One of my favorites is a mutation that alters one copy of a gene for a blood protein to make individuals having it, almost completely immune to hardening of the arteries. A group of people in Italy have it, and it is recent enough that they were able to track it back to a single individual.
There are numerous other examples. Would you like to learn about some of them?
All mutations, useful or not, increase genetic information in a population. Would you like to see the numbers on that?
"Information increase" really has nothing to do with it.
This will be a little crankier than your post deserves. I havent been listening very well to evolutionist posts, probably because of another thread on creationist "lies". You have politely offered to teach and few of us are giving you the time of day, unfortunately.
Clearly, mutations do not increase information, except wierd things like polyploidy. They either add or subtract from BENEFICIAL information. The consensus is that most mutations subtract from beneficial information.
The thrust of newDarwinism is to recognize the complexity of the mathematics and thus the virtual necessity that mutation subtract from beneficial information, unless there is something mysterious added.
And once again, the evidence of evolution is more akin to a Rorschach test than proof. Not that it isnt evidence ... I understand how and why this example is used. Its not frivolous, but its not ironclad proof of a beneficial mutation, even if it is a bit of evidence that can be interpreted as such.
Being tall or short can be beneficial or detrimental under the right conditions --- and it can happen by deletion of information. If the conditions are right, it SEEMS beneficial. Thus, the Rorschach test -- you see what you want to see in the result of "mutation." This might also seem like adaption. But, if you are deleting beneficial (even if recessive) information, you are not getting something built for the long haul, but rather a very narrow niche adaptation, leading to trouble when you need to move on to a new and different niche. But of course, Darwinism is about the very long haul, which is why the issue is so important and why the short-sighted view of what is "beneficial" has to be severely challenged to see if the extrapolation is valid.
The first thing I think when I see your example is that I have no idea where the evidence came from, but I have a really good guess how it ends. What has probably happened is that, like out of control (practically random) borrowing by the US Gov., you have not increased beneficial organization, you have simply moved the problem elsewhere by taking away from beneficial structure. Yes indeed, you are better off in a narrow niche of a liquidity crisis, but the beneficial structure that allows the economy to work is being compromised. Who wants to bet the evidence supports that analogy? The supposed benefit will be seen in a detriment moved into a different aspect of the organism, because beneficial structure is removed.
How about this, seems I am right again.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/2003/0221.asp
Now in gaining an anti-oxidant activity, the protein has lost a lot of activity for making HDLs. So the mutant protein has sacrificed specificity. Since antioxidant activity is not a very specific activity (a great variety of simple chemicals will act as antioxidants), it would seem that the result of this mutation has been a net loss of specificity, or, in other words, information. This is exactly as we would expect with a random change.
And the point of that is not being "right" (that and 1.25 gets me a cup of coffee). The point is that the Darwinist interpretation is so predictable and easily attacked on the same basis over and over. Like the speciation thing. Its another example of some valid evidence for the Darwinist proposition, but it is demonstrably overblown evidence because that is what the philosophy behind it demands and that is all it can see. Since there is no alternate theory to Drawinism that gets the faintest recognition, where else could you possibly go as a Darwinist with this evidence of HDL metabolism?
So, the creationists are paying attention and are armed with science, and not the kind you get from correspondence school.
The whole notion of neodarwinism should also provide the cautionary tale. Neodarwinism is based upon the idea that random mutation is not a sufficient engine of change and that genetic material must have a tendency to self-organize to overcome the enormous complexity required to create beneficial change. Now that tendency -- well, its pretty darn mysterious where it comes from -- is not a hypothesis. It is not falsifiable. It is not predictable. It just happens, but no one is ever clear how in advance. What exactly does that leave you with? The clear prediction that since that tendency is a very narrowly specialized facility that virtually all mutations of enormously compliciated systems must remove beneficial information and organization.
