Common descent would necessitate similar genetics. Similar genetics would be susceptible to similar viruses. These scars very well could represent a scar left on creatures that don't have the genetic immunities to avoid the virus.
...much less for Him to be putting a pseudo-history in porpoises that makes it look like they're more related to camels than to sharks.
Porpoises are air breathing mammals with bones, much more similar to camels than sharks. If I programmed an add-on for Windoze, I wouldn't use Unix code.
You inherit DNA changes whether they're good for you or not.
I agree many mutations can be passed down. Information rich DNA makes each and every one of us completely unique. (For good or Bad).
What we see in DNA makes sense against this model.
Where ever the data leads us is fine with me. Unfortunately, preconceptions are ingrained in all human beings. So we are destined to differ on opinion until the evidence leaves us no other choice.
What kind of designer tries to pass forward forever every design change--even if it's just accidental noise--that isn't seriously harmful to the designed? What we see in DNA does not make sense against a designer model unless the designer is a mindless robot.
There are many credentialed biologists and chemists who disagree with you.
Check the link back to the origin of this article. What the Webmaster does is he gathers articles from science journals that typically evolutionist’s scientists show surprise at their findings. These don't always work in favor of creationism; oftentimes they illustrate how the leading scientists are befuddled by where the evidence is leading them.
He updates monthly and has a backlog of articles from the last three years. His name is Davis Coppedge, and he is a scientist at JPL working on the Cassini project, which is approaching Saturn. He is also a Creationist who uses recent data gathered from the archives at NASA that confounds the scientists regarding findings in our solar system. Remember, many of the most advanced satellites that have been sent into space have been in the last 20 years.
I will be posting some of his research over the next few weeks. Exciting new astronomical discoveries that aren't usually leaked to the press.
A viral intron happening at the same location in independent events would be a truly staggering coincidence. For the DNA record to be just as compatitible with common design as common descent, this staggering coincidence would have to be repeated to account for thousands of viral introns that have been cataloged across multiple genomes up and down the tree of life. It simply cannot have happened as often as you need it.
But it's worse than that. These viral scars are themselves subject to mutation, and that's what we see. Some primate gets a virus which imbeds its DNA in a germ-line cell nucleus but fails to coopt the cell function per the usual plan. Instead, the cell reproduces normally, even with the splice of virus genome inserted. A baby is born with a harmless marker in its DNA.
Millions of years later, you can tell whether a primate came out of that lineage or not by whether the marker is present. Furthermore, you can guess how long ago the marker was inserted by the amount of mutations accumulated among the variations.
That does not spell "common designer." It screams "common descent." That's what we see. You have a tree of DNA relatedness. It has mutations on top of mutations. The connectedness lacking in the fossil record (because of the spottiness of the fossilization process itself) is present in the DNA picture. Big mutations help outline major branching points, but these accumulate a finer dust of little mutations all the time.
And that's without looking at other lines of evidence. When you do, you find that your "designer" somehow decided to make whales out of even-toed ungulate parts. Molecular biological data said this first, but then Pakicetus and Rhodocetus fossils turned up with the diagnostic pulley-shaped ankle-bones of that same group.
Do you understand what I just said? The molecular bio data essentially predicted what would otherwise be an almost absurdly ridiculous fossil find. Whales would be even-toed ungulates, if they still had toes. The people who found the fossils that clinched this didn't believe it themselves until they found the fossils.
And what are all those funny fossil series that seem to show forms morphing into other forms? Why do they match the same trees that the DNA gives you? I mean, why do you make a whale out of camel-goat-pig-hippo stuff when you have fish available? And why does your designer work up to the modern forms with an aquatic-as-a-crodicle whale, then an aquatic-as-a-seal whale, then some obligate-marine-but-still-has-external-legs-type whales?
In the end, all you can do to stay in the game is postulate a designer who can't fail to emulate evolution.
Porpoises are air breathing mammals with bones, much more similar to camels than sharks.
But why? Why afflict the porpoise with a need to come up for air at all? Where it lives, such a feature is merely a liability. Yes, the porpoise is a mammal and is made from mammalian parts. You're trying to use the your model's problem to dodge your model's problem.
Your designer made bird after bird after bird. Suddenly, however, he decided to make another kind of flyer using tree-dwelling mammal parts. Your designer made fish after fish after fish, then suddenly decided he needed another thing shaped like a fish, swimming around in the ocean eating fish, but made using camel/pig/giraffe/hippo parts.
Then he put funny trace data in the DNA to make it look like camels, pigs, hippos, and cetaceans all diverged from a common ancestor. Then he put funny fossils in the ground to make it look like land ungulates slowly became aquatic to become cetaceans.
What were we supposed to think? You've got to let Occam's Razor kick in at some point.
There are many credentialed biologists and chemists who disagree with you.
Whatever the number that disagrees with me, it's nothing to the number that disagrees with you. I can't believe you have no more sense than to go there.