The Origin of Novelty

Novel =
1. new and not resembling something formerly known or used2. original or striking especially in conception or styleSo, would dwarfism be something new when both parents did not suffer from dwarfism, seems like yes is the correct answer... SourceFunction =
1. professional or official position2. the action for which a person or thing is specially fitted or used or for which a thing exists3. any of a group of related actions contributing to a larger action4. an official or formal ceremony or social gathering5.A. a mathematical correspondence that assigns exactly one element of one set to each element of the same or another set5.B. a variable (as a quality, trait, or measurement) that depends on and varies with another6. characteristic behavior of a chemical compound due to a particular reactive unit7. a computer subroutine; specifically : one that performs a calculation with variables provided by a program and supplies the program with a single resultIn the proper environment, could dwarfism turn out to be specially fitted for something...seems like another yes to me. Sourceand the big one:
Deleterious = harmful often in a subtle or unexpected wayIn most cases with natural selection, would dwarfism be harmful...why, yes it seems it would. SourceSo, we have a child born with dwarfism to normal height parents (a novel/new trait), which could serve a function in the proper environment. Unfortunately, the current environment is not one where dwarfism is advantageous, rather it is deleterious/harmful. However, this does not take away from the fact that it is a mutation causing a novel function...simply based upon what those words mean, as per the English language.Also, your other examples would also be novel features, although in general they would also be deleterious/harmful. Imagine a scenario where our child is born with dwarfism, but the environment favors this trait. Say, a place where all caves have super small entrances. Well, if a predator comes along and is eating human beings, who is most likely to escape predation....That is right! The child with dwarfism that can achieve safety in caves. Now, this novel feature actually serves a beneficial function. (This is a highly improbable situation, and in most 99.9% of cases dwarfism will be deleterious, but it still shows this as a novel feature and a novel function).

You keep missing one word in all of this....I will attempt to spell it out slowly.De-le-ter-i-ous....... did you get it this time?A novel function doesn't have to help the organism, but could be harmful. So, yes, those would be novel functions (the first time they appear in a genetic line). That does not mean that they have to help the organism. Get that through your head and we will be a little bit closer to an understanding. You keep seeming to think that a novel function must be beneficial and that is incorrect thinking on your part, not any fault of those who can understand the difference between deleterious and beneficial.

They are novel features, which cause novel functions...Cystic Fibrosis - novel function = abnormal transport of chloride and sodium across across an epitheliumNet result - Deleterious.Stump for arm - Novel function = Inability to utilize two hands, forced to work with only oneNet Result - DeleteriousCleft Palate - Novel Function = hypernasal voice resonanceNet result - DeleteriousNow, with these three, it is very difficult to imagine a environment that would make natural selection favor these novel functions, but it could happen at some point. Similar to dwarfism, currently it is deleterious, but if the environment changed to favor those that have a smaller stature, then those with this mutation would find favor in the environment.Again, you are ignoring the most important word, which is deleterious.Now, do you actually have an argument, or are you simply going to continue to ask the same questions over and over again, ad nauseum, even though it has been answered.

It is not wrong to define the word as the English language defines it. The fact that you must change the word's definition in order to achieve your desired outcome should clue you in to the fact that you are defending an indefensible position. When the English language no longer serves your position and you must do mental gymnastics to find an answer, I think it is time to hang up your cross and pack it in.According to the English Language novel means new, not new and good, not new and good or pointless, but simply New. Any other addition to that definition is you changing the English language to fit your point rather than accepting what a word actually means. It would be analagous to me deciding that spinach=pizza so I get what I want for dinner.Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : Forgot the word "be"

Your hyperbole and utilization of extreme mutations that would require very specific environments does not cause anything detrimental to the ToE, whether or not you think that it does.Could some environment come along where these mutations bring benefit? Yes. Is an environment likely where nuerofibromatosis is beneficial? Very likely not. So, in the vast majority of cases, this would still be a deleterious novel feature that has its own functions.Your obvious effort here is to draw attention away from the simpler mutations that each and every one of us has simply due to the randomness of chemistry and the duplication process of DNA. You are avoiding the pocket mice by trying to draw attention away from this type of mutation and remain solely on deleterious mutations in the current environment. We are not falling for it, but simply answering your questions (for myself it is to show any lurkers that there are answers to your obviously horribly thought out questions, even though in most cases the mutations you speak of will remain deleterious).Could you not get your child the surgery for a cleft palate because at some point it could become advantageous? Sure, but that would be cruel of you to not give your child the best shot within the environment he or she is currently supposed to dwell within.Mutations are mutations and they will offer some sort of novel feature and/or function. It is still dependant upon the current environment whether the mutations will be deleterious (cystic fibrosis) or beneficial (pocket mice). Also, they can be neutral as well and be passed along further until an environmental change forces them to become one or the other.

