Did "Team SFT" Really Debunk "Stated Clearly" on the DNA Evidence That Humans & Chimps Share A Common Ancestor: Endogenous Retroviruses?




An attempt, of sorts, to debunk "Stated Clearly's" (SC's) video. I debunk their debunk here, making notes on the content when they are not wandering away from the topic. 

The original video. https://youtu.be/oXfDF5Ew3Gc



"Team SFT's" response. https://youtu.be/-0TUdi_40ZI 
I've sat through more than two hours of this drivel so you don't have to.


SFT begins by declaring that "evolutionists" (by which he means people who don't deny biological science along with many other well-established sciences) are unprepared to "debate" with him. I personally have invited him to debate me in a grown-up, written forum many times, but he has always declined. He tries to insist on a live video debate. I have refused this because I have seen the way he treats people who engage with him in videos of live discussions, often projecting heckling images while they talk. Besides, rhetorical skill is no means by which to determine scientific truth. If you read this SFT, my offer is still open for a written discussion at a neutral venue.

Note the hypocrisy in the fact that my comments on their video and on their Facebook page have been removed. Readers, please feel free to comment yourselves. 

He says that "evolutionists" don't read creationist literature. I criticise nearly all of the creationist literature I have been able to find and thar has been brought to me on the subject at this linkhttps://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/hasnt-evolutionists-story-about-ervs.html

Their "debunk" begins with the desperate creationist bleat that maybe ERVs were designed into our genomes rather than being endogenised by exogenous retroviruses. (The "VIGE hypothesis".) It does nothing to account for the facts as I explain herehttps://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/could-you-have-this-backwards.html The idea that ERVs were originally parts of organisms' genomes is falsified by the example of the koala retrovirus KoRVhttps://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/the-koalas-tale.html?m=0

Next comes just about the only apotropaic magic "argument" that creationists posses in the face of common ERVs. They are functional, so the must have been designed. Never mind that Paleyism was abandoned upon the discovery of evolution, the argument is a lie. No complete ERV is functional (though some can be revived to functionality as we shall see). Bits and bobs of ERVs have been found to have been scavenged and put to new uses. See The "Not Junk" Anti-ERV defence. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/the-not-junk-efence.html

Once they settle down a bit and actually start watching Stated Clearly's video, "Mattman" pipes up and whines that the voiceover says that evolution was assumed to be true. It's the usual creationist bleat that conclusions arrived at by applying reason to the evidence are "assumptions". This is blatant nonsense. An attempt to discount all the evidence and reasoning behind one of the most successful scientific theories. And highly ironic. Isn't creationism based on assumptions? The two of them are starting to put me in mind of Beavis and Butthead by this point. "Uh hur. He made an assumption". "Snigger snigger. Yep, yep. Heh heh heh".

Mattman goes on to display his utter ignorance of the history of science, falsely stating that deep time was 'invented' because it was needed by evolution. No. It was concluded from the evidence long before Darwin, and, BTW, taught by British geologists in British universities, by professors who were frequently "men of the cloth". But this is irrelevant to ERVs anyway. 

SFT starts prattling on about fossils, with the standard creationist claptrap concerning them, but this is also irrelevant. 

Once SFT settles down again and returns to genetics, he comes out with a hilarious gaffe! He has convinced himself that mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were the characters in the Biblical creation myth! https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/mt-eve-y-adam.html

Mattman then claims that we can trace our DNA back to a time when there were no mutations. This is simply, or to state it more honestly, a lie. Then some drivel about a "gorilla" with a knee joint? Has he even got the creationists garbage about Lucy wrong? I sometimes wonder why I spend my time debunking these morons, but the sad fact is that a significant number of people believe them because Jesus, or something.

Prattle about Francis Collins. Unsupported assertions about pseudogenes, chromosome fusion etc. More irrelevance.

