several factors. One possible factor contributing
to the bias is most likely a problematic alignment,
in which sequences belonging to the same group
(genus) are easily aligned, whereas the opposite is true
for sequences belonging to different groups. Complex
models might be confounded when trying to extract information
from the bad intragroup sequence alignment,
while simpler models use basically the observed patterns.
This would warrant a word of caution for the estimation

of phylogenies from highly divergent data sets.
http://crandalllab.byu.edu/Portals/20/docs/publications/retrovirusmodelsMBE01.pdf

Thus, we found that RepeatMasker and Retrotector did not routinely sort the same element into the same class. For example, among ERVs classified as class I by the Retrotector method, 64.72% were classified as ERV1 and 35.28% were classified as ERVL by RepeatMasker.
One explanation for the different distributions of ERVs across bovine chromosomes could lie in the target elements employed by the methods used to identify ERVs. In the analysis of the chromosomal distribution of the elements detected, the various methods showed different chromosomes that did not follow any homogeneous distribution. The nature of the elements detected by each method could be a good reason for this discrepancy.
Genome-Wide Detection and Characterization of Endogenous Retroviruses in Bos taurus

I have heaps of these. Much research pooheys other research as inaccurrate, simplistic or erraneous in comparison to some latest model.

I have posted heaps of examples and you still plod along with the same old story line.

All these computations are nonsense. You lot will never ever be able to reflect the complexity of the human genome into numbers accurately. It is no more than fluffing around in the dark.

These algorithms of yours could show an egg evolved from a coconut if that is what evolutionists wanted them to demonstrate.

You will come back with more of this nonsense as a support for your view. You are welcome to it. You are welcome to have faith in the blind leading the blind also. However, don't you or other evolutionists dare to ridicule creationists who suggest these algorithmic results are nonsense. Don't you dare suggest that there is any credibility at the base of any of your comparative genomics. There isn't!

"I am telling you this kind of complicated nonsense will never be seen by me as evidence of anything more than you researcher like to mess around with algorithms and can adjust them to produce the results they want."--Astridhere

Sorry, but there is no reason that we should respond to your posts. You have stated that there is no evidence that would ever convince you. You have stated your bias quite clearly. You don't care about the evidence. You have made up your mind and nothing is going to budge it. Enjoy your dogma.

Naraoia · Nov 1, 2011

Hey, how many times have I told you not to reply within quotes? You seem to like being ignored

I'm well aware of phylogenetic bias. Now, how is it a problem for primate ERVs specifically?

And while we are at literature, nice job cherry-picking the beef paper. Here is my cherry-picking of same:

Garcia-Etxebarria & Jugo 2010 said:
An analysis of representatives of ERV families from rodents, primates, and ruminants showed a phylogenetic relationship following their hosts' relationships.

Whoops?

(FWIW, most of the branches actually seem unresolved in that phylogeny. Which isn't terribly surprising given that we're talking quite a long divergence in short sequences from viral genomes that evolved fast to begin with, and had little reason to remain conserved after endogenisation. But you do get some nice well-supported clusters of human + chimp sequences.)

G-E&J2010 said:
ERVs that were detected by at least two of the methods and whose reverse transcriptase (RT) region was longer than 500 nucleotides were used to define bovine ERV families.

Pretty cautious approach... though 500 nucleotides still aren't that many!

G-E&J2010 said:
The bovine ERV putative families that we detected were defined based on the support of phylogenetic trees. A cluster was considered a putative family when the clustering was significant in at least two of the phylogenetic methods (bootstrap values of >70 for neighbor joining and maximum likelihood and Bayesian posterior probability of >95 for Bayesian inference).

Again, clear awareness of the inherent uncertainty of their "algorithms"...

G-E&J2010 said:
The BLAST-based search detected the fewest elements (928 elements), most of which were also detected by Retrotector. As the criteria used in the BLAST-based search were quite strict, the elements that it detected could be considered to be highly conserved ERVs.

Translate: the reason BLAST didn't find most of the putative ERVs detected by the other methods is that it wasn't picking up dubious crap.

G-E&J2010 said:
as stated previously by Sperber et al. (38), results from RepeatMasker and Retrotector cannot be directly compared because the RepeatMasker output is difficult to organize into proviruses. In addition, Retrotector rarely detects elements less than 1,000 bp long, and RepeatMasker can detect much shorter repeats and single LTRs.

Translate: don't be surprised to get useless results when you compare, how did you say, eggs and coconuts...

And so on.

One thing is abundantly clear to me: these people thought about what they were doing.

Naraoia · Nov 1, 2011

Astridhere said:
These algorithms of yours could show an egg evolved from a coconut if that is what evolutionists wanted them to demonstrate.

I told you, your ranting doesn't interest me. Show me your work. Put up or shut up.

Astridhere · Nov 1, 2011

So it appears I win in facing off with Naraoia and Loudmouth.

Both your responses clearly are a cop out planned to excuse yourselves from defending your claims of algorithm credibility in the face of the evidence I posted to the contrary. Namely this....

