As for the "It takes more faith to believe in evolution than creationism"? How about I take a few phrases out:
every once in a while
By chance this sometimes happens to
And once in a blue moon such a sperm or egg is lucky
by luck of the draw
It all depends on a roll of the genetic dice.
Enough said. Takes a tremendous leap of faith to imagine that such a process ever happens.
Due to the hurdles, "fossil" retroviral DNA strings (known by the technical name of "endogenous retroviruses") don't end up ubiquitous in a species very often
The understatment of the century. And after all that he says it "probably happens"
Not quite the rock-solid evidence it is portrayed to be
I think you missed the point. The fact that such situations are so rare SUPPORTS common descent - the odds of a retrovirus causing a DNA are very rare so it doesn't happen very often at all.
That is why the fact that humans and apes sharing common DNA fossils is such strong evidence.
Go read any other theory. They all use that language. Why you may ask? Because all theories can, have in the past, and will in the future, be modified as new information comes to light. This new information tends to focus the theory to something that approximates a local truth.
This language does not reflect the acceptance or the 'solidness' of the evidence.
Finally... Why didn't you bother to read it before you made your previous dismissive comments about it?
As for the "It takes more faith to believe in evolution than creationism"?
This is a common mantra from creationists, but only because they don't understand the first thing about science in general, or evolutionary biology in particular. It doesn't take any "faith" at all to realize that evolution has taken place and is occurring. It just takes evidence, knowledge, and understanding of the relevant processes.
How about I take a few phrases out:
How about you *don't* follow the usual creationist lame sophistry of yanking disconnected phrases out of context and parsing them as if microscopic *textual* examination of a description could somehow shed more light than the actual *evidence* underlying the findings?
Oops, too late:
"...every once in a while..."
Yes, it does indeed happen that, as I said in the original sentence in full, "However, every once in a while a virus's invasion plans don't function exactly as they should, and the virus's DNA (or portions of it) gets embedded into the cell's DNA in a 'broken' manner." There is a vast amount of evidence supporting this description of the errors which sometime occur during retrovirus transcription. Do you actually dispute this, or are you just trying to be a jerk over the fact that I was writing an overview of the process, and didn't want to bog it down by specifying actual transcriptional error rates, citations to the many studies which have measured these rates, and so on? Or are you really going to try to claim that retroviral transcription is a process which occurs with perfect fidelity and that it never, ever goes awry?
In short, just what in the hell is your actual point in waving around a phrase yanked entirely out of any recognizable context, as if you had some sort valid criticism, when it appears you're really just nitpicking over trivialities as an excuse not to have to deal with the actual substance? If that's your game, you might as well have stuck to your original tactic of making snotty comments about HTML, because that's just as foolish a way of avoiding the real evidence.
"...By chance this sometimes happens to..."
Yes, so? By chance it sometimes does happen to -- as established by quite a few studies, not to mention plain common sense. The original sentence you're trying to be tunnel-visioned about is, "By chance this sometimes happens to a special cell in the body, a gametocyte cell that's one of the ones responsible for making sperm in males and egg cells in females." Do you really *dispute* that? Is it somehow your contention that testicles and ovaries are somehow *immune* to viral infection?
"...And once in a blue moon such a sperm or egg is lucky..."
Again, do you have *any* actual point? If so, what in the hell is it? Or do you just enjoy cutting-and-pasting a few phrases out of any context whatsoever, then sitting back pretending that you've accomplished something? Do you want to discuss the topic, or do you want to play some word games as an excuse to convince yourself that you've somehow "refuted" anything by highlighting words with a crayon?
Here's your cut-and-paste in its original context: "And once in a blue moon such a sperm or egg is lucky enough to be one of the few which participate in fertilization and are used to produce a child -- who will now inherit copies of the "fossilized" viral DNA in every cell of his/her body, since all are copied from the DNA of the original modified sperm/egg." Your waving around the words I used to point out that not every sperm or egg ends up producing a child doesn't change the fact -- repeat, the *fact* -- that it *does* still happen. Or are you really going to try to argue the opposite: that no sperm or egg ever ends up as a child? If so, where *do* children come from, Einstein? Sheesh. Please think before posting.
"... by luck of the draw ..." "... It all depends on a roll of the genetic dice..."
Yup. It does indeed. Do you have a problem with the dynamics of gene recombination? Because if so, there's a guy named Mendel you should go take it up with, not to mention several million other biologists in the subsequent 150 years, who have verified Mendel's laws of inheritance to the point where only an idiot would try to dispute them. Are you an idiot?
