Endogenous retroviruses

[Paul Howard]

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are sometimes claimed to be proof of evolutionary theory. It’s said, for example, that the ERVs shared by humans and chimps provide effective mathematical proof that humans and chimps have a common genetic ancestor. What is a good response to that claim?

[Ashish Dalela]

I don’t know about ERVs but I can find out. Do you have any idea about how many “proofs of evolutionary theory” they will find out after you disprove one of these? Infinite. Longer than your lifespan. This is because they are paid to do so. Their promotion depends on it. Their bonus and stock options depend on it. So they will do so. Not because they believe in any of it. But because saying that they believe in it gets them more money, more stock, more bonus, more papers, more promotions. And you are too gullible for believing that they believe in what they say.

There are scientific theories that are formulated after you have the data and you need to explain the data. Then there are scientific theories that send people in search of data to prove the theory. Evolution was initially an explanation of data. It is now a theory begging for data. So people are searching for it. They will find a hundred things against it, and they will reject them. They will find one thing that supports it right now, and they will put a great emphasis on it. This is politics.

You know a lot about US politics. The entire country is saying that there is a recession. And the government is saying there is not. They changed the dictionary definition of recession to avoid having to say there is a recession. They play with job statistics. One man has three jobs, and it is counted as three men having three jobs. It is not the attempt to find the truth, tell the truth, and elevate the truth. It is propaganda to not find the truth, hide the truth, and deprioritize the truth. Why? Because elections are near. Careers hang in the balance. Lots of money is at stake.

The problem is that you may not see in academia what you can see in politics. But it is the same. Business and political corruption is known, but academic corruption is unknown. The modern-day Vaisyas and Kshatriyas are discredited. But the modern-day Brahmanas are not. But why spend your life trying to discredit them? You need to develop the alternative that will replace them in due time to a far stronger level before you take them out. They cannot be changed because they are paid to do a job that they are doing effectively. You cannot pay them to do a different job.

If you know that a house is going to collapse, then you don’t spend your time trying to accelerate its collapse. You focus on building a new house for the time after the old one has collapsed. Let it collapse on its own. But get the new house in order and make it bigger and stronger. This will be a useful service for everyone.

As far as evidence is concerned, I have already given so much logical mathematical evidence in Signs of Life. But do we understand that evidence? If not, the focus must be on understanding those arguments. When you have so many mathematical arguments against it, then you don’t need virus and bacteria evidence. This is why I did not go after molecular evidence. I know that if I present one such evidence, there will be a million counterarguments. My entire life will be spent just doing that. Therefore, I have framed simple and irrefutable mathematical arguments. But how many people read and understand it? I think almost no one. They like molecular, virus, and bacteria evidence. That means millions of pieces of evidence, one saying something and the other saying the opposite. And we have to spend our lives debating it. This is not going to lead to anything. It is an exercise in futility.

In the last blog post, I have explained what a body is. It is an organizational structure into which atoms are hired like employees. The structure comes before the employees. It comes before the atoms. The structure can change even with the same atoms. An organization can change its structure with the same employees. This is called protein folding. The atoms remain the same. The structure changes.

I did my master’s thesis in protein folding in 1994. I was doing computational models of molecular structure based on ab-initio methods in quantum mechanics. I had to master a lot of computer programming, quantum mechanics, biochemistry, and linear algebra to do these things. I thought this was going to lead to something. But after a ton of work, I realized that this is never going to work. After 30 years it hasn’t. In that time, the computers have become a million times more powerful. The mathematical packages are a million times better. Various kinds of methods have been tried and abandoned. But nothing has worked. There was some recent noise about this problem being solved by AI. Now it has faded away. Wait for few more years. Nobody will talk about it. People don’t like discussing their failures. I’m not talking philosophy. I’ve done all these things in depth, far more than anyone else who talks about evolution. Unless you do the mathematics you don’t know what you are talking about. With mathematics, you see the logical contradictions.

There is no such thing as molecular bonding. There is no electromagnetic force to bind these atoms together. There is a structure based on a mental reality that they cannot perceive. That mental reality changes, and the structure changes. Then all the atoms are reorganized. They call it protein folding. It is folding because the organizational structure is being repurposed. The same atoms can do many different jobs if they are organized in a different structure. That is just like pieces of wood can be organized into a table or a chair to achieve different goals.

