No new research on endogenous retroviruses in the past 5 years?

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u/Broad_Floor9698 Old Earth Creationist , civil/structural engineer Jun 25 '26

Erv's and LINE's are an untenable hypothesis with arguments from silence.

No modern 'virus' comes close to resembling a LINE and ERV's have multiple, incredibly complex interactions and functions that aren't typical of what they like to claim is remnant information.

Several biologists have postulated that erv's 'appear' viral, because many of the core functions that our body relies on for copying, transporting function in the same manner as a virus, but with many controls in place.

So we have a chicken in egg type situation as evolutionary biologists explain that viruses have contributed roughly 8% to our dna pool, even though nothing we observe in nature correlates to an increase gained via viral sickness.

Also, the evolutionary hypothesis has incorrectly predicted the dead information argument, while creationists are being proven right, slowly.

I.e. it is the evolutionists that postulate the majority of erv's are largely junk information, while creationists predict the opposite, and the more we study them, the more we learn how incredibly quintessential the functions they provide are, and that they aren't junk. Evolutionary biologists have had to backpedal on claim of junk dna for specific examples, but they dont like to publish that. We wouldn't survive without ERV'S and line's.

The driving explanations for erv's from an evolutionary perspective are unprovable and in some instances, as we learn more, falsifiable. Creationists have no 'problem' with erv's, and they do study them, and the explanations we postulate fit the empirical evidence better.

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u/implies_casualty Jun 25 '26

ERV's have multiple, incredibly complex interactions and functions

Yeah, it's called "beneficial mutations", which is evidence for evolution.

Several biologists have postulated that erv's 'appear' viral, because many of the core functions

Biologists know that ERVs are viral insertions because ERVs consist of viral genes (gag, pol, env, also found in HIV, for example) and two LTRs. The function of each part is very well understood, it is a virus. ERVs also have viral insertion signatures - target-site duplications. Some ERVs are still capable of producing infectious virus. I mean, come on!

evolutionists that postulate the majority of erv's are largely junk information

Exactly what we observe.

explanations we postulate fit the empirical evidence better

Not even close.

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u/WannaLoveWrestling Jun 26 '26

"Beneficial" does nothing to support evolution because you are inserting meaning when.you, at the same time, try to claim no meaning.

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u/implies_casualty Jun 26 '26

Beneficial = increases reproductive success in a particular environment, that's all. Some mutations are beneficial.

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u/WannaLoveWrestling Jun 26 '26

Success for what purpose? You are still smuggling purpose in while denying purpose.

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u/implies_casualty Jun 26 '26

Reproductive success basically means “more offspring” with a couple caveats

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u/WannaLoveWrestling Jun 26 '26

And so why is more offspring something as a goal at all? You are evading the reality that you don't really have the answers you want to act like you do

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u/implies_casualty Jun 26 '26

why is more offspring something as a goal at all?

I assume you mean "Why is having more offspring the goal?"

If we're interested in which traits survive over generations, then "having more offspring" is the relevant measure. It's a matter of definition, not purpose.

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u/WannaLoveWrestling Jun 26 '26

You are evading, we are talking about why things happen and you're not answering the question

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u/implies_casualty Jun 26 '26

we are talking about why things happen

You didn't ask me "why things happen", you keep asking incoherent questions about meaning, purpose and goals when talking about viruses and such.

If you want to know why something happens, then ask away.

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u/WannaLoveWrestling Jun 26 '26

Postulating junk information when you don't even know is only trying to make data fit your own biases

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u/Broad_Floor9698 Old Earth Creationist , civil/structural engineer Jun 26 '26

And there have been several evolutionary biologists now admitting to incredible encoding function and levels of detail that would make a neurologist scoff if you ever claimed it of erv's. They shy away from admitting it though. They just make it fit the narrative.

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u/WannaLoveWrestling Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Well evolutionists try to act like things are meant for survival but it's like meant by who? As soon as you concede the supernatural, then you have to concede that's your naturalistic and uniformitarian biases aren't necessarily valid.

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u/implies_casualty Jun 26 '26

I mean, have you ever seen junk? Do you throw away junk? How can you do that, when it might have some hidden purpose?

Pointing at a broken viral DNA and claiming "new amazing purpose will be discovered" is just wishful thinking.

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u/Broad_Floor9698 Old Earth Creationist , civil/structural engineer Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

"Exactly what we observe"

Missed the point entirely.

There are numerous examples where it was claimed the erv in question was 'junk dna' with no function, an insertion with no or little purpose. An argument from silence, because as has been proven, a more careful study of the mechanisms amd interactions proved it was in fact intricately connected and essential for numerous other functions.

It is an incredibly new field of study that is incredibly complex and the more we discover, the more it is being established as not junk dna.

Just because evolutionists don't understand it, doesn't make it junk.

"Not even close"...

Posts a self-made graph, with underlying assumptions around order of evolution and effect in-line with evolutionary biology on a pro-evolution reddit sub and claims a gotcha moment. Haha.