If that is the purpose of the thread, then you should realize that you have been given this evidence. So, please stop obfuscating with these extreme mutations that will be detrimental to the organism a majority of the time(especially considering that these are not even applicable to the point you stated in your OP)Earlier in the thread you were given different versions of eyes that show a step ladder toward the mammalian eye. Now, in this example only extant species were used, although it does show a plausible pathway that eye evolution may have taken, from a light sensing spot to a more concave design and finally to the mammalian eye. Then you were shown two different mutations causing a darkening of the hair color of the pocket mice, mutations that have happened quite recently in geological terms. You asked for plausible examples of how these mutations can be happening in modern animals and you were given it in the pocket mice. At this point you decided to argue with hyperbole and to only discuss extreme mutations to draw attention away from the fact that you were given specifically what you asked for! You were also given ideas for how eyes could have developed. Is this for sure the pathway that was taken in evolutionary terms? Maybe, but it is tough to tell as we have only been studying evolution for a mere .00000333% of the history of Earth, not exactly a long study. However, it fits with the predictions of the ToE and nothing so far has discredited this theory. So, please stop throwing out random extreme ideas and let's continue on the topic you claim was the purpose of this thread. What was unconvincing about the stepwise fashion that evolution may have taken with the eye?1. Would you agree that an organism which can sense light and shadow only would be better at evading predation?2. Would you agree that an organism that can sense light and shadow from specific directions would be better off at avoiding predation than the organism which can only sense light and shadow but not from which direction?3. Would you agree that an organism which can sense light, shadow and basic shapes with direction would be better off in competing for resources than an organism which can only sense light and shadow with direction?

What you are discussing is artificial selection, not natural selection. Nature has no goal to maintain purity within breeds of animals throughout history. This does not mean it does not happen where some animals remain perfectly adapted to their enviroments, but there are still small mutations constantly changing even that population.Take the example of the coelacanth. Everyone referred to this fish when found as a fossil species, yet while bearing a striking resemblance to its ancestors there were still differences in the extant populations and the extinct ones.If there is an Intelligent Designer, would it not be more similar to how artificial selection works in the case of dogs. Humans are breeding for purity, so dogs remain similar to their ancestor populations. Would not the designer do the same thing? Why do we not see natural selection acting in concordance with artificial selection? Is the designer not exactly sure where he or she would like each species to end up?

Seems that Bolder is still having trouble with the English language and what my statements have been, let me see if I can help him out.Mutation - A permanent, heritable change in the nucleotide sequence in a gene or a chromosome; the process in which such a change occurs in a gene or in a chromosome. SourceDisease - A pathologic condition in which the normal functioning of an organism or body is impaired or disrupted resulting in extreme pain, dysfunction, distress, or death. SourceNow, to avoid confusion for you pay attention to the second word in the definition of disease:Pathogen - An agent causing disease or illness to its host, such as an organism or infectious particle capable of producing a disease in another organism.Not sure about everyone else, but it seems that mutation and disease are two different things. One caused by an outside agent and the other caused by a change in the genes, which is heritable.So, while lay definitions may consider cystic fibrosis a disease, because it is actually caused by a change in the genes, it is actually a mutation. But, hey, thanks for trying to lie about what I said. Good to know that Jesus' warriors have no issue with lying.

