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To understand a little of the rarity of such "beneficial" mutations, consider that the overall mutation rate for an average living cell is on the order of one mutation per gene per 100,000 generations.9,10,11 Estimates for the average human genomic mutation rate run between 100 and 300 mutations per generation.( Ninth International Conference on Microbial Genomes, October 28th-November 1st, 2001. Gatlinburg, TN ( http://cgb.utmem.edu/meeting_reports/redwards_11_06_01.htm ) http://genetics.hannam.ac.kr/lecture/Mgen02/Mutation%20Rates.htm) In other words, a human child will have from 100 to 300 mutational differences from his or her parents. Of these mutations, only around 2% will be "functional" mutations. Of all functional mutations, most estimates use a ratio for beneficial vs. detrimental mutations of 1:1000. (http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/genetics.html) That means that it would take around 500 generations to get just one beneficial mutation in an entire genome.

So, from the perspective of a single gene, it would take around 50 million generations to realize a single beneficial mutation. During this time the gene would have also been hit by around 1,000 detrimental mutations. Why is it easier to destroy than it is to create from scratch? The reason is that there are a lot more ways to destroy than there are to create. There are a zillion more ways to break a glass vase than there are to fix or create that glass vase from scratch. The same thing holds true for the various functions in living things. They are like glass vases.
...
Like all other language systems, biological language systems use chemical letters and words that are defined by a limited cellular system and its interaction with its limited environment. Nothing functions by itself just as no letter or series of letters has inherent meaning.
-Dr. Sean D. Pitman

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“infinite number of those fine transitional forms, which on my theory assuredly have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life.”

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“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information, what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection.”

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Reasons Darwinism will ultimately collapse

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ORIGINAL: flyboy2610

Science cannot explain how genetic information is ADDED to the DNA molecule.
Mutations are always the result of loss of genetic information, never because new information was added to DNA. Even the most ardent of evolutionists will readily admit that the genetic structure of a human is far more complex than that of a amoeba, but science cannot explain how the new information was added, using any accepted scientific method of research.

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Mutations add genetic information to the population. What ever a mutation can do, another mutation can undo. If you admit a mutation can result in a loss of information, then you must acknowledge that another mutation can add information.

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"Chakrabarti and Rabitz analyzed these observations of the proteins’ behavior from a mathematical standpoint, concluding that it would be statistically impossible for this self-correcting behavior to be random, and demonstrating that the observed result is precisely that predicted by the equations of control theory. By operating only at extremes, referred to in control theory as "bang-bang extremization," the proteins were exhibiting behavior consistent with a system managing itself optimally under evolution.

"In this paper, we present what is ostensibly the first quantitative experimental evidence, since Wallace’s original proposal, that nature employs evolutionary control strategies to maximize the fitness of biological networks," Chakrabarti said. "Control theory offers a direct explanation for an otherwise perplexing observation and indicates that evolution is operating according to principles that every engineer knows."

The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature.

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The language in the following paper is hilarious. Basically the researchers are saying “We know this looks like an engineered feedback control loop. We analyzed it and found it statistically impossible to have come about through a stochastic processs. But we will strenuously object to anyone calling it evidence of design.” ROFLMAO

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"The scientific establishment bears a grisly resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition. Either you accept the rules and attitudes and beliefs promulgated by the 'papacy' (for which read, perhaps, the Royal Society or the Royal College of Physicians), or face a dreadful retribution. We will not actually burn you at the stake, because that sanction, unhappily, is now no longer available under our milksop laws. But we will make damned sure that you are a dead duck in our trade." (Gould, D.W., "Letting poetry loose in the laboratory," New Scientist, 29 August 1992, p.51)

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ORIGINAL: Veritas

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ORIGINAL: flyboy2610

Science cannot explain how genetic information is ADDED to the DNA molecule.
Mutations are always the result of loss of genetic information, never because new information was added to DNA. Even the most ardent of evolutionists will readily admit that the genetic structure of a human is far more complex than that of a amoeba, but science cannot explain how the new information was added, using any accepted scientific method of research.

Mutations add genetic information to the population. What ever a mutation can do, another mutation can undo. If you admit a mutation can result in a loss of information, then you must acknowledge that another mutation can add information.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

Mutations do not add information, they change existing information.

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ORIGINAL: jmjphe

I got a question regarding this loss of information. I'm just going to throw a theoretical example. You have a small land mass. There are only two kinds of nuts, the amount of each is roughly 50/50. One kind of nut is small and has a weak shell around it. THe other nut has a larger shell that is a little more dense. Lets also say a type of bird lives on this island and because of its beak size, only is able to eat the smaller nuts. Becuase of this, the larger nuts become plentiful. Within this bird population a mutation occurs and a single offspring is born with a larger more dense beak (becuase of the mutation). THis beak allows for the bird to eat both the small and larger nuts, giving it more eating options.

1. Is a larger beak considered a mutation (can it happen)?
2. Is this a loss of information? At face value I can see someone thinking its a gain, because of the gain in the beak size.

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1. Yes. That would be a mutation.
2. No. It would be a gain, but not because the beak is larger. The population would have genetic information for the larger beak, as well as the genetic information for the smaller beak.

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Oh ok. So if the big beaked bird were to produce offspring, those offspring could very possibly have on the the two beaks or maybe a mix? like a medium sized beak (in between big and small)

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ORIGINAL: Consecrated2God

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Mutations add genetic information to the population. What ever a mutation can do, another mutation can undo. If you admit a mutation can result in a loss of information, then you must acknowledge that another mutation can add information.

That's not true. If I were to put a pinprick in a balloon, it would always lose air. It would never gain air.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

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ORIGINAL: Veritas

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ORIGINAL: flyboy2610

Science cannot explain how genetic information is ADDED to the DNA molecule.
Mutations are always the result of loss of genetic information, never because new information was added to DNA. Even the most ardent of