Is there really such a thing as a beneficial mutation?

Well, at the unicellular level, we've seen immense variation of body plans in response to various environmental pressures.At the multicellular level, though, there really isn't any variation on body plans. Almost every single species shares the same body plan; the segmented worm + legs.You too. A casual look at your spine should be enough to prove that you're nothing but a variation on a segmented worm with legs. Your embryological development occurs in linear segments. And if that's not enough, we can delve into the genome, and see that the genes that control body plan - the homeobox genes - are almost identical in structure and function to the same class of genes throughout the animal kingdom.But you're right. All organisms are tied down to the segmented worm, because the segmented worm is a very robust archecture, and it's easy to model genetically - the head is the beginning of the gene, and the tail is the end of the gene.Developmental genetics is quite facinating, actually, if you've ever heard of DNA as "the blueprint of life" and wondered exactly how to read the blueprint. Homeobox genes are that blueprint, and we're aware of thousands of mutations that affect the development of different segments of that segmented worm archetecture. That's what those Drosophila experiments are all about. I think there's a typo here. If they were previously present how can they be novel?

The quantity of information is not what's important - Many "lesser" organisms contain far more base-pairs in their code than humans do. What's important is the "type" of information present in the code. The human eye and drosophilia eye (I'm not implying a direct evolutionary link between the two, btw) are developed from very different genetic plans. The appearance of the genetic code necessary for the human eye, and therefore the phenotypic appearance of the human eye, would be an increase in information necessary for macro-evolution.Gain of information of this sort has not been observed, nor does genetics confirm that it is even possible; (note that while the discovery of the master eye gene is intriguing, it merely activates the eye formation processes throughout the animal kingdon - the actual genetic pathways involved in eye formation from one species to the next is extremely divergent)

It is not enough to alter the body plan. He wants an alteration of the body plan that "increases complexity" or is an "increase in information". Which or both of those two is necessary is still pretty vague. What those actually are has never been rigorously defined in a useful way by any creationist who has ever used those phrases.I predict that he may actually produce definitions for those things, but those definitions will not allow for any way to calculate the information or complexity of something to be able to tell if those have increased or decreased.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

In here
"Perfectly Reasonable Deviations" there is a 1985 letter from Feynman to Wolfram wherein Feynman is saying that it is "not" his "opinion" that there is a hostile environment to complexity studies. Feynman then ACTUALLY tells Wolfram that he is not going to be able to work IN (really!!!!!!) this environment anyway because the best he will be able to do is to MANAGE or be an ADMINSTRATOR of the environs.The authors of the collection of letters felt it incumbent to inform the reader that Feynman was incorrect and in truth Wolfram has made out the environs for himself and his complex of ideas saying that Wolfram has EVEN been CEO for years now.This was Feynman's point, he economically created the environment he intends complexity information to dominate and take over organismic simplisty or any complex of ideas Feynman may have had correctly orderable.It is still a good question how to measure genetic "information." There would have to be limits to form-making for this to be better demonstrable and perhaps only with certain symmetry replacing the difference of stochiometric and methodolical LOGIC is this possible.

quote:

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IM KANT - Introduction to Logic 1963

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The broader papers I am preparing to write only just start to get into this.

I didn't really want to go there, but ok. Since you're bringing up credentials...I studied biochemistry and am currently attending medical school - so I think I know something about science, biology, genetics, and yes evolution. Perhaps you're familiar with Douglas Futuyma? I studied in his class. So yeah, I know something about evolution. What else do I have to say?

I struggle to understand most of your posts but I think there is something important that I hope MJ and others read that I gleaned from this.It is not enough just to produce ANY definition of information/complexity. In order to support the claim that information/complexity cannot increase, the ability to derive a METRIC MUST be a part of that definition.Without that basic requirements, any discussion of loss or gain of information/complexity is nothing more than complicated sounding babble; the equivalent of conversations I have with my 6 month old son.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

mjfloresta writes:

So yeah, I know something about evolution. What else do I have to say?

The scientific definition of your term 'body plan.'We're waiting.

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Archer

You might want to explain why your posts don't show your knowledge of evolution. You may have been in Futuyama's class, but were you paying attention?

Yeah, that was my "slip up." You see Kant said,"stoichology" not "stoichiometric" as I did. I made a short cut across geometry and algebra that way and Einstein's use of Reimann etc.The defintions of Shannon information probably are not good enough for biological form-making at the point that MJ is differentitating "organ" and body(Bauplane)plan. Yes there is "mature" discussion in addition to the simple placing of information in a header sent out on the internet.-------------------------------
I am interested in a field of perfect form-making by artifical selection helped along technically to be ADDED to natural selection and the Darwinian algorithm no matter the narrowed Fisher focus which is only a property but not the whole continuum but I am not really fully there as of yet.

I think it's difficult to establish this Metric without going into deeply into the genetics..If I define the increase in information or complexity as being that information which is neccessary to produce a different organ or body plan, then I concede there may be some ambiguity, in the absence of comparing the actual genetic makeup of the organs that some organism is supposed to acquire.But, any ambiguity aside, is there any evidence of an organism acquiring a new organ derived from genetic information it did not previously posess?

But it is curious to me why Mendel's notion of a "developmental binomial" is passed over for the simple sex ratio discussion.It seems to me that any "prior" info of an organ or a body plan would be found in whatever stats that was supposed to have helped populate.

I hope you notice that this is a VASTLY different question than the one of a different body plan.Consequently, there is no reason to expect that this would ever happen in evolution. Except for initial specialization of cellular function, the story of evolution is one of duplication and co-option. That has been my point from my first post in this thread. If in order to see a "beneficial" mutation you must witness the wholesale evolution of the eye or equivalently wings growing on the back of a pig, you will never be satisfied.On the topic of benefical mutations, I'll note that you totally ignored the example of Hemo C. It isn't a third eye, but don't you think that a new kind of blood is a pretty big deal?

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I don't see why Shannon information isn't a perfectly good definition in the case of hox elements in the genes except for the fact that using that definition refutes MJ's claim. None of the "useful" definitions of information or complexity that exist when mapped to genetics show the impossibility of increase that creationists love to tout. Or at the very least, no one has shown how they do so.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

And another point. If you can't do it, then you cannot hold weight to the claim that information cannot increase. It is and will remain a bare and unsupported claim until the day that you or some other enterprising creationists actually does the job of being rigorous about it. Not only is it ambiguous, it is impossible to derive a metric and therefore equally as useless as no definition at all.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

It's not a different question at all; I'm merely taking one step back so we can deal with first things first. A new body plan would be composed of new organs; starting with the generation of new organs then, seems like the place to start.As to the Hemoglobin C, I don't deny the existence of beneficial mutations (nor am I convinced that any truly exist) but that is irrelevant because a beneficial mutation does not imply a changed body plan or organ..