Quagmire said:
Apparently not. From another thread:
Quagmire said:
Bet you won't respond to it this time either.
Told ya.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
The battle of evolution vs creationism
- Thread starter bobhikes
- Start date
Told ya.
outhouse
Atheistically
FranklinMichaelV.3
Well-Known Member
Stop embarrassing yourself.
A coyote is not a dog
Neither is a Dingo, but I bet he would try to pet one anyway.
johnhanks
Well-Known Member
Still stumped on this one, CotW?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
I discussed the exact same thing with him on another thread as well.Apparently not. From another thread:
Don't be too sure about that, scientists have already observed it working in reverse, ie., a non-dog producing a dog: http://boingboing.net/2005/03/04/tur...es-into-d.html
A couple of rather startling things that the article doesn't mention is that along with the personality traits and specifically dog-like behaviorisms, the offspring of the control-bred foxes even started to develop some specifically dog-like physical characteristics: black and white and/or spotted pelts, floppy ears, blue eyes, and curved tails.
Bet you won't respond to it this time either.
Needless to say, then we come to this thread and it's as if it never happened.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
This! ^^^^^
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Because we can see the evidence. And it points to that. How d we know the sun is really that far away? Or that germs cause illness? or that gravity is caused by mass warping the space it inhabits?
What stops small changes from accumulating into big ones? An actual reason mind you. A real legitimate and functional reason. If you say "dogs produce dogs" you will only prove evolution correct. What is the functional property that prevents changes from accumulating over time?
I don't have to believe. I know.
Sure. He would win hands down but he simply doesn't care if god exists or not. Its a waste of his time as the debate is trivial and stupid to him. I tend to agree but I find it fascinating and to each their own in that regard.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Yep. and his opinion on science is that of a layman.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
In the light that he would utilize only the evidence rather than bias to draw conclusions he is most certainly not an academic. In terms regarding his degrees he is obviously an academic. It depends on your standards for the term.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
yes. He just said it was laughable.
Instead of making a new thread about the ERVs, I had a better idea. I remembered that I have used an IRC client called Mibbit which allows people to chat anywhere without having to have an account or program download: Mibbit chat network
The good thing about this is that it allows as many people to talk at one time as you'd like. So this doesn't have to be just between Call_of_the_Wild and me. Anyone else who wants to come can do so as well. Now we just need to get meeting time set up (and figure out what time zones we are in): Time Zone Map
I'm on the east coast of the U.S.A, and it is 5:13 PM here at the moment. How about you, CotW? What is your time zone?
The good thing about this is that it allows as many people to talk at one time as you'd like. So this doesn't have to be just between Call_of_the_Wild and me. Anyone else who wants to come can do so as well. Now we just need to get meeting time set up (and figure out what time zones we are in): Time Zone Map
I'm on the east coast of the U.S.A, and it is 5:13 PM here at the moment. How about you, CotW? What is your time zone?
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
First, science IS a philosphy. That's why scientists recieve Philosophcial Doctorates.
Second, creationism IS NOT a philosphy. It is a dogma. I.e. the arguments may change infinitly, so long as the conclusion remains the same.
Simurgh
Atheist Triple Goddess
A PhD is the highest degree an university awards to those who have successfully completed a specific course of study in their discipline. Yet that does not mean that they are philosophers. And so an academic who earns a Doctor of Philosophy in one of the sciences is no more a philosopher than one who gets a PhD in mathematics or nursing. It simply means that with a PhD I have more academic learning in a given field than a guy with an MA. I was not required to take any philosophy courses for my degree for example.
Creationism is a religious belief, and yes, to some it might be almost a dogmatic issue. Yet, strictly speaking a dogma is something that has been decreed to be an incontrovertible truth as so designated by an authority. So just because some more or less popular guy like Craig states that creationism and/or ID are facts, does not make them dogma unless the person who wants to belief such things officially accepts his proclamations as the absolute truth in that regard.
I certainly hope that you are looking into ERVs, Call_of_the_Wild, as knowledge of the issue will be necessary if you wish explain it within the scope of creationism. Perhaps you have already began looking at creationist websites which address the ERV issue. Be careful about what you read. Make sure that it is accurate, and of equal importance, up to date.
