The pattern of the ERVs fits the predicted evolutionary tree for primates. Too much of a coincidence I am afraid.
2) There are NO examples of ‘shared errors’ linking mammals to other species.
Mammals are not a species and this is also a sidestep. The pattern of ERV's fits the evolutionary tree of primates and indicates they share common ancestory beyond doubt. This is just one line of evidence that coincidentally matches the primate tree.
3) The assertion that common ancestry is the only possible explanation for endogenous retroviruses in identical chromosome locations of different species is based SOLEY on the mere ASSUMPTION that they are nonfunctional
No, these ones are non-functional. It is not an assumption. They are not active in protein expression. Also even the rare ERV's that aid function are still due to past RV insertions. And still the pattern of these insertions matches the predicted primate tree of descent.
It is just as possible that that retroviruses are a degeneration of a designed system rather than having arisen through some random process.
You are throwing out all sorts of wild possibilities like someone thrashing around in deep water. There is no reason whatsoever that the pattern of ERVs in primate genomes would fit the predicted tree of descent of primates unless the ERV's were aquired through inheritance. Sorry its just too coincidental.
TOE can accommodate this phenomenon, but it can also accommodate its absence, as it has in the past. Common ancestory does not predict it.
No, these ones are non-functional. It is not an assumption. They are not active in protein expression. Also even the rare ERV's that aid function are still due to past RV insertions.
You are assuming the very thing in question. Repeating the premise that these are (and always have been) due nonfunctional products of retro viral infection that have inserted randomly into the genome of the host organism does not prove anything. It is not certain that these ERV's are nonfunctional, and always have been. Such a proof of absence of past functionality is impossible.
Furthermore, it is equally plausible that there is some mechanistic process inherent in the viruses rather than a random process that would account for the phenomena apart from than common ancestry. For example, the enzymes in viruses that do repeatable reactions, under the same conditions. If the DNA in mammals is very similar, then if they are all infected by the same virus, why wouldn't the virus be expected do the same thing in the different species?
You are throwing out all sorts of wild possibilities like someone thrashing around in deep water.
There is nothing wild in what I have asserted. The idea that this phenomena could be accounted for by degeneration of a complex system is just as plausible as the notion of its explanation by random process and common descent. No one has the slightest idea of what the role of these ERV's was in the past. As I said, TOE accommodates the phenomenon, but it also accommodates its absence. And given the failure of past claims of 'definitive genetic proof' of common ancestry, I see no present reason to accept ERV insertion as dogmatically unassailable evidence of TOE.
Cordially,