After SC's introduction, Mattman pipes up and says that ERVs would need time to become deactivated before they could ever acquire beneficial mutations. He seems to be totally unaware that reverse transcription, the process that converts the retroviral RNA genome into DNA before integration with the host's nuclear DNA is rather error prone, withn no error detection and correction, and the reverse transcription process occurs on a massively parallel basis. Thus much retroviral genetics is already mutated on integration. This is what you get when nuts have convinced themselves that they are so right, they don't need to learn anything.

SFC then starts holding forth again about function in ERV elements. Not ERVs, note, but ERV elements. As is always the case, we have yet another creationist ignoring or glossing over the evidence that ERVs are indeed of retroviral origin, and the fact that many of these integrations are associated, not with beneficial functions, but with diseases, especially late-onset cancers that are invisible to natural selection. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/why-do-virologists-and-geneticists.html

Here are some notes of mine on beneficial functions performed by ERV elements. 
https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/ervs-do-stuff-doesnt-that-prove-that.html
https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/ervs-promote-transcription-of-host-dna.html
https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/ervs-are-essential-in-reproduction.html

SFT then appeals to an article by creation.com. This is their "What we believe" page. Can't you just tell that they are going to be impartial and intellectually honest? https://creation.com/what-we-believe

SFT repeats, "It had to be the case that ERVs originated in the genome". Hitchen's Razor applies here. This is bare unsupported assertion.

Hahahaha! "Berry Desspero" gets a mention. Apparently I was "destroyed", somewhere or other. My name is pronounced "baa ree dez bruh". Here is SFTs pathetic attempt to answer the questions I posed to him. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/standing-for-truth-attempts-to-reply-to.html

As to how retroviruses originated, nobody has any good evidence at the current state of knowledge. My guess, and it is just a guess, is that they originated in the very early stages of the emergence of life, but it is again irrelevant to common descent. They are dependent on host cells, but could easily have arisen after the emergence of host cells. SFT seems to have convinced himself of an argument that carries no weight.

And again, the assertion that virologists and geneticists are not investigating function. I'd love someone to point to any item in the scientific literature by creationists, as opposed to "evolutionists" that presents evidence for function in ERV elements. 

Now the klutz argument that mice could not have babies before there were placenta. SFT, have you never heard of non-placental mammals?

Mattman then exposes that he is totally ignorant of the sequence of development of life by imagining that "evolutionists" think that placental mammals evolved directly from fish! You can't make this stuff up. He also thinks that both sexes had to have been able to produce placentae! 

Oh, my poor brain cells! But I will plod on.

Mattman then reveals that he has totally missed or failed to understand the fundamental point by saying that viruses can "spill over" between different species. They can, and do, but only common loci point to vertical transfer.  See https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/the-same-retrovirus-or-erv-has-been.html

He then talks about ERVs that are present in certain species, and not in others. As if it is impossible for different species to acquire unique ERVs. Why he thinks this is a problem is a mystery.

SFT then asserts (of course, without any evidence) that the presence of nonfunctional genetics of viral origin would be useless and costly, therefore deleterious. "A waste of energy for the cell". Yet vast amounts of nonfunctional DNA remains in our genomes. Junk DNA is a thing. See https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351

Regarding "Phoenix" (See my explanation of the "Phoenix virus experiment here, @ 
https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/the-phoenix-virus-explanation-of.html) Mattman gets it wrong immediately (there's a theme here) by saying that the HERV-K sequences were some of the oldest ERVs in the human genome. All the evidence (for example from LTR discontinuities, see https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/long-terminal-repeats-ltrs.html) says that they are among the youngest sequences. He said it was a failed retrovirus, that they altered. No. Here is the truth. They took a bunch of failed proviruses (ERVs). They had the hypothesis that these were all mutated copies of a provirus from the same original retrovirus, and that if they constructed a "consensus sequence" from them, their different disabling mutations could be eliminated, being corrected by "majority vote" from all the others, there was a good chance that this could reconstruct the original, replication competent provirus. This was a completely objective process. Despite Mattman's false assertion that it did not create a replication competent retrovirus, it did. Here is the original paper. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1665638/ Mattman clearly hasn't even been bothered to read the abstract.

