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I Believe We Were Created: Change My Mind

The basics. Start simple, from the top. Don't preach. My first question is, what is the scientific method?
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DocSavage · M
If we were created. God could have done a better job at it.
@DocSavage [quote]If we were created. God could have done a better job at it.[/quote]

If you are serious, how could you possibly know that?
DocSavage · M
@AkioTsukino
As Hamlet said : who would bear the whips and scorns of time ?
Or : the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

It took a lot of time for evolution to put us here, we carry a lot of junk still in our DNA
@DocSavage [quote]It took a lot of time for evolution to put us here, we carry a lot of junk still in our DNA[/quote]

How do you know it took a lot of time and why is it that if God didn't create us with a lot of junk in our DNA but evolution did why is the later a better explanation than the former?
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@AkioTsukino [quote]why is the later a better explanation[/quote]

All species carry ‘silenced’ genes… these are genes that once caused certain proteins to be produced, but now no longer function in the original manner. Such genes are called pseudogenes.

Nearly all mammals have functional genes for expressing an enzyme (L-guluno-γ-lactone oxidase) that allows the production of vitamin C, which is essential for proper metabolism.

I say ‘nearly all mammals’ because primates cannot produce their own vitamin C. In humans, there is a set of four genes that code for vitamin C production. As you may know, these genes are composed of many, many smaller units called nucleotides, so these four genes contain a very large number of such nucleotides (the human genome has 64 billion nucleotides, so it’s comparatively small). The first three genes are fully functional, but the final gene in the sequence has a mutation in a single nucleotide, and this mutation prevents the sequence from completing. That’s why humans need to obtain vitamin C from their food… because the mechanism for producing it has become a pseudogene.

Across all primates (chimpanzees, bononbo, humans, and apes) not only is it the final gene in the sequence that is silenced, but within that gene [b]the same nucleotide[/b] carries the mutation that is responsible.

Now, why would this be?

1. astonishing coincidence

2. when the gods created all the species they put genetic pathways for vitamin C production into all mammals, but then inactivated a single nucleotide from among the four genes necessary for that production, inactivated the same nucleotide in all cases, and did that only in primates. They obviously thought this to be a tremendous joke to play, because we carry around 2,000 such pseudogenes.

3. All mammals developed the ability to produce vitamin C, but around 40 million years ago, in the ancestor common to all primates, that ability was removed by a mutation in a single nucleotide, and the deficit was passed to all primates due to common descent during evolution.

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[i]That’s[/i] why
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newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@AkioTsukino Well, Option 3 (common descent during evolution ) offers a complete, comprehensive, and consistent explanation of the evidence.
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@AkioTsukino [quote]why is the later a better explanation[/quote]

Humans and chimpanzees both carry inactive genes acquired from viruses.
This occurs because some viruses insert a copy of their genome into the DNA of whichever species they infect. These are called retro-viruses... HIV is one such.

Where such viruses infect the cells that produce sperm and eggs, they can be passed on across generations.

The human genome contains thousands of these remnants of long-past infections... now rendered harmless... and so does the chimpanzee genome.

Most of them are in exactly the same place on both genomes.
That’s astonishing, so I’ll repeat it: most of them are on [b]exactly the same place on both genomes[/b].

Let’s choose an explanation from a few (non-exhaustive) options:

1. astonishing coincidence

2. when the gods created humans they decided to sprinkle around several thousand retro-viruses, and they put the preponderance of retroviruses at matching sites on both species because... umm... because... well... because... stop questioning the gods!

3. The majority of retroviruses match because both species inherited them from a common ancestor, who had itself accumulated them from the line of its own descent.

The small number which do not match are the remnants of infections that each species has warded off independently since divergence from the common ancestor... as predicted by the Theory of Evolution.
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[i]That’s[/i] why