"Phylogenetic bias, by which incorrect models
can give correct answers, has been identified in simulation
studies. Why this bias occurs is a question that
remains unsolved. Here, we report an empirical example
of this bias. The causes of it are probably complex and
dependent on several factors. One possible factor contributing
to the bias is most likely a problematic alignment,
in which sequences belonging to the same group
(genus) are easily aligned, whereas the opposite is true
for sequences belonging to different groups. Complex
models might be confounded when trying to extract information
from the bad intragroup sequence alignment,
while simpler models use basically the observed patterns.
This would warrant a word of caution for the estimation

of phylogenies from highly divergent data sets.
http://crandalllab.byu.edu/Portals/2...odelsMBE01.pdf

Thus, we found that RepeatMasker and Retrotector did not routinely sort the same element into the same class. For example, among ERVs classified as class I by the Retrotector method, 64.72% were classified as ERV1 and 35.28% were classified as ERVL by RepeatMasker.
One explanation for the different distributions of ERVs across bovine chromosomes could lie in the target elements employed by the methods used to identify ERVs. In the analysis of the chromosomal distribution of the elements detected, the various methods showed different chromosomes that did not follow any homogeneous distribution. The nature of the elements detected by each method could be a good reason for this discrepancy.
Genome-Wide Detection and Characterization of Endogenous Retroviruses in Bos taurus

I have heaps of these. Much research pooheys other research as inaccurrate, simplistic or erraneous in comparison to some latest model."

Clearly you are unable to defend the monumental instability and lack of credibility these papers above, written by evolutionists, speak to.

Here is another. I have stacks... I enjoy evolutionists discrediting each others work.

The taxonomy of HERVs is still a source of confusion. The preferred systematic nomenclature uses the amino acid specificity of the tRNA that hybridizes to the primer-binding site. The name is defined by adding its one-letter code as a suffix to the acronym HERV (13). HERV-K, for example, uses a lysine-specific tRNA as primer for the initiation of the reverse transcription reaction. The limitations of this approach include the fact that very distantly related viruses use the same tRNAs, and that incomplete information about this short region due to deletions or mutations make classification of these retroviral sequences almost impossible. In addition, many HERV proviruses have been given arbitrary laboratory names or extensions.
Retroelements and the human genome: New perspectives on an old relation

You proffer the ridiculous (oviduct that poofed into a double/triple uterus then back to single) backed by the science of possibly, maybe and likely. Backed this mystery up further with flavour of the month (virus provided the genetic material to evolve mammals) derived by erraneous and presumptive algorithms that are simplistic and erraneous, and call that irrefutable evidence for evolution that only a fool would not see. Well let me tell you something. Creationists are not the boofheads here.

So clearly unless you are able to produce 'evidence' that refutes my evidence of the non credibility and instability of your algorithms as demonstrated in the examples above, if you are here to convince me this erv rubbish of yours is credible rather than being able to simply defend the basis for much of your erv 'evidence' is based on,..then guess what...I have another win for creationists.

It is actually evolutionists that provide poor responses as to why any reasoning person should take this erv evidence for common ancestry seriously.

Loudmouth · Nov 2, 2011

Astridhere said:
So it appears I win in facing off with Naraoia and Loudmouth.

You lost when you stated the following:

"I am telling you this kind of complicated nonsense will never be seen by me as evidence of anything more than you researcher like to mess around with algorithms and can adjust them to produce the results they want."--Astridhere

You admitted that you would reject any and all evidence if it pointed to common ancestry. That means you lose.

Naraoia · Nov 2, 2011

By the way, let me trot out TalkOrigins for a quick point. Quoting from the 29+ evidences FAQ:

The stunning degree of match between even the most incongruent phylogenetic trees found in the biological literature is widely unappreciated, mainly because most people (including many biologists) are unaware of the mathematics involved (Bryant et al. 2002; Penny et al. 1982; Penny and Hendy 1986).

[...]

f tests of the theory of common descent performed [as poorly as measurements of the gravitational constant], different phylogenetic trees, as shown in Figure 1, would have to differ by 18 of the 30 branches! In their quest for scientific perfection, some biologists are rightly rankled at the obvious discrepancies between some phylogenetic trees (Gura 2000; Patterson et al. 1993; Maley and Marshall 1998). However, as illustrated in Figure 1, the standard phylogenetic tree is known to 38 decimal places, which is a much greater precision than that of even the most well-determined physical constants. For comparison, the charge of the electron is known to only seven decimal places, the Planck constant is known to only eight decimal places, the mass of the neutron, proton, and electron are all known to only nine decimal places, and the universal gravitational constant has been determined to only three decimal places.

Just sayin'.

ETA: I might have a play with my random proteins again. I have an idea that I'm sure has been done before, but sounds like a fun thing to try. Stay tuned...

Another poor response to ERV evidence for common ancestry by a creationist.

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Re-Created, Not Evolved.

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