Is there really such a thing as a beneficial mutation?

Ok, I didnt know you were going to go straight to HOXOLOGY.Now I understand why you were disagreeing with MJ.This will work as long as the clump in morphospace underconsideration (my idea will artifically and possibly emprically with niche and non-neutral biogoegraphy disjunt this)is rotund or at worst elliptic (self-similarly) but if the dimensions really are like organs rather than body plans MJ simply has to hold contra Gould that linear hox relations do not stump Mayr's earlier complaints through his term "genetic revolution" that Gould felt confident will propel evolutioanary structure through his phases and onto all three legs of his tripod.

It's not that I can't do it; It's that we don't have the space for me to post the entire genetic sequence of (for example) the 1"several thousand genes" involved in drosophila eye development versus the several thousand genes involved in human eye development...1: Science, Halder et al., v.267, pp 1788-1792, 3/24/95.I said it was ambiguous not because there's no defintion, but rather because what comprises one body plan versus another is individualized to each body plan as detailed by tremendously complex genetic codes...

mjfloresta writes:

I think it's difficult to establish this Metric without going into deeply into the genetics..

Don't be shy. We've got specialists here who can follow you, even if all of us can't.Do what you must to put forward a testable hypothesis.

If I define the increase in information or complexity as being that information which is neccessary to produce a different organ or body plan,

What is a '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.

Do your best.

But, any ambiguity aside, is there any evidence of an organism acquiring a new organ derived from genetic information it did not previously posess?

No, let's not leave the ambiguity aside. This is important.You have proposed an alternative hypothesis that would invalidate the theory of evolution. If validated, your findings could make and break careers worldwide.Compared to your confident posts a few steps back, you sound suddenly reticent. Why? All we require is the information to understand your hypthesis properly. Now is your chance. Teach us.You have been talking about body plans. You still haven't defined that term scientifically. What is a 'body plan'?Your hypothesis requires that wisdom teeth not be considered part of the 'body plan' of homo sapiens. If those teeth are not part of the body plan, which teeth are? Any? What about jawbone shape? Is that part of the 'body plan' or not? How do you decide?We're still waiting.

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Archer

That is an unwarranted assumption. A new body plan could well, and more probably would, consist of familiar organs (or organ functions) in a new arrangement.

Gain of what information? You haven't described any gain of information in anything other but the vaguest of sense and still in terms of wanting an experimental observation of the sudden appearance of the sort of structures that take long stretches of time to develop.If you think you can give us a proper usable definition by going into the genetics in depth then please do so, I'm sure we can stand a little genetics What does this mean? Genetics certainly allows for it, what do you mean by 'confirm' other than actual experimental confirmation? From one species to the next? Is that really what you mean? How highly divergent are the genetics between the development of human and chimp eyes? I'd certainly agree that there are significant differences between the development of vertebrate than invertebrate eyes, but from species to species I think you might only find significant differnces in a small number of cases.TTFN,WK

mjfloresta writes:

I said it was ambiguous not because there's no defintion, but rather because what comprises one body plan versus another is individualized to each body plan as detailed by tremendously complex genetic codes...

You use the word 'body plan' twice here. You still have not defined the term. Surely you know that this statement cannot be understood until you do.Please give us the information. What is a 'body plan'?After you supply that definition, please explain what you mean by a body plan being 'individualized.' What would be an example of an individualized body plan? How does it differ from an unindividualized body plan?

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Archer

Jazzns was talking about information and you seem to have switched to talking about body plans.If you can tell us how to measure the genetic information then you won't have to paste all those sequence alignments, not that we are against a good thread full of sequence alignments.TTFN,WK

MJ, really I don't know how I can explain it any differently. It seems pretty obvious that you are not understanding what I am saying.My point was, starting from a body plan, you are NOT going to get a vastly different body plan. Please notice the NOT in that sentence. The basic plan from fish to people is the same. Almost everything that differentiates us from fish in phenotype is a combination of duplication and co-option.The vast majority of the origination of the body plans of todays organisms happened at the top of the evolutionary tree. That IS my point. You keep replying asking me to point out a case of novel body plan in new creatues when what I am saying is that you SHOULD NOT expect that. All you are doing is presenting a complicated request for an example of the hopeful monster. I am sorry MJ, evolution does not work like that.

