The Origin of Novelty

I think you would be more accurate using the word "feature" than "function". Which is presumably why you prefer the latter term to the former.Apart from that, if something is novel, it's novel. Novel doesn't mean good. If your head exploded, it would probably be the most original thing you've ever done, but that doesn't mean it would be a good thing.A mutation which is spontaneous rather than inherited from the parents is novel at the moment that it arises. This is not a biological question, it's just English.

I think anyone not actually insane would agree that if there was an environment in which such a mutation was favored, then that environment would favor this mutation.However, the fact that there is no such environment, and that we certainly don't live in one, allows us to describe this mutation as deleterious.

No. The theory is that novel features arise by mutation. The rest of your gibberish has nothing to do with that question.I think at this point you're being willfully obtuse, such stupidity can hardly come by nature.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

The difference would be that a disease is by definition deleterious, whereas some mutations are beneficial.You really do seem to have some sort of mental block preventing you from learning biology. Why don't you just face the fact that you can't do it? Tone-deaf people shouldn't sing, you shouldn't try to talk about biology.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Now you're just talking gibberish.Which kinda proves my point.I know that we've explained the theory of evolution to you already. If you just don't get it, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Talking gibberish about it when it's plain you don't understand it, on the other hand, is kind of shameful. Taq and Tempe did not write that "there is no difference between a disease and a mutation". That was gibberish that you made up in your head because of your mental problems.

I wouldn't put it like that, that would be rude to dwarfs.What I would say it that it is deleterious and so tends to be selected against.Is there anything else really obvious that you need explaining to you?

You really don't get it at all, do you?As I say, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But there are only three options before you:(a) Give up trying to talk about biology.
(b) Forget all the crap currently in your head and start again. (If you are genuinely as stupid as you come across as, this may not help.)
(c) Continue to humiliate yourself in public.

That was gibberish combined with echolalia.

I'm giving you advice that you could profit from if you would take it.The options I have given seem to be the only options before you. At the moment, you are going with option (c): you are simply degrading yourself in public while we watch and think: "Ah, yes, creationism".

He did not, of course, say this. But you can make yourself look ridiculous and dishonest by saying so, so go for it.

So you still don't understand the theory of evolution?In other news, sun rises in east.

I'll propose my own toast, thank you."To understanding the Theory of Evolution! Simple, lucid, and obvious, if you're not mentally handicapped."

That's not how natural selection works. It's a statistical tendency, it doesn't go about smiting everyone with a single deleterious mutation with lightning bolts.You really haven't grasped the theory of evolution at all, have you? So according to you:(a) My views tell me that mutations causing dwarfism in humans are deleterious.
(b) My views tell me that all mutations are neutral.You're funny.

We've done this before,but let's do it again. I don't suppose that Boulder-dash will understand it, but by now that's hardly the point. Boulder-dash won't understand anything(1) Reproduction occurs, and offspring are quite, though not exactly, like their parents.(2) There are things that make the offspring not exactly like their parents (as referred to in the previous point). These include mutation, recombination, and lateral gene transfer.(3) These changes may make the resulting organism better, worse, or the same, at reproducing within the environment it finds itself in.(4) There are factors that influence whether these changes will spread through the gene pool, namely natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift. The effect of these factors will be to (statistically) favor those variations that favor reproduction over those that do not.---As an obvious corollary of these facts, the cumulative effect of this is that natural selection will favor and accumulate those variations which adapt an organism to its environment. So of course mutations can continue to accumulate in a line of descent until they are clearly distinct from the ancestral population; and for this reason lines of descent can branch to fill different environmental niches.---I do not of course expect Boulder-dash to understand any of this.

Actually, I wonder if that's evidence that he's a deliberate troll.It doesn't really matter to me either way.