Here's my original comment in full: "Through a process called neutral genetic drift, given enough time (it happens faster in smaller populations than large) the 'fossil' viral DNA will either be flushed out of the population eventually, *or* by luck of the draw end up in every member of the population X generations down the road. It all depends on a roll of the genetic dice." If you want to try to dispute this well-established statistical property of Mendelian inheritance, go right ahead, but you'll only be making a fool of yourself. Here, knock yourself out -- dazzle us all by showing us what's wrong with these analyses.
Enough said.
ROFL!!! You haven't said *ANYTHING*. You just cut-and-pasted a few of *my* words, then sat back and declared victory. And then people wonder why we don't take creationists seriously any longer...
Takes a tremendous leap of faith to imagine that such a process ever happens.
Not at all, son. It takes familiarity with the *vast* amount of research which has shown that it *does* happen, *how* it happens, how *often* it happens, the specific properties of the *processes* by which it happens, databases of the results of the thousands of cases in which it *has* happened, direct observations of each of the steps by which it happens, cross-species studies confirming the thousands of observations consistent with the precise predictions about what we would find in genomes if it *had* happened, and on and on and on.
It doesn't take *faith* at all, it takes mountains of evidence, which provide overlapping confirmations in multiply independent ways. Which we have.
The only person acting on "faith" in this discussion is you -- your blind (and incorrect) faith that I have no grounds for what I write, that I'm somehow just making it up, just posting what I "imagine". What *GALL*. Frankly, you owe me a huge apology, you little snot.
The astute reader will note that Asphalt never once stopped to consider that my post might have been the result of carefully gathered knowledge acquired by decades of research through the efforts of thousands of biologists. He never once thought it worthwhile to ask, "how do you know that claim XXX is valid", or "how was this determined"? No, he just arrogantly cut-and-pasted a few trivially tiny sequences of words out of my long post, and then breezily blew it all off with an obnoxiously condescending slap about how it must just be "faith" that causes me to "imagine" such a thing.
Behold the belligerent ignorance of the creationists: They don't know the first thing about biology, and don't have a clue about any of the research, but by gosh, they don't *have* to, because they presume that no one else really does either. It's all just made up, don'tcha know...
[Due to the hurdles, "fossil" retroviral DNA strings (known by the technical name of "endogenous retroviruses") don't end up ubiquitous in a species very often]
The understatment of the century.
Oh really? Then why are there over TWENTY THOUSAND of them in your own DNA? Try reading my words IN CONTEXT, kid -- any particular retroviral infection has a pretty small chance of ending up a permanent feature in a species' DNA, just as I correctly said above, but given how many BILLIONS of your cells get infected each time you get sick, and how many MILLIONS to BILLIONS of individuals there are in a population, and how many MILLIONS of generations pass during geologically "short" periods of time, it *still* ends up occurring often enough in absolute numbers to cause your DNA to have literally thousands of such "fossil viruses" stuck in it, passed down to you from your long-dead ancestors. They're neatly cataloged and databased as a result of the Human Genome Project. They're real -- no matter how much you might want to cling to your false belief that they're just something we "imagine" based on nothing but "faith". Deal with it.
And after all that he says it "probably happens"
See above, and lay off the inappropriate sarcasm -- you're just making a fool of yourself.
Not quite the rock-solid evidence it is portrayed to be
Go look it up, instead of reveling in your total ignorance, *and* being an insufferably smug jerk about your lack of education.
Characterization of the low-copy HERV-Fc family: evidence for recent integrations in primates of elements with coding envelope genesAnd, as usual, that's just the tiniest *tip* of the iceberg. My PubMed searches on endogenous retroviruses turned up over a *thousand* papers. These are just some of the more useful ones.Human-specific integrations of the HERV-K endogenous retrovirus family
Endogenous retroviruses in the human genome sequence
Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences
Human L1 Retrotransposition: cis Preference versus trans Complementation
Identification, Phylogeny, and Evolution of Retroviral Elements Based on Their Envelope Genes
HERVd: database of human endogenous retroviruses
Long-term reinfection of the human genome by endogenous retroviruses
Insertional polymorphisms of full-length endogenous retroviruses in humans
Many human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) proviruses are unique to humans
The distribution of the endogenous retroviruses HERV-K113 and HERV-K115 in health and disease
A rare event of insertion polymorphism of a HERV-K LTR in the human genome
Demystified . . . Human endogenous retroviruses
Retroviral Diversity and Distribution in Vertebrates
Drosophila germline invasion by the endogenous retrovirus gypsy: involvement of the viral env gene
Genomic Organization of the Human Endogenous Retrovirus HERV-K(HML-2.HOM) (ERVK6) on Chromosome 7
Sequence variability, gene structure, and expression of full-length human endogenous retrovirus H