Why haven't we observed mutations of new body parts?

Is that what you think we do in the science threads? Just make up bullshit? Whatever we want, and act like it's true?Jesus, NJ, that's not how it works at all. We go do the research, on sites like Google Scholar and PubMed - read the primary research - and then we come back and tell you what it says, as we understand it. Since some of us have degrees in this stuff, or others of us have gone to at least some school for it, some of us understand better than others.But unless specifically stated you shouldn't really be encountering anything from our side that hasn't been substantiated by someone's scientific research. NJ, any mutation can serve as the basis for subsequent mutations. Environment determines that. Mutations don't plan ahead. They happen at random. It's like asking someone who lost in the lottery why they didn't play the winning numbers instead.It's a question that indicates that you don't quite understand what's going on. What maximum? How could there be a maximum? You can always add to the end of a DNA sequence; they're of arbitrary length. It's like saying there can only be a certain number of words - but that's clearly false. Even if you reach, say, every possible combination of 10 letters or less, you can start with the 11-letter words. And the 12-letter ones after that. And so on. Why? Based on what? Just your "gut feeling?"Do you understand why I don't take that as seriously as, say, a paper on bioinformatics? Or Yockey's work in Information Theory and Molecular Biology showing that all known functional sequences - across the world of living things - can be connected by single nucleotide changes through a network of minimally functional intermediates?Or Denton:

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"One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps." M. J. Denton, 1999

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There's more than enough mutations - because living things have only covered a small fraction of all the diversity mutations could be capable of.You have it completely backwards, NJ. Fuckin-a, NJ. We've got all that. We've had it for years, and we've been falling all over ourselves to show it to you.Why do you think we're so convinced about evolution? But here's the funny thing, NJ - somebody gets it in their head that evolution can't mix with their religion, and all the evidence in the world just doesn't make any difference. It's like they don't even see it. They forget it as soon as its shown to them.It'd be amazing if it wasn't so sad. We keep showing the creationists the evidence, and then next day, they're back like nothing ever happened. Can you understand our consternation? No, of course not, because you've got it too.

NJ - find a bird near you, and count the number of limbs it has.2 legs, 2 wings, right? No arms?Did you ever wonder why that is? The wings are the arms.Wings didn't begin as little stumps growing out of the body. They began as arms. The transitional stages between wing and arm is an arm with feathers, and then a skinnier arm with the feathers, and then an arm with no claws and elongated fingers, and then specialized feathers, etc. But that's just nonsense. We have examples of the transitions all the way through. You've even been shown them. But here you are again, forgetting completely that you've even seen them, because you have the crazy idea that it's against your religion. In museums. You should go sometime. Why wouldn't a transition be fully formed? Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "fully formed." Archeopterix is a fully-formed archeopterix. In no sense is it a fully-formed modern bird.

...and?NJ, there's all kinds of stuff we wouldn't know if the evidence for it had never existed. So what? Are you saying that if, in an alternate universe we might not know something, we can't know it in this one?How the hell does that make any sense? Honestly, the things you say sometimes.

The genome that encodes these proteins and enzymes is what mutates, obviously. And we've made observations that show that mutations are capable of more than enough diversity to account for all living things (and then some, by a factor of one thousand to one.) Lynn Margulis has a penchant for dramatic overstatement, that is all. She's a firm supporter of the evolutionary consensus, and of descent by modification by natural selection and random mutation, just like all other serious biologists. Please, don't try to read her mind from the things she says in public. Unless you're reading her journaled papers, you're not getting the whole story, and you're drawing conclusions from faulty evidence. As Percy has alluded to, panspermia has a chicken-and-egg problem. Where do the viruses come from? How did they evolve? It doesn't solve any of the problems its adherents claim need to be solved, it just pushes them to another world.As it happens, though, mutations are capable of vastly more genetic diversity than we see in living things, so its abundantly obvious that mutations are sufficient to account for the diversity of living things. Indeed. Lynn Margulis is a brilliant evolutionary biologist who puts her ideas to rigorous test, and then publishes the results for peer-review. Which are things the creationists absolutely refuse to do, because then all would see the intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of their position. There are religions in the natural world - just look around you - and religions make claims about the natural world. Debunking those claims and studying the phenomenology of religion are appropriate venues for science, despite your feelings.

That's certainly true, but do try to remember that, with just a freshman-level biology class, there's much, much more than you currently know, too.For instance we've actually performed experiments that result in the evolution of "irreducibly complex" genetic structures via mutation and natural selection. You probably didn't cover those in freshman biology, for instance.I'd suggest going the next step and taking a higher-level genetics or biochemistry class if you're interested. It's a lot harder to learn this stuff on your own, trust me.

That may be true. It's a function of the deep specialization prevalent in the field of biology. By the time you have a Ph.D. and you're doing research in your field, you might find yourself quite divorced from the fundamentals of biology, to the point where the questions a freshman might have - for whom it's all new - might very well be stumpers.There's quite a few Ph.D. biologists around here, incidentally, many with a focus in evolution and genetics. (Myself, I'm just an interested layperson and sometime student.)

Well, we are the ones with the weight of scientific evidence on our side. Creationists don't really have anything but the Bible, so there's not all that much for them to argue about. Two creationists generally agree on hardly anything, but since there's no evidentiary basis for their beliefs, arguments between them don't generally go anywhere. No, but he is. People are convinced by evolution because of the vast, vast weight of scientific evidence in its favor, not because of "Satan."

Since evolution isn't simply a process by which parts are added, but a process by which parts are taken away as well, "irreducible complexity" is simply a scare term with no relevance - and certainly no obstacle - to evolution.No irreducibly complex structure has ever been found. Indeed, there's mathematical evidence that all living things occupy a very small fraction of the biological sample space - precisely, in fact, the portion of the sample space that can be reached without depending on neutral or useless proto-adaptations.

I doubt it. Consider, for instance, mechanical wear. Friction of moving parts erodes materials - takes parts away.If the complex mechanisms that surrounded us were truly IC, then even one atom's-worth of wear would break the machine. No such machine could be operated at all, because the slightest, undetectable wear - one part being taken away - and the machine would be done.Machines don't work like that. Sure, there are parts that they can't function without, but that doesn't mean that every single missing part, or part of a part, grinds the machine to a halt.By the strict definition there's no such thing as an IC machine. There are always parts you can take away.

Perhaps. I'm still not convinced that IC, even in this more useful definition, actually describes anything that actually exists, which is what makes the whole thing so moot.