I’ve argued with enough Young earth creationists and flat-earthers to know exactly where this is headed. No matter what I say, anything with direct, real-time observable evidence will be lumped into “non-evolutionary biology”, and anything implied by that evidence will be lumped into “useless theorizing”, without any explanation as to why the principle shouldn’t be applied consistently.
It’s like saying “Gravity is a useless theory, ‘earth physics’ is the only thing with real application, but people throw in the dumb gravity theory so they can shoehorn useless yarns about how Pluto is supposed to behave, and I want to believe that God just makes Pluto look like it’s behaving according to the same gravitational force as earth, but it’s a continuous miracle, because nobody has actually witnessed Pluto do a full revolution of the sun.”
The mechanism that explains the development of life on earth is the exact same mechanism that explains viral evolution. There is no “genus barrier”, since genus is an even more arbitrarily defined grouping than species. You can’t just say “Sure viral evolution is a thing, but it doesn’t apply to anything historically because I don’t like history.” Well I guess you can say that since you are saying that, but it’s just a kind of sad and weird thing to say.
You keep mentioning how you’re not a Young-earth creationist but you’re not any different since they make the exact same argument you’re making about how we cannot and should not try to make any inferences about the past outside of the Bible no matter what evidence there is.
So for HIV research, I really only need to talk about viral evolution, since even that would negate the majority of anti-evolution arguments made in this thread, namely:
- That random mutation can produce useful and novel functionality
- that random mutation and natural selection alone can produce efficient and functional phenotypes with the appearance of design.
- that genetic research can trace the relationship and origin of lifeforms
Literally the only counterargument I’ve heard is “That’s just viruses, those mechanisms don’t apply to anything else, I don’t know why but I insist that is true.” This despite the fact that we can observe the same mechanism and phenomenon in bacteria and rapidly reproducing animals in real time in the lab.
In the end you’re just some dude on the internet with a weird axe to grind about a subject you don’t really understand. The research world goes without your approval because luckily people making grant decisions usually actually bother to try to have a decent grasp of the subject. You’re in the world as the flat earthers railing about how the evil NASA is wasting money on the globe conspiracy. If you actually were as smart as you think you are and had it figured out as much as you think you do, you wouldn’t be trolling internet forums, you’d be revolutionizing biology.