You wouldn't think that nature has any specific requirements for where on the body the eye has to form, would you? FlatfishNature don't care where the eye ends up, yo! The only key is that in the environment that the creature lives in the mutation allows it to survive long enough to pass on its genetic code. Flatfish eyes are assymetrical, which is not similar to any other creature. Yet because the eyes work well in the environment the flatfish finds itself in, the selective pressure does not remove this adaptation from the genetic pool.Now, also bear in mind that the eyespots were most likely forming in the pre-cambrian, far before there were any real skeletal structures to speak of. It makes sense that those eyes that moved toward the optimum area of the body as body plans developed (Most cases this is symmetrical on the head of the animal)were better able to function within the environment that they found themselves in. Once evolution has set something, it is rare to see it move in reverse, as seen with the issues that the mammalian eye has (i.e.-blind spot in humans, requiring an addition of tapetum for cats to see in the dark)Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : to include the word "tapetum"

This is more a response for Mindspawn than for you Taq, but I really wanted to hit on this point for Mindspawn, because his analogy is absolutely terrible.Mindspawn, you keep claiming that cars fall into a nested heirarchy, but this is definitely not the case. You speak of specific "types" of cars, such as the SUVs, the Trucks, the Sedans, the Off-road vehicles. Then, you proceed to mention crossover cars, where two "types" of cars are brought together. However, unlike in biological systems worldwide, when a car manufacturer is creating a crossover car, they use the optimal system designed for the purpose they would like the crossover to have. Imagine them combining the features of an SUV and an off-road vehicle. The goal is to create a crossover with the size and power of an SUV, but with the ability to go off-road close to equal of a Jeep. Would the car manufacturer begin to design an entirely new system of four wheel drive, or utilize the system that has already been proven to work? As seen in any crossover, humans or intelligent designers reuse designs that have already been proven in the field. They take the extant four-wheel drive system and install it into the new crossover. This leaves the SUVs power because the engine has not changed, but adds the four wheel capability exactly similar to that of the Off-Road vehicles. It is the same system, not a redesign.Now, let's look at your intelligent designer. The cephalopod eye was extant long before the mammalian eye came around. Also, the design of this eye does not have the blind spot flaw that is evident in the mammalian eye. So, when this intelligent designer decided to create the human "Baramin", he or she decided, unlike a human car designer, to completely redesign the eye. Not only did he or she decide to do a redesign, but he or she chose to redesign the eye to non-optimum standards. Why, would an intelligent designer, creating a crossover (like your car analogy) redesign a system to make it worse? Your own analogy shows the issues within ID and with "Baramins".As to the topic of novel features and functions, I believe that you have been shown substantial evidence that these mutations occur and I think you even buy into them. You simply have to cover your tracks by saying that they were already present in the genome because saying otherwise would go against your beliefs. You have been shown the Pocket Mice, the E. Coli, and the evidence for the evolution of the middle ear. Now, you must remember that we have only been focusing on evolution for a mere .0000045% of the history of the Earth and .0000056% of the time life has been present. And, in that time we have already shown that mutations occur, and we can provide evidence of this fact. However, no one has yet to discover a mechanism that stops mutation at a certain point, other than the weeding out done by selection. So, looking at the precentage of time we've been looking, plus no known stopping mechanism we can see that this data can be extrapolated, whether or not it defies your beliefs.The last thing I want to ask of you Mindspawn is that what would you consider anti-evidence of ID? I told you that for evolution finding a barrier to further mutation would be a good example of something that would throw a wrench in evolutionary theory (although I think the entire theory could be reworked to incorporate this new fact, although with limitations). So, what would falsify ID? You are discussing an all-powerful being, is there anything that this creator could not do? If not, then who on Earth cares about it, because there is nothing we can test for. Why? Because every answer can come down to, well, the all-powerful creator wanted to make it look like a nested heirarchy or the all-powerful creator wanted humans to be limited in some way so redesigned the eye to achieve this. When your cause can do anything, you have zero predictive power.

