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Without delving into it I can already agree with this. I have no porblem with extra legs, eyes in the worng place, grossly defomed faces occurring. This is how wwe got our dog breeds and cats without fur etc. They are 'genuinely novel' by the usual definition. Would their genome be differnet. Sure - perhaps by only one SNP (a mutaion in one place). Would there be new genes? NO!!! New cellular systems?
Of course there are the non grossly deformed faces.. variations on eye position, nose length, leg length, etc. All of these are due to mutation, or variant alelles in a population recombining. You just don't notice it because it doesn't seem like a mutation. We are all mutants really, we all pass on two or three novel mutations to our children on average. That also means our parents passed 2-3 on to us as well.
However, your claim that these mutations don't produce novel genes is false. If you change a codon in a gene to produce a different protein, that is a new gene my friend. If you do it several times over the course of a few millenia, that is evolution.
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The list of DNA in your body is not a list of blobs or fairy floss.
Yes, tuned through the processes of selection.
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It is a list of finely tuned nano-machines that group into factories and structures. So it is dead easy to see how a mutation can grossly change appearences without adding a new part or system.
And this is exactly the sort of tuning that can't be done by design. It must be done one step at a time.. one change, then another, then another. A living creature is like a random nest of Pick-Up-Sticks, or a Chinese puzzle. You can't just 'design' it, you have to move one bit a little here, then shift another a little there, and so on. It is virtually (and probably mathematically) impossible to create such a complex interrelated system from scratch. Evolution is the only way such complex interrelated systems can be created.
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The "True Origins" description of evolution uses an extreme version of evolution to argue that evolution could equally predict a genome that is completely different. The problem with this is that it is "possible" that such an outcome could occur, but in that case it would be impossible to infer evolution.
Evolution predicts both outcomes, but the second is not useful in inferring evolution, only the first, because only the first outcome (a nested hierarchy of related genetic patterns), clearly and strongly indicates a progressive process.
The description on the TalkOrigins site put it this way. Evolution predicts A and and NOT A, therefore the inference of A is invalid. But the response at TalkOrigins put it this way.. evolution predicts A and very weakly the possibility of B. A is strongly indicative of evolution (as it is the only reasonable explanation for a pattern such as A), while B does not, as there are many processes which produce B. Therefore the fact that Evolution "might" predict both A and B is irrelevant, as if we were to find B, that would not allow us to infer evolution. So TrueOrigins logic is flawed.. evolution is not indicated by both A and B, only by A.
In any case, I don't think that B (evolution so radical that every alelle of an organism is changed and is unrelated to its ancestors) is really a prediction of evolution. Evolution does not predict that organisms will change every codon of every gene with equal frequency. There is good reason to believe that this is both mechanically and selectively impractical or impossible. Many important and central gene complexes seem to have vary narrow tolerances as to what mutations they will permit, and I think this extends down the hierarchy to a good majority of the genes in an organism to a greater and lesser degree. So I don't think B is really a prediction of evolution at all.
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