ERV FAQ: Could you have this backwards? Maybe ERVs are designed-in variation inducing genetic elements (VIGEs)?

URL: https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/could-you-have-this-backwards.html

Acronyms sound so 'sciency', don't they? "DNA", "RNA", "CMBR", "SARS" etc. You can find them throughout the scientific literature. But "VIGE"? It only appears in creationist and cdesign proponentsist literature. It's an example of cargo cult science. Trying to sound sciencey when you have no evidence or reason to support your nutty ideas is an indicative feature of pseudo-science.

Simplified representation of the life cycle of a retrotransposon from Wikipedia

Many creationists/cdesign proponentsists have clutched at this idea to attempt to cast doubt on the conclusion that ERVs are the inherited remnants of retroviral integrations.

The idea is that some god or other "intelligent designer" poofed or designed (as appropriate) these elements in organisms in order to make them 'roll the dice' and re-integrate DNA into other regions of the genome either by direct DNA->RNA>DNA transcription and retrotranscription, or by the less direct route of creating exogenous retroviruses that may then re-integrate into the genome.

There are several basic problems with this idea.

1) There is no evidence for them being originally poofed-or-designed-in elements. A basic guiding principle of science is that of parsimony. You do not complicate your ideas in the absence of evidence. It is unnecessary. And a tedious waste of time.

2) There is no means of distinguishing between the mooted 'VIGEs' and their re-integrated products.

3) Whatever the answer to 2), their products still appear in corresponding loci in related species, and still force us to conclude common ancestry for the reasons already explained at length in this FAQ. 

4) Why would a god or other "intelligent designer'" employ such a hit-and-miss method of distributing copies of genetic material, for all intents and purposes at random in the genomes they created, more often than not causing damage?

5) Why are none of these so-called "VIGEs" still active in the population?

6) Why couldn't this god or other "intelligent" designer just poof or design in what they wanted in the first place?

7) The whole idea of the utility of "variation inducing genetic elements" is highly derivative of the principle of the natural selection of undirected heritable variations. Either this principle is valid, or it is not. You can't have it both ways.

8) According to creationist lore, "information cannot increase in the genome", yet here they are, proposing a mechanism to do just that.

See also, "The 'Not Junk' Anti-ERV Defence"
and "But how can you rule out design as an explanation?"

From https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/endogenous-retroviruses-frequently.html