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

dad said:

Bible, as well as Sumer and Egypt to some extent.

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Self-referential texts and wishful thinking.

Great.

Either you know or not. The degree of seriousness of the repercussions of not knowing is not something we need be concerned with here.

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I know the bible is a collection of myths. You don't? How sad.

Now, if the different state past did see ERVs get transferred in different ways, then all meaning is lost for those seeking to limit all reality and interpretation to this present time.

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There is no evidence for different state pasts.

This is why nobody takes you seriously.

AV1611VET said:

Now that we're grown-up, what's changed that we no longer believe it and can sing it with the same conviction and zeal as when we sung it back then?

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I know you've heard this comparison before and it's not meant to be insulting but you could ask the same question about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Why shouldn't people stop clamoring about the things they now understand to be false?

sandwiches said:

I know you've heard this comparison before and it's not meant to be insulting but you could ask the same question about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

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Who died a martyr's death because they believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?

What nation claims it is Santa Claus' or the Tooth Fairy's 'Promised Land'?

What nation(s) invested a large chunk of their assets to stop the spread of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy before it ever got started?

Show me Santa Claus' and/or the Tooth Fairy's diary.

Ya, you can ask the same question about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, but there's really no comparison.

sandwiches said:

Why shouldn't people stop clamoring about the things they now understand to be false?

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Who says they don't?

If I understood the Bible to be false, I would stop 'clamoring' about It.

AV1611VET said:

Who died a martyr's death because they believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?

What nation claims it is Santa Claus' or the Tooth Fairy's 'Promised Land'?

What nation(s) invested a large chunk of their assets to stop the spread of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy before it ever got started?

Show me Santa Claus' and/or the Tooth Fairy's diary.

Ya, you can ask the same question about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, but there's really no comparison.

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So, you believe that the actions of men due to a story validates said story?

AV1611VET said:

Who says they don't?

If I understood the Bible to be false, I would stop 'clamoring' about It.

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Then, why are you surprised that not all people don't keep on praising the Bible after they grow up?

sandwiches said:

So, you believe that the actions of men due to a story validates said story?

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Martyrdom proves one thing, and one thing only -- that the person who died, died believing that what he died for was real.

Experts say that, throughout history, no one ever died for something he KNEW was a lie.

This means that when the authors of the Scriptures went to their respective deaths, they went there because they didn't fabricate the story they wrote; they fully-believed that what they wrote was the absolute truth.

Astridhere said:

You evolutionists have lost this round lovies. The reason being to argue about the intricacies of this nonsense is based on ridiculous and non-credible algorithms that count or ignore whatever they need to, swish that with a stack of predetermined assumptions and insertion values placed on misrepresented fossil evidence, throw in a bottleneck or two and a heap of likely, maybes and possiblies and whallah...you have nonsense mutations and nonsense data that mean absolutely nothing as far as evidence goes.

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Without using one person as a 'whipping boy' here, I think there is a little misunderstanding surrounding ERV's here.
If a virus inserted its DNA into your germ cells (ie sperm or eggs) you would not be infected (that would require somatic cells to be infected), but the DNA could potentially pass to your offspring (if the infected germ cell was fertilised and so on).
In your offspring, this 'new' genetic material would sit neatly in the genome, and each succesive offspring would receive a copy also.

Any children you had earlier would not have this viral DNA.
All conceived afterwards would.

This is not common descent, this is not evolution, this is an observable fact - descent with modification.

Fast forward 100 generations, and any direct relatives of the earlier children would not have these viral DNA sequences in their genomes if they havn't reproduced with anyone that does (ie they have become a seperate population by emigration, perhaps), and those from later born will have.

If the DNa is not for a gene (ie it is redundant) then it is free to mutate/translocate/be copied multiple times or whatever in the genome with no ill effects to the animal.

The less the viral DNA insert looks like the original, the longer it has had to mutate -providing it can still be seen to be 'homologous', that is similar enough to the original insert to be recognisable, as opposed to so dissimilar it could have occured by random chance (ie another insetion)

What is being discussed here is that we have found our genome to be littered with ERV's. The vast majority of these are homologous with chimps, slightly less with the other apes, and even less with other mammals.
Given this fact on its own, I would bet a suprisingly large amount of money that they would be homologous with H. neanderthalis DNA.

What conclusions can we draw from this?

Common descent is the only sensible conclusion.

Like it or not, it is a fact that the evidence displays in great big letters (that would be CTGA then).

There is no debate here, there is no cover up or clever mathematical guesswork.

Our DNA is very similar to P. troglodytes for the same reason that your DNA is very similar to your cousins.

AV1611VET said:

Martyrdom proves one thing, and one thing only -- that the person who died, died believing that what he died for was real.

Experts say that, throughout history, no one ever died for something he KNEW was a lie.

This means that when the authors of the Scriptures went to their respective deaths, they went there because they didn't fabricate the story they wrote; they fully-believed that what they wrote was the absolute truth.

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According to this logic all religions are absolute truth. There are examples of martyrdom everywhere.

CabVet said:

According to this logic all religions are absolute truth. There are examples of martyrdom everywhere.

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Do you know the difference between 'absolute truth' and 'fully-believing one is correct'?

AV1611VET said:

Do you know the difference between 'absolute truth' and 'fully-believing one is correct'?

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Alright, I will rephrase, all religions have martyrs that die thinking that their beliefs are absolute truth. Since martyrdom has nothing to say about the validity of one's belief and all religions (among many other things) have their martyrs, martyrdom is not related to religion.

CabVet said:

Alright, I will rephrase, all religions have martyrs that die thinking that their beliefs are absolute truth. Since martyrdom has nothing to say about the validity of one's belief and all religions (among many other things) have their martyrs, martyrdom is not related to religion.

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When people tell me that the Gospels were written to fake the prophecies in the Old Testament, I point to martyrdom to prove otherwise.

At that point, the person either has to admit that the writers of the Gospels did not fake anything, or else they were not the writers of the Gospels.

That's usually when they change their story and say something like, "Prove Matthew wrote the book of Matthew," etc.

The conversation usually goes something like this:

He: The writers of the Gospels just made up the story about Jesus. They knew the Old Testament, so they just made up a story about a man who fulfilled all the prophecies concerning Him.

Me: Then why did they choose martyrdom over recanting their stories?

He: You can't prove they were martyred, because you can't prove Matthew wrote Matthew, and Mark wrote Mark, etc.

AV1611VET said:

If I understood the Bible to be false, I would stop 'clamoring' about It.

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Don't worry, I'm sure you'll make a deathbed conversion to atheism.

AV1611VET said:

Martyrdom proves one thing, and one thing only -- that the person who died, died believing that what he died for was real.

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All this proves is that homo sapiens are capable of convincing themselves of a great many things, even holding onto those beliefs upon pain of death.

Take a moment and bone up. May help clear up some confusion for you.

Martyr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This thread is about ERVs. Apologetics belongs elsewhere.