Barbarian asks:
We see that happening every day. I'm wondering how you think you should calculate changes in information in a population. Could you show us your math?
It doesn't have anything to do with "calculating" anything,
No, that's wrong. "Information" is a mathematical concept, and one calculates how much of it there is. You don't really know how it works, do you?
Are you saying that "every day" we observe an example of new, never before existing, gene increasing type of DNA code, that benefits the organism, being added to the DNA of a multi-celled organism?
Well, that does happen, but again, you're being held back because you don't know what "information" means. Let's try it a little simpler for now;
How is information calculated generally?
Two key words I always have to stress here are "observed" and "multi-celled." I have been searching and also challenging others like yourself for one example for the last 12+ years and never have I found or been presented with even one.
The Milano Mutation, which gives considerable resistance to hardening of the arteries. It first appeared in Giovanni Pomarelli, and spread over time until about 3 percent of the local population has it.
Tibetans have
EPAS1 and
ELGN1 mutations that allow them to live healthy lives at extreme altitudes.
And of course, bacteria have been shown to have beneficial mutations; because they reproduce rapidly and produce large numbers of individuals, it's much easier to find favorable mutations by them. It's why creationists don't want to talk about bacteria.
But "favorable" does not mean anything in information. In fact, every new mutation in a population adds information to it.
If Universal Common Decent were true then this would be the proof of it happening.
That's why scientists came to accept common descent. The evidence of mutations and natural selection was the first cue, but then genetics showed that the family tree of living things first demonstrated by Linnaeus had a basis in fact. And we know this works, because we can check the genes of organisms of known descent.
I must stress that the example must have been observed under controlled lab conditions in which we can be certain the changes were not just the result of already existing alleles in the population becoming predominant.
Sorry, that excuse won't work for you. In the Milano Mutation, for example, we know the person who had the mutation.
Also I would expect to see this happening "every day" in multi-celled life since the multi-celled life is the majority of life we observe on earth.
New information in a population occurs every day. But you don't know what "information" means, or even how to calculate it. So when someone told you a story, you had no way of knowing it was false.
Single celled life doesn't work to convince me since...
... it's so easy to demonstrate in bacteria, you don't want to think about it.
doesn't adequately represent life on earth
They are alive, they are on Earth. Can't do better than that.
has another form of DNA (called plasmids) almost never found in multi-celled life
They are called "chromosomes" in eukaryotes. You're wrong again.
has been shown in the lab to have (in most cases where a genetic change took place) that was actually caused by its change in environment, not the result of random mutation and natural selection.
Nope. The bacteria which evolved a new, irreducibly complex enzyme system did so by random mutation and natural selection. Hall was able to identify each step as it evolved in the culture. Since the culture was from a single bacterium of known genetic compostion (setting up such a culture is commonly done even by freshman bact. students) your excuse won't work here, either.
And as you just learned, information is increased in a population with every new mutation and birth of a new individual. Would you like to learn how it's determined?