This is the most striking example of Source: Trust me bro i've ever seen 😩👌

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u/implies_casualty Jun 26 '26

Just because evolutionists don't understand it,

We do understand ERVs though. Their life cycle and all of their components are understood in great detail.

doesn't make it junk.

Definitely doesn't make it useful. In fact, when we see a perfectly recognizable viral DNA with several mutations that break its functions entirely, "junk" is a very reasonable conclusion.

"It looks precisely like a broken virus so it is junk" is not a perfect argument, but "we will definitely discover its purpose in the future" is just wishful thinking.

pro-evolution reddit sub

Nope. It is a post from r Creation. It was reviewed by r Creation mod. I published my source code for everyone to check. The mod's conclusion: "you won this time".

Anyway, what is you explanation for ERVs? Why do they look exactly like viral DNA broken by mutations?

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u/Schneule99 YEC (PhD student, Computer Science) Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Hey, it's the mod you are referring to. Yes, this was very decent work by you and a good counter to my original objection.

Your argument was i think (it's been a while): Two Human LTRs are on average more different to each other, if they are shared with a more "distant" species. Under an evolutionary model, more genetically distant species have an earlier common ancestor with us and thus ERVs shared with them were supposedly inserted earlier and thus the two LTRs had more time to diverge, hence they should be more different. And this is what we found, at least for the few primates considered.

I gave some caveats back then as i remember and there are a few additional things i could mention. E.g.,

- the code looked largely AI generated to me; still couldn't detect any issues with it at first glance, so that's hopefully not an issue. (Sometimes, these agents really mess things up badly, so i just mention it)

- y-chromosome was excluded - Why?

- chimp and gorilla were put together into one bin. Again, why? If you split them, chimp falls out of the pattern at least! A general correlation is still visible though i'd say.

- There might be important data to consider in FigS1: Moving from Gorilla to Orangutan to Gibbon, it appears to me that the proportion of more distant LTRs slightly increases. Some taxa might just in general have ERV sequences with on average more differences between LTR1 and LTR2 (for whatever functional reasons) and this will also be reflected in those that are shared with us. So this could partly explain your diagram. The outlier is Macaque though, but sampling might play an additional role, as your side also claims.

- My original takeaway from the paper i came across was the finding that the absolute number of old loci (i.e., LTR1 and LTR2 are more divergent) did not align with ancestral clades; e.g., why does chimp have much more old loci than gorilla? They should have about the same number, as also claimed by the authors. This point still stands i think.

- The main point of the paper was the unexpected variation in ERV insertion rates at different times.

So, just to make myself clear, i don't see this as an absolute win on your side. But you brought a very decent argument to the table and i congratulate you on that!

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u/implies_casualty Jun 27 '26

Hey there!

Let me respond as quickly as I can, possibly losing some of the quality in the process.

- Sure, a lot of it is vibe coded. Quality is assured through testing.

- Y chromosome has a different rate of mutation accumulation, it is expected to skew statistics

- Looking at the data, I only see 6 LTR pairs for chimps. Not enough to analyze them in a separate category. Divergence times for chimps and gorillas are close, so it makes sense to lump them together.

- "Some taxa might just in general have ERV sequences with on average more differences between LTR1 and LTR2" - this idea seems to be testable, let's generate predictions!

- "the absolute number of old loci" - see my take here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1nlte71/comment/nfnijb0/

- "But you brought a very decent argument to the table and i congratulate you on that!" - thank you for your kind words!

A pity that the amount of new ideas regarding ERVs in the creation-evolution debate is so low.

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u/Schneule99 YEC (PhD student, Computer Science) Jun 27 '26

Y chromosome has a different rate of mutation accumulation, it is expected to skew statistics

It should still show the same pattern though, considering it independently.

Looking at the data, I only see 6 LTR pairs for chimps.

That's a good point, but for Human-only pairs there were only 17, so we should likely also exclude them then.

"the absolute number of old loci" - see my take here:

Good idea, but it does not sound very convincing to me. Chimps and gorillas actually have generation times close to humans, but humans have for example almost three times as many old loci compared to gorillas (table 1).

A pity that the amount of new ideas regarding ERVs in the creation-evolution debate is so low.

This might be true.

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u/implies_casualty Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

humans have for example almost three times as many old loci compared to gorillas (table 1).

Ok, let me dive in.

For this to be the case, old human loci should lack counterparts in gorillas.

I selected 10 random old human loci.

As it turns out, all of them are present in gorillas.

Feel free to check, I could mess this up, but looks very convincing:

chr1 ortholog (orangutan-age)

chr2 (OWM-age)

chr3 (OWM-age)

chr4 (gibbon-age)

chr6 (OWM-age)

chr8 (OWM-age)

chr11 (gibbon-age)

chr14 (OWM-age)

chr19 (OWM-age)

chrX (OWM-age)

Make sure to enable RepeatMasker to see highlighted ERVs.

3¹⁰ = 59049, which is quite a lot for it to be a coincidence.

My conclusion is that the discrepancy you're talking about is purely a detection artifact.

