Creationist eat your heart out! Evolution is the ONLY logical explanation!

We have in our genome what are known as Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs).
These represent the genetic information of viruses which at one time infected an organism's reproductive cells and so the viral genetic information was encoded at random points in the genome and passed on to the offspring.

If life was created discretely in different "kinds" then there is no reason that ERVs should be present at the same random places in a genome with increasing frequency the more closely related the organism and the odds that this has occurred randomly are akin to finding a specific needle in a stack of needles and also finding it at the same point in a hundred other needle stacks.

Creations just falls flat here.

Thoughts?

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midnightrose · F

Can you explain why there is no reason for it to be present if created in different kinds? Also you said same random places so how is that random if it's the same? Doesn't that show some kind of order?

If life was created discretely in different "kinds" then there is no reason that ERVs should be present at the same random places in a genome with increasing frequency the more closely related the organism and the odds that this has occurred randomly are akin to finding a specific needle in a stack of needles and also finding it at the same point in a hundred other needle stacks.

I don't disbelieve evolution. I'm one of those weird people that thinks what science has found can coexist with the idea of a creation.

Pikachu

@midnightrose

Can you explain why there is no reason for it to be present if created in different kinds?

Because ERVs are the result of infection events. It makes no sense that god would create organisms with viral genetic material which is ordinarily inserted during an infection. Furthermore, there's no reason that the location of these ERVs in the genome should be positively correlated with organisms that evolution describes as more closely related.

you said same random places so how is that random if it's the same? D

The places in the genome where ERV material is found are random results of the viral infection. That is to say that even if the same kind of virus infected two different species at the same time there is little chance that the ERV would end up in the same place in the genome of both hosts.
So that the ERVs appear in the same places with increasing frequency with more closely related species shows that those two species share an ancestor which itself was infected by a virus, had the ERV encoded in its genome and passed that altered gene code on to its progeny.

Doesn't that show some kind of order?

Absolutely. It shows the order of phylogeny. It falls in line with what is predicted by evolution: that more closely related animals will share more ERV sites than more distantly related animals.