I would not say it is superior, obviously there should be some differences due to enviromental niches. However what I would say is that if I was designing eyes for animals and I had already used a system that did not create a blind spot in the vision, I would still use that system in the new eye. Imagine the placement of the optic nerve as the four wheel drive capability in your car analogy, the cephaloid eye is a Jeep and the vertebrate eye is an off-road SUV (Original Hummer, if you will). In the cephaloid eye the optic nerve is placed correctly, so that it avoids the blind spot. This is analogous to the placement of the four wheel drive in a Jeep, placed where it should be and connected fully to ensure proper operation. Now, as the SUV is not exactly identical to the Jeep, so too the vertebrate eye must be somewhat different because of evolutionary pressures. But, the blind spot is something that could have been avoided through design and ensured better functionality of the eye. In the vertebrate eye, if there is a designer, he or she decided to change the placement of the optic nerve to force it to travel through the retina, causing the blind spot. In our car analogy, this is like the designer of the SUV trying to make it four wheel drive, but instead of hooking it up correctly, arbitralily deciding to try something new. So, instead of the four wheel drive going from the transmission to each axle, the designer decides to have the four wheel drive hooked up from transmission to engine, then to axle. Well, this would definitely hurt the performance of the vehicle, just as the arbitrary placement of the optic nerve in vertebrates hurts our vision.If the vertebrate eye was intelligently designed, the designer avoided parts that for sure worked. No need to bring up the parts that are less important in the terrestrial world (maintain horizontal vision, lack of color (which is less necessary in deep water), etc...) but the placement of the retina behind the optic nerve creates a negative outcome and yet was still chosen to be designed that way. The optic nerve could have been placed behind the retina in vertebrate eyes by a designer avoiding the blind spot without forcing the eye to become a marine eye, just as all designers of off-road crossovers connect the four-wheel drive differential from the transmission to both axles. The eyes will still be different, just like a Jeep and a Hummer are different, but systems that have worked in each will maintain their design when being used in a crossover model. That is how intelligent designers create, they use systems that have already been proven effective.Evolution makes far more sense than intelligent design in this instance because the eye systems evolved separately. Evolution could not correct the error of the placement of the optic nerve in vertebrates because of the stages that it took to build into that system. Once it has begun, there is no reverse engineering to fix errors. It becomes either survive to reproduce or don't that determines if the trait lasts. SourceEdited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Seriously? Did you enter this conversation without reading any of the thread? Well, fine, just for you I will post a link to every time, in this thread alone, that Taq has spoken about the mutations that led to dark fur in pocket mice...BTW, it has been mentioned a lot, so maybe you should follow the link in the first of these messages which will lead you to the study.Here we go, the list of number of times this has been mentioned with zero explanation coming from the other side... Message 22 Contains link to study...
Message 125
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Message 514
Message 538Do you still need more information on the Pocket mice and the fact that they definitely show a new feature arriving via mutation (actually through different mutations that both resulted in dark fur and the ability to produce melanin)?

You have not addressed the issue with any sort of evidence, other than your own incredulity. So, no, you have not addressed the evidence.As Taq has pointed out, the mutation changed how much melanin was released, which had a change on the phenotype of the mice, this is definitely a novel feature that allowed the pocket mice to survive in a different niche, the lava fields.Also, I am pretty sure there was more than one example of novel features evolving given to you, perhaps you were banned while they were being posted...Here are some others from this thread and the peanut gallery for the debate between mindspawn and RAZD... Message 501 Change from jaw to ear
Message 33 Antifreeze in fish
Message 510 Cytochrome C
Message 512 Adaptations to high altitude through mutation
Message 446 Siberian Foxes
Message 342 This is mine and deals with a deleterious mutation, but still a novel feature...novel, remember only means new for that genetic line. Dwarfism is novel when the individual is born to a family with no history of dwarfism. However, it is generally deleterious.
Message 201Vadoma People
Message 203Blue Chicken Eggs
Message 35 Starch consumption Talk about moving the goalposts...You asked for a mutation that led to a novel feature, which the pocket mice are definitely an example of. The mutation to the mc1r gene caused more melanin to be released, leading to darker fur. Now, that this has been shown, you have decided to fall back to well, they could produce melanin before, they just didn't produce as much. Which you would be correct on. However, the mutation changed HOW MUCH melanin is released, which led to a novel phenotype, i.e. dark fur. This directly addresses that which you asked for and so now you have to move the goalposts back and say that you were asking for the mutation that led to the production of melanin in the first place. Ahhhhhh...there it is. The mark of a person who knows he has absolutely no argument. Claim that the moderation is biased against you. You, who only got a 24 hour suspension for the same offense that someone else got 5 days. Stop crying about it and actually provide evidence, other than your own incredulity, and maybe you might make more sense. The problem you run into is not that the mods are against you, but rather that you refuse to provide any evidencial support for any of the statements that you make other than your own thoughts. And sorry to say, from your posts, I do not trust your thoughts to be correct. After all, this is in the science forums, so evidence is required.So, please explain how you see the origin of novelty, without evolution, and please provide evidence for your assertions outside of your own mind. Because Taq has already shown you a novel feature, so what is your explanation for it?

I am definitely beginning to think that you are correct, sir.