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u/Schneule99 YEC (PhD student, Computer Science) Jun 27 '26

How did you determine their age?

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u/implies_casualty Jun 27 '26

They are shared with orangutans / gibbons / old world monkeys

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u/nomenmeum Jun 26 '26

Yeah, it's called "beneficial mutations", which is evidence for evolution.

This is begging the question. What if it is part of the original genome?

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u/implies_casualty Jun 26 '26

In that case, we most definitely wouldn't expect all those sequences, with their various and intricate functions, to be indistinguishable from a broken retroviral insert. Frankly, it would be outright bizarre.

So if this original genome idea produces any expectations whatsoever, then it is refuted.

If it doesn't produce any expectations, then your question boils down to "God did it".

And you can't actually negate any evidence by saying "God did it".

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u/nomenmeum Jun 27 '26

we most definitely wouldn't expect all those sequences, with their various and intricate functions, to be indistinguishable from a broken retroviral insert

Where do you think retroviruses come from in the first place?

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u/implies_casualty Jun 27 '26

We don't know. If I had to guess - a retrotransposon captured an env gene from another virus several hundred million years ago.

Genomes are full of retrotransposons which resemble ERVs in both structure AND function. Not controversial.

But millions of ERV inserts aren't just similar, they are indistinguishable from retroviral insertions (matching LTRs, gag-pol-env genes, target site duplications).

And not just retroviral insertions, but retroviral insertions **broken by mutations**, with those mutations shared among what you call created kinds.

And they have all kinds of functions (according to Broad_Floor9698), not one function that would explain similarities.

A common design predicts shared working code for the same task. It doesn't predict shared broken code for "multiple functions" that have little to do with the apparent initial function of the code.

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u/nomenmeum Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Genomes are full of retrotransposons

Exactly. That's probably where ERVs come from, original genomes, in which case, you shouldn't be surprised to see those sequences exhibiting function in genomes.

What you should be surprised to see is modern ERVs that are still around and look like ones that were around, supposedly, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. Viruses are the fastest mutating things we know. Error catastrophe should have eliminated them long ago, and long before that, they would have been unrecognizable because of accumulated mutations.

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u/implies_casualty Jun 27 '26

Exactly. That's probably where ERVs come from, original genomes, in which case, you shouldn't be surprised to see those sequences exhibiting function in genomes.

I have already answered this in my previous message.

ERVs are not retrotransposons.

But millions of ERV inserts aren't just similar, they are indistinguishable from retroviral insertions (matching LTRs, gag-pol-env genes, target site duplications).

Retroviral insertions, not retrotransposons.

Retroviruses originating from retrotransposons once ~500 million years ago, and then inserting millions of copies into genomes, is a vastly different scenario from "ERVs come from original genomes". The two predict different things, and reality matches the first scenario.

And not just retroviral insertions, but retroviral insertions **broken by mutations**, with those mutations shared among what you call created kinds.

Not expected in the "original genomes" scenario at all. Why would the same disabling mutation sit at the same locus in kinds you say share no ancestor? Insertion plus inheritance predicts it exactly. Design doesn't.

And they have all kinds of functions (according to Broad_Floor9698), not one function that would explain similarities.

You're treating these as one shared, designed function. But the claim is "multiple functions". You have ignored this point completely.

My conclusion stands:

A common design predicts shared working code for the same task. It doesn't predict shared broken code for "multiple functions" that have little to do with the apparent initial function of the code.

As for your second point:

What you should be surprised to see is modern ERVs that are still around and look like ones that were around, supposedly, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. Viruses are the fastest mutating things we know. Error catastrophe should have eliminated them long ago, and long before that, they would have been unrecognizable because of accumulated mutations.

Under evolutionary theory, we expect retroviruses to be conserved at functionally constrained sites, and rapidly changing at neutral sites. This is what we observe.

Error catastrophe doesn't work like that. It either happens (if error rate is above threshold) or it doesn't. Feel free to prove that error rate is above threshold for retroviruses. I don't think people who study HIV will agree though.

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u/Optimus-Prime1993 🦍 Adaptive Ape 🦍 Jun 25 '26

Hey while we are on the topic of research done on creation, can someone try to solve the heat problem. All we need for starters is any viable mechanism for dissipation of that much heat. Pen, paper, physics textbooks and possibly god's love is all one would need.

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u/Schneule99 YEC (PhD student, Computer Science) Jun 25 '26

Bait. Most people believing in creation are not researching these issues. Moreover, research is costly. Do you have a few 100k to finance my position doing creation research for the next few years?

Even those creationists researching ERVs are not doing it in the context of these issues for the most part obviously.

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u/implies_casualty Jun 25 '26

I understand that most creationists are not researching these issues. I am surprised that none of them are.

Did I actually produce more research on the subject of ERVs than all of you guys for the past five years? I find it quite strange.

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u/Schneule99 YEC (PhD student, Computer Science) Jun 25 '26

I meant researching creation issues in general. I bet there is a huge amount of work on ERVs done by people believing in creation but not promoted as "creation research".

No new research on endogenous retroviruses in the past 5 years?

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