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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)

Well that is just silly now. I can define, for example, Shannon information without references to all the possible instantiations of information that it describes. Either you don't really understand what information is or you are just trying to cop-out of your responsibility to support your claim. I don't know which but based on this... I am guessing it is the former. YOu need not, and in fact SHOULD not, reference a particular case of your information in order to define it.It doesn't really matter though because if you are unwilling or unable to provide the definition and the metric then your claim simply forever will lie in the garbage heap of bare assertions. If you wish to continue in all intellectual honesty, you must abandon any references to the impossibility of an increase in information/complexity in the instance of a beneficial mutation.

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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'd go with Brad on this and imagine that an 'unindividualised' body plan would be something like the vertebrate bauplan consisting of a general set of physical attributes shared by the vertebrates, even if i highly derived forms in some instances. The individuated body plan would then take into account derived features and novel structures which a particular clade might have.So a tetrapod unindividuated body plan might have things like a spinal cord, a head two sets of paired appendages, a post anal tail and so forth while a rhino's body plan would include specific details like his horn.And these plans encompass not only the morphology but the developmental pathways which are taken to produce them.TTFN,WK

The topic is mutations, and the question of whether they can be beneficial.The word "information" does not appear in the OP. It has been casually mentioned in subsequent posts. Then mjfloresta asserted that it was a central point in Message 34, and that has dragged the thread into a discussion of information. However, mjfloresta has utterly failed to connect that assertion about information to the topic of the thread, and has ignored a number of requests to do so.I am ruling future discussion of increase/decrease in information as off topic for the current thread. By all means start a new thread, or use one of the existing open threads if you wish to discuss information. This thread should stick to the topic of mutations, and whether they can be beneficial.PS: The OP does not mention body plans either. Further discussion of those will also be ruled off-topic.

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This post contained material that was ruled off-topic as I was writing it. I saw the notice after posting and modified the message accordingly.Please excuse.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Off topic.

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Archer

My initial post was simply a warning about perception. From my perspective, it seems that in order for a creationist to agree that a mutation is "beneficial" that is must do something drastic.All I wanted to point out is that any creationists wanting to discuss if a mutation is beneficial may need to adjust their expectations to what the ToE actually says is possible. The conversation ends when a creationist requires someone to present an example of, lets say, a lizard growing wings. This is a dead end. The ToE does not specifiy that a lizard will grow wings, but it says that a lizard may cop-opt a pair of feathered arms into wings.My reasoning is simply that it seems that good examples of beneficial mutations are being overlooked for this pie-in-the-sky expectation of lizard evolving before our eyes. All that is needed to refute the original claim that there is no novel beneficial mutations is to simply show an example of a novel beneficial mutation. There is no requirment that this mutation cause an eye to grow in order for it to be considered beneficial. This false requirement is a distraction technique used by creationists to ignore the very good examples of beneficial mutations that have been presented.

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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)

Yes, you were saying that early on, and WK said something similar, but it certainly does not characterize anything I said or believe. It seems to be something you think you get from what I've said but I don't see how. Really a confusing straw man I'd say.This thread seems to have gone very wrong while I've been busy and I'm still busy and may not get back to it for a day or so. Too bad.{edit: This is ridiculous. In other words you are saying we have to accept evolution, period.No, what you mean is not what EVOLUTION says is possible but what SCIENCE says is possible. And I for one am responding to that when I question that what science says is possible could actually produce the changes over billennia that evolved everything living, or in other words question the evolutionist idea of a beneficial mutation.However, I think it's too easy for this thread to wander too many places. I hope we can drop this particular line of thought for now and just focus down on the particulars of the claims about what a beneficial mutation is}Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Jazzns writes:

My reasoning is simply that it seems that good examples of beneficial mutations are being overlooked for this pie-in-the-sky expectation of lizard evolving before our eyes. All that is needed to refute the original claim that there is no novel beneficial mutations is to simply show an example of a novel beneficial mutation. There is no requirment that this mutation cause an eye to grow in order for it to be considered beneficial. This false requirement is a distraction technique used by creationists to ignore the very good examples of beneficial mutations that have been presented.

I agree. Personally, I think the evolution of nylonase in bacteria is example enough. Fascinating story.What creationists really owe everyone is a testable explanation of why incremental genetic mutations would not accumulate over time. As things stand there is every reason to think they will, and do.

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Archer