Here are some examples of arguments that I have found which creationist sites use to explain ERVs within the creationist model:
Some ERVs have functions within the human genome. As such, they must have been designed into the genome from the beginning and not inserted by viruses.
There are multiple problems with this argument. Firstly, there are many things about full-sequence ERVs that let us know they were inserted by retroviruses. Full-sequence ERVs have the same basic structure as known retroviral genomes. The structure of both is laid out as follows:
LTR-Gag-Pol-Env-LTR
The LTRs are "long terminal repeats" whereas Gag, Pol and Env are regions which code for the enzymes and proteins needed for the creation and transcription of viral particles. Since both known retroviruses and full-sequence ERVs have this same structure in this same order, we know that the ERVs came from retroviral insertions.
There's even more to it than that, however. An enzyme called "integrase" is used to insert the viral DNA into the host genome. One of the hallmarks of the action of this enzyme is "target site duplication", which causes an extra copy of DNA sections along the site where the retroviral genome has been inserted. As expected, full-sequence ERVs have these same target site duplications.
What's even more striking is the fact that ERVs can sometimes generate viral proteins and trigger retroviral antibody production by the immune system in humans. In Koalas, we even have an stronger example. Koala retrovirus (KoRV) is known to exist in both ERV form and as individual viral particles. Koalas can therefore transmit the virus either through typical disease route (from one adult to another) or by inheriting them from their parents (in ERV form). So we have an observed example of a retrovirus in the process of becoming an ERV.
As far as functionality in humans go, it should be noted that the LTRs are where ERVs express their function in humans. This is because LTRs can affect and control other genes in the human genome (as this is their function in retroviral genomes as well). The function seems to have simply been borrowed from the retroviruses once they became an integral part of the host genome. What's more important than this is the lack of function that the other components (gag-pol-env) have in the ERVs. Or if they do have function it is only from parts of them an not the package as a whole. If the ERVs were the product of design, you would then expect (1) that only the LTRs and other necessary bits would have been designed into the DNA and all of the other pieces left out as they have no function in humans (despite the fact that they do have critical functions in retroviruses) and (2) there would be no target site duplications.
There are only 7-14 ERVs common between humans and chimpanzees. Since retroviruses have a known degree of selectivity, we can explain a mere 7-14 ERVs out of 98,000 similarity by chance alone.
This argument is based on out-of-date information. It was true at one time that only 7 ERVs were known to be common between chimps and humans, but since 2005 the entirety of the chimpanzee genome has been sequenced. It was after doing this that scientists were able to discern that there was more than a 99.9% similarity between the ERV patterns between humans and chimpanzees. There is no possible way to account for this by chance alone. The selectivity of retroviruses is nowhere near sufficient.
This shows both (1) How we know that ERVs came from retroviral insertions and (2) how we know that they could not have gotten the same pattern by chance.
Take note of all of this before we begin our debate in chat, CotW.
Here are some examples of arguments that I have found which creationist sites use to explain ERVs within the creationist model:
Some ERVs have functions within the human genome. As such, they must have been designed into the genome from the beginning and not inserted by viruses.
There are multiple problems with this argument. Firstly, there are many things about full-sequence ERVs that let us know they were inserted by retroviruses. Full-sequence ERVs have the same basic structure as known retroviral genomes. The structure of both is laid out as follows:
LTR-Gag-Pol-Env-LTR
The LTRs are "long terminal repeats" whereas Gag, Pol and Env are regions which code for the enzymes and proteins needed for the creation and transcription of viral particles. Since both known retroviruses and full-sequence ERVs have this same structure in this same order, we know that the ERVs came from retroviral insertions.
There's even more to it than that, however. An enzyme called "integrase" is used to insert the viral DNA into the host genome. One of the hallmarks of the action of this enzyme is "target site duplication", which causes an extra copy of DNA sections along the site where the retroviral genome has been inserted. As expected, full-sequence ERVs have these same target site duplications.
What's even more striking is the fact that ERVs can sometimes generate viral proteins and trigger retroviral antibody production by the immune system in humans. In Koalas, we even have an stronger example. Koala retrovirus (KoRV) is known to exist in both ERV form and as individual viral particles. Koalas can therefore transmit the virus either through typical disease route (from one adult to another) or by inheriting them from their parents (in ERV form). So we have an observed example of a retrovirus in the process of becoming an ERV.
