ERV FAQ: But how can you rule out design as an explanation?

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/in-science-we-apply-principle-of.html


In science, we apply the principle of parsimony. This means that we go with the simplest hypothesis that accounts for the greatest amount of relevant data, and is contradicted by none of them.

Regarding endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), endogenization fits the bill.

'Design' does not. 

'Design' fails to explain why ERVs with functional genes should be found in common locations in different species. Their location is not critical to their function.

'Design' fails to explain why long terminal repeats (LTRs) are so configured as to get themselves transcribed by RNA polymerase II. This is something that is essential to the retroviral replication cycle, but makes no sense as a 'designed' feature.

'Design' fails to explain such a scattergun approach as using integrase to insert retroviral genes into host cells' DNA with no regard as to whether or not they will cause damage. 


A common tactic of creationists, writing
 about ERVs, (see this page) is to suggest that ERVs were designed into the genomes of different "kinds" of organisms to provide a means of distributing useful genes by exogenization and re-endogenization. So which were the "original, designed-in" ERVs, and which were the result of exogenization and re-endogenization? How does "design" explain that the latter types are still in orthologous locations in different species? As we know, integrase is incapable of targetting specific DNA loci.

'Design' also fails to explain all the non-functional LTRs and ERVs. 

Endogenization in common ancestors explains all these things.

If you say, "Ah, well, it could be design, but we just don't know the reasons", then you have made your hypothesis unfalsifiable, and therefore of no interest to science. Under such a hypothesis, the actual facts become irrelevant. 

The purpose of science is to explain the actual facts - why they are as they are, and not otherwise.


If anyone thinks that ERVs are designed for a purpose or for several purposes, they must have answers to the following.

a) What is reverse transcriptase designed to do? Why was it designed? To what purpose?
b) What is integrase designed to do? Why was it designed? To what purpose?
c) Why were ERVs designed with a viral codon bias?
d) What is the design purpose of re-transcribable promoters?
e) What were the HERVs that produced the consensus sequence that generated Phoenix designed for?
f) What is the design purpose of both exogenous and endogenous KoRV
g) If chimps and humans have commonly located ERVs, what is the design purpose of giving these common ERVs common disabling mutations?
h) What is the design purpose of giving some people certain HERVs and not others

i) What is the design purpose of creating different syncytia in different placental lineages?
j) Why would an intelligent designer need to use a retroviral vector for altering intelligently designed genomes?
k) Why use reverse transcriptase to copy RNA to DNA when, as we know, the reverse transcription process is error-prone, with no error detection and correction?
l) Why use integrase to insert potentially erroneous DNA in virtually random locations, often disrupting the genetics already there?
m) Why did it take humans, rather than a magic being, to  create CRISPR/Cas9 technology for precise gene editing?

See also - The "Not Junk" Anti-ERV Defence
and - 
More ancient viruses lurk in our DNA than we thought.

Someone attempted to answer these questions. I reply here.
And now "SFT" has piped up with responses to the questions. I answer him here.
They had another go, which I examine here.
Yet another attempt is examined here.

You see, it's no use just waving your arms in the air and saying, "Design". Endogenization explains all these features. Here is a page giving the explanations. How does 'design' explain them?


8 comments:

  1. "...therefore of no interest to science." - and therefore no interest to you. If you have a science only worldview, that is sick. We are far more than science can discover. If you are only concerned with what we can know scientifically, I daresay you're going to leave a lot of information, good information, out.

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  2. Whether or not there is more to know than what science can tell us, science tells us a lot. And saying that I am leaving information out does not actually show that I am.

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  3. Brian Forbes, Intelligent Design claims to be a scientific explanation. So showing it to be scientifically vacuous is emnough to destroy it. If you accept Intellignet Design as a philosophical or religious doctrine, ok, but then it becomes compatible with standard evolution science. Henry Drummond got this far over a century ago.

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  4. Design only fails if you claim to know the intent of the designer. Without knowing that, you can't say that it fails.

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  6. You want to reduce science to simplistic laws in a desire to control and understand nature but reality is too complex for the human mind to know. It’s simply hubris. The more we study nature the more complex it becomes. We are discovering more and more laws. Things are becoming murkier—not simpler. It’s a paradigm thing: many materialists maintain faith in the unproven assumed axiom that we can simplify everything. RV as homologies, nothing more. Homologies are better explained by design the way we design many vehicles from a common base frame, such as boats, cars, buses, planes, all using the same basic technology, just modified and arranged differently. Yet cars are simply compared to life and no body would imagine a car could evolve. You could never give me a series of steps as to how an engine could gradually evolve by simply steps and still work. All the pieces must come together at once. Life is exactly like that. The eye alone defeats evolution. The fact that ribosomes create—and edit amazingly—the proteins that make ribosomes defeats evolution. Kindly explain how this loop got started. There are unlimited examples. I won’t hold my breath with all due respect.

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    Replies
    1. "but reality is too complex for the human mind to know."

      That is an unsupported assertion. You need to demonstrate this not assume it.

      "The more we study nature the more complex it becomes."

      And yet the entire history of humanity shows that the study of nature yields results and advances our understanding of it.
      This demolishes your previous statement.
      So what if our continued investigations yield more questions? Asking questions and investigating the universe advances our knowledge.

      "Things are becoming murkier—not simpler."

      Disagree.
      Provide verifiable evidence to support your assertion or it is rejected.

      "Homologies are better explained by design the way we design many vehicles from a common base frame"

      No - because vehicles do not reproduce whereas organisms do.
      Homology is the similarity due to shared ancestry between a pair of structures or genes in different taxa. The best example of that is the pentadactyl limb which, among tetrapods, can easily be seen through comparative anatomy and is verified through the examination of DNA.

      Once again you make an assertion without verifiable evidence, whereas science can verify homology in the natural world by examining and experimenting with DNA.

      "You could never give me a series of steps as to how an engine could gradually evolve by simply steps and still work."

      No - because engines aren't organisms. They don't reproduce nor do they have DNA.

      "All the pieces must come together at once. Life is exactly like that."

      More assertion, no evidence.

      "The eye alone defeats evolution."

      It doesn't of course. They eye can and has been demonstrated to have evolved several times as there are many different types of eyes. Eye evolution is one of the most understood and explained aspects of evolutionary biology.

      For more please dip into the following search on Google Scholar - you have over 3 million to choose from - I won't hold my breath for your response either:

      https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=evolution+of+the+eye&btnG=

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    2. Do humans know everything about biology?
      No
      Just because something can reproduce, doesn’t negate the fact that it’s designed.
      It seems stunningly obvious that all life appears designed.

      https://youtu.be/TKkuj1s4CL8?si=N3UH_SRkuk3XtghG

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