[narby]

No, it doesn't mean that we have to have had a common ancestor with chimps, and that chimps and people had a common ancestor with gorillas. But it does seem to imply that, for some unknown reason, the genomes are related in the same way.

Because of the astronomically high odds against an identical ERV sequence, in the same location, in any two different species because of *separate* infections, the only acceptable answer is that these sequences are the result of a single infection in a single individual, that then speciated to produce non-human, and human species.

Add to this fact that there are several thousand such identical insertions, and the concept that common ancestry is *not* the cause of these DNA sequences is just not believable.

deal with it.

[Virginia-American]

Because of the astronomically high odds against an identical ERV sequence, in the same location, in any two different species because of *separate* infections, the only acceptable answer is that these sequences are the result of a single infection in a single individual, that then speciated to produce non-human, and human species.

We're in agreement. I was just saying that if the ERVs aren't the result of inherited viral remains, but were instead the result of the same virus infecting, say, chimps and people independently, there is still the problem of why these independent infections should show the exact same nested hierarchical pattern.

In other words, if the CS/IDer can't accept the inheritance of the ERVs, he still has to explain why the pattern of vulnerable places in the genome is that same nasty nested hierarchy.