As far as functionality in humans go, it should be noted that the LTRs are where ERVs express their function in humans. This is because LTRs can affect and control other genes in the human genome (as this is their function in retroviral genomes as well). The function seems to have simply been borrowed from the retroviruses once they became an integral part of the host genome. What's more important than this is the lack of function that the other components (gag-pol-env) have in the ERVs. Or if they do have function it is only from parts of them an not the package as a whole. If the ERVs were the product of design, you would then expect (1) that only the LTRs and other necessary bits would have been designed into the DNA and all of the other pieces left out as they have no function in humans (despite the fact that they do have critical functions in retroviruses) and (2) there would be no target site duplications.
There are only 7-14 ERVs common between humans and chimpanzees. Since retroviruses have a known degree of selectivity, we can explain a mere 7-14 ERVs out of 98,000 similarity by chance alone.
This argument is based on out-of-date information. It was true at one time that only 7 ERVs were known to be common between chimps and humans, but since 2005 the entirety of the chimpanzee genome has been sequenced. It was after doing this that scientists were able to discern that there was more than a 99.9% similarity between the ERV patterns between humans and chimpanzees. There is no possible way to account for this by chance alone. The selectivity of retroviruses is nowhere near sufficient.
This shows both (1) How we know that ERVs came from retroviral insertions and (2) how we know that they could not have gotten the same pattern by chance.
Take note of all of this before we begin our debate in chat, CotW.
Last edited:
Here's another:
If ERVs were caused by retroviruses, then the cells which contained the ERV infections would have been removed by the immune system.
This argument only holds water if you ignore the fact that the immune system is imperfect. Viruses have ways to defending themselves against the immune system. One way is by expressing genes which help to suppress immune function (some ERVs are known to have such genes). Another way is by remaining dormant. A host cell can look and function normally if the viral DNA within it is inactive. Immune cells typically look for external signs of infection such as changes in the cell membrane of infected cells. If they cannot detect external signs of infection, they will leave the infected cell alone. If a mutation during transcription has rendered the viral DNA inactive, then it can hide from the immune system indefinitely. Many ERVs have been mutated to the extent where they cannot produce viral products and so are safe from attack.
If ERVs were caused by retroviruses, then the cells which contained the ERV infections would have been removed by the immune system.
This argument only holds water if you ignore the fact that the immune system is imperfect. Viruses have ways to defending themselves against the immune system. One way is by expressing genes which help to suppress immune function (some ERVs are known to have such genes). Another way is by remaining dormant. A host cell can look and function normally if the viral DNA within it is inactive. Immune cells typically look for external signs of infection such as changes in the cell membrane of infected cells. If they cannot detect external signs of infection, they will leave the infected cell alone. If a mutation during transcription has rendered the viral DNA inactive, then it can hide from the immune system indefinitely. Many ERVs have been mutated to the extent where they cannot produce viral products and so are safe from attack.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
I just read something on Wiki. (I know, some people complain about the source, but anyway, it's interesting): Paleogenetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Genetically, H. neanderthal was closer to chimpanzees genetically than to H. sapiens. That's a huge wow!
Well that source does have a citation, so it doesn't really matter if it's from Wikipedia or not. This is pretty amazing though. So where would creationists then put neanderthals? In the human kind or the ape kind? If they are more closely related to chimpanzees, then that would suggest the ape kind, yes? If the theory that humans and neanderthals interbred is ever proven, that would put the whole "kind" system in a bit of a pickle, wouldn't it? An ape kind interbreeding with a human kind?
adi2d
Active Member
If a lion and a house cat are the same "kind" how can a human and an ape not be the same "kind"?
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
Agree.
Yup.
I always thought H.n. was closer genetically to us. It made more sense. It presents exactly the problem you're stating. Were they ape-kind or human-kind? And on what conditions would they be either?
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
Actually, since most intermediate forms have been found in the fossil record, lions, cats, dogs, horses, rats, and most other four legged creatures are all "four legged" kinds, except for the fish-like whales that are also four legged kind but without legs.
But yes. Humans and chimps are the same "kind". Apes are all the same kind. Apes and monkeys belong to the same kind as well. And all life forms belong ultimately to the same kind, the life-kind.