The "Phoenix" experiment is a great example of the sort of science that creationists demand. Observable. Repeatable in the here and now. Falsifiable. If the experiment had failed, it would not necessarily have falsified the endogenization hypothesis, but the fact that it succeeded is very powerful evidence that it is correct, and creationists have no alternative explanation as to why it did succeed. 

Mattman once again tries to smear the science with the "assumption" jeer, but assumptions are valuable in science. You assume (provisionally) that something is true, but then you test to see whether your assumption is correct. Testing, in creation "science" is like holy water to a vampire. They avoid it at all costs.

A big stretch of irrelevant babble follows at this point. All already dealt with. They then go off topic, babbling about bacteria and exogenous viruses. 

Still listening to Mattman at the moment. Why do I subject myself to this incoherent, irrelevant garbage?

And another incoherent rant, devoid of any evidence or even coherent reason, from SFT.

We now come to the crux of whether ERVs are inherited traces of retroviral integrations, or designed in features. He admits that if the former is the case, the probability that the majority of common ERVs are not due to common descent are negligible. But he says that no science has been presented to even suggest that ERVs derive from retroviruses! 

Mattman says that chimps were created to eat plants. What planet is he living on? Is Beavis and Butthead the apt description? I'm now thinking Dumb and Dumber.

SFT maintains that genetic elements have to be in the same positions to perform the same functions. Wrong yet again. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/arent-same-genes-in-same-places.html

Now an "Answers in Genesis" article! SFT, you are really scraping the barrel! "All viruses are molecular machines, which means that they were designed". The very first sentence is garbage. And, of course, all the evidence that ERVs are of retroviral origin is studiously ignored. And this link explains why AiG can be discounted as a serious source. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/aig-statement-of-faith.html

More drivel, unsupported by any evidence or semblance of reasoning. Naked assertions, whistling in the wind. Confirmation bias.

Mattman says that ERVs that do not have corresponding loci are "excused" by "evolutionists" by them saying that that are independent endogenizations, neglecting to mention that the vast majority of endogenizations are in precisely corresponding loci, and that independent endogenizations are perfectly reasonably to be expected. They are really desperately clutching at straws here.

1:40:35 Then we have the pathetic characterisation of evolution being a purely random process. It was Huxley, Darwin's friend, upon hearing of the natural selection of undirected variations, declaring, "How stupid not to have thought of that!". 150 years later, nobody has that excuse, not even indoctrinated creationists.
SFT then goes on to argue from personal incredulity that retroviral insertions could not possibly be beneficial, again ignoring all the evidence that these sequences derive from retroviruses.

Mattman then pipes up, saying that we do not have a certain theory of the origin of retroviruses. Again, their origin is irrelevant to them being proof of common ancestry. He repeats the lie that there is no evidence that ERVs are of retroviral origin, and that the idea is circular reasoning, assuming evolution in the first place. No Mattman. No assumption of evolution is made when concluding that commonly located ERVs are due to common ancestry.

A conclusion drawn from evidence and reasoning is not an assumption or a presupposition.

The conclusion is drawn from the following items of evidence -

  1. ERVs have the same detailed structure as proviruses. This fact does not require us to assume evolution.
  2. Retroviral integration does not target specific loci in DNA. This fact does not require us to assume evolution.
  3. Inheritance places the same genetic material in the same locations in DNA. This fact does not require us to assume evolution.
But it does seem to me that evolution-deniers assume evolution is false when trying to prove it is false...

Mattman frantically waves his arms around a bit more, and complains that "evolutionists" just assume that ERVs present in chimps and not in humans, and ERVs present in humans, but not in chimps, are due to post-speciation endogenizations. He completely misses the whole point, that commonly located ERVs descend from common ancestors, and unique ERVs are fully to be expected post-speciation. I would love to hear his explanation, and the evidence he uses to support it.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Mattman continues his weird ramble with talk of current exogenous viruses that will "imprint in your body at some point". It seems that it still hasn't sunk in that it takes reverse transcriptase and integrase, exclusively retroviral genes, to integrate viral DNA with nuclear DNA, and it needs to integrate with DNA in a gamete for it to become heritable. HIV is the only known retrovirus circulating among people, and it has not been observed to endogenise. He finishes his outburst with a lie that scientists dismiss or play down any function that they do find. 

SFT incoherently comes back with talk of  "internal and external escapees" and asserts that they are evidence for something called a "fall". He continues to repeat the nonsense that the sequences had to have originated in the genome, as if repeating it makes it true. I'm starting to feel sorry for these people. More arm-waving and jabber about function. This is getting boringly repetitive. 

They play the last section from SC's video, where he says that given that a particular set of types of ERV found in chimps and humans do derive from retroviruses, the probability that they all wound up in corresponding locations by chance is vanishingly small. He then mentions that there are other lines of evidence from our DNA. Beavis and Butthead do their inane adolescent sniggering. 

Now Butt - er - SFT brings up "Hotspots" to try and account for commonly located ERVs. Has he forgotten that he was claiming tha
t they were originally designed into our genomes? Anyway, the "hotspot" idea does not fly. See https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/relationship-between-integration-sites.html

He continues with a repeat of the argument that homology could be explained by design, without offering a scrap of evidence for it, and he continues to ignore the fact that ERVs are an argument for orthology, not homology, and again, ignores the evidence for that. 

Mattman prattles on about mutations in mitochondrial DNA. I don't know why. The ERVs that prove common descent are in the chromosomes. Nuclear DNA.

Function again. Already dealt with above.

An ERV found in baboons and cats is a problem? Why? It might be if they are found in precisely corresponding loci, but they are not. Mattman is simply lying about this.

SFT starts talking about the general degrees of similarity/difference in the DNA of chimps and humans. The ERV evidence is not about that, but about the specific markers for which the evidence for them being retroviral in origin is copious. All the same, we are different species and we would expect to find differences. They form part of a nested hierarchy which is exactly what we would expect to see from evolution. If a god had created our genomes, it could have created anything, so creation has no predictive power regarding this. He does not provide any data for his supposed "waiting time problem". They are going way off topic at this point.

They come back on topic with HIV and SIV. Matttman claims that SIV provides beneficial functions in primates without any evidence to back it up. However, HIV is not known to have endogenised, nor SIV, except in the case of the gray mouse lemur of Madagascar. SIV causes diseases in the primates it infects.

SFT then repeats the unsubstantiated claim that ERVs should all be negatively selected - after claiming for two hours that they are beneficial! 

Matthew contradicts SFT by saying that neutral mutations are not flushed out by selection. He then rambles on incoherently yet again. 

SFT comes back and restates that neutral mutations carry a cost, and should have been flushed out by natural selection. These two characters should have sorted out what they think before starting this video!

SFT says he wants to make the most technical and informative rebuttal of ERVs on the internet. It's not a good start to fail to provide any evidence. Besides, creationists far more knowledgeable and qualified have tried before him and failed. 

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/hasnt-evolutionists-story-about-ervs.html

Matt closes with another false statement - that all humans have the same retroviruses. No. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/03/16/1602336113

SFT closes with yet more unsubstantiated assertion.

The one enormous, essential fact that Beavis and Butthead ignore is that integrase, the enzyme that snips our nuclear DNA, attaches one end of the provirus to one strand and the other end of it to the other stand, closing it all up again, cannot target specific DNA loci. Yet here we have sequences coding for integrase and all the other retroviral genetics in our genomes, in precisely corresponding loci in the DNA of Homo and Pan. They have utterly failed to account for this. 

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/did-team-sft-really-debunk-stated.html
















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