Questions about Evolutionism vs. Creationsim

[Alex K]

That's what I'm starting to think about these posts, too. I'm not on an atheist site to be some random theist's lab rat. Don't just poll us about our thoughts on your classwork and then disappear. Come and have a real conversation with us instead.

Actually, I would like to have a real conversation with you.

Could you explain with some more detail why the earth is billions of years old, and why radiometric dating proves that age? And why remainders of retroviruses prove our relationship to apes? Feel free to throw all the scientific terms at me that you wish, and I'll do my best to understand them.

Sure, but please note that I am a physicist by training, not a geologist or a biologist.

Now, many of the viruses you know such as the common cold, carry their genome in the form of RNA molecules. They therefore can't accidentally end up in your own genes, which are given as DNA. Some RNA viruses such as the Aids virus HIV, however, possess a mechanism to translate their RNA back into the DNA format - they are therefore called retroviruses. When you get infected by one, there is a small chance that its back-converted DNA will end up in your sperm cells or egg cells and be passed on to your children as part of their genome in every single one of their cells, including THEIR sperm cells or egg cells. Over the generations, these so-called Endogenous Retroviruses or ERVs degrade because they get cut up and mutate, but usually scientists can still recognize their DNA remains as having belonged to a retrovirus DNA many generations ago. This apparently happened to the common ancestors of chimps and humans, because there are many fragmentary ERVs in the corresponding places in human and chimp DNA, and this is smoking gun evidence for a common ancestor (but only one line of evidence among many), documenting infection events in those common ancestors. Chimps are your distant cousins, get over it. I bet that, like me, you have some relatives in your extended family that are way worse than being a chimp's removed cousin.

If you ask specifically about which remainders - a large part of our so-called junk DNA is chopped-up retroviruses, so, a lot of different ones.