Whatever they call electromagnetic force creating bonds is called the prāṇa body in Vedic philosophy. Some people call it an “ethereal body”. It is not perceivable because it is like an organizational structure without any employees. Atoms are not the cause of this structure. The cause is the mental reality. This is why they can never explain the molecular structure itself. That structure is a reality apart from atoms. But they are not trying to study that reality. They are trying to supervene structure on atoms. But chemistry is a fundamentally different subject than physics because it should be about structure instead of atoms. When we have that alternative science of structure, then biology will also get that same science of structure.

That science of structure requires a mind. That mind requires a soul. And so it goes. If you read Areas of Semantic Research, there is a section on Chemical Law that talks about structure. I have compared chemistry and physics to grammar and words. The words do not fully determine the grammar and vice versa. Grammar is a structure. Words are atoms. This is a hierarchical system in the sense that a paragraph is like a word and a chapter organizes paragraphs in a structure.

This hierarchical system is also a modal system in which structure can be described using words. For example, “cube” is a word that describes a structure. A “tree” is a word that describes a structure. So, the words contain structure and the structure contains words. The word that contains structure is “mind”. The structure that contains words is “body”. So, mind and body are joined by structure.

DNA is like a word. It contains many structures like the word “cube” denotes a structure. When the DNA is transcribed, then individual genes are expanded into many structures. That is just like the word “cube” expands into a geometrical structure. That structure then attracts atoms as its six vertices and you get a visible cube. This is the science of manas, prāṇa, and vāk. There is a word called manas. It expands into a structure called prāṇa. And that structure then attracts atoms called vāk, namely, atoms of hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling. This is how the word “cube” becomes an actual cube that you can see. But modern science doesn’t have any of this. They talk about DNA transcription, which is just like the word “cube” expanding into a real cube. But they don’t have a theory. They don’t understand what it really is. To understand, we have to treat atoms as symbols of meaning. Then we have to understand the structure as grammar. And then we have to understand how a paragraph can be summarized into one word.

You can think of DNA as one Bhagavad-Gita verse and the body as Prabhupada’s purport on that Bhagavad-Gita verse. The purport came out of the verse. The process of expanding the verse into purport is the same as DNA expanding into a body. It is the same process in which a book title is expanded into a book. However, if some other Acharya writes a commentary, then they can expand the verse into a different purport. Both purports are hidden inside the verse. One person sees one purport and another person sees another purport. Likewise, the same DNA can be expanded into many bodies. Those bodies are purports, and the DNA is the verse. Then there are deeper realities than the verse from which the verse has expanded.

One DNA expanding into many bodies is called epigenetics. The DNA is fixed, but the body is not fixed. The verse is the same but the purport is not the same. Evolutionists cannot explain this. So, let them resolve their problem of genetics vs. epigenetics. They cannot solve it. When the body is not fixed even by genes, then what are we talking about in evolution? Are we discussing the evolution of genes? Or the evolution of bodies? Or both? Or neither? Or something in between?

If people don’t have answers to these fundamental questions, and if they focus on these questions, then they cannot get their bonus, salary, stock option, and promotion. Their monetary incentives are attached to not focusing on fundamental questions. Hence, they will point to something else as a possible culprit. Maybe if we study that virus we will get an answer. That gives them millions of dollars in research funding. They pay themselves bonuses out of that. From that, they finance their vacations, houses, and luxuries. Why will someone not do it? There is a river of money flowing underneath academia. Look at that river and how it flows. Don’t worry about the sand it leaves on the embankment. That sand is simply evidence of the river flowing, not evidence that the river is headed in the right direction. The boatmen in that river are also not headed in the right direction. But they got to keep rowing in the direction in which the river is flowing. They can’t row against it.

[Paul Howard]

I’ve just been trying to promote your books when I see people discussing related topics, by concisely explaining some of the arguments you’ve made and directing them to a suitable page of your website if they seem like they could be interested. I don’t see how else to assist your “new house” project, but I’ll stop if you think my efforts are counterproductive.

[Ashish Dalela]

• Doing vs. not doing is one binary
• Doing for the right vs. wrong person is second binary
• Doing at the right vs. wrong time is third binary
• Doing at the right vs. wrong place is fourth binary
• Doing in the right vs. wrong opportunity is fifth binary
• Doing in the right vs. wrong style is sixth binary
• Doing by the right vs. wrong person is seventh binary

There are many binaries like that. They are combined to decide right vs. wrong action. I just added the right vs. wrong person to the doing vs. not doing binary and you are trying to simplify it to doing vs. not doing binary. That means universal laws of action or inaction. What can I say? You can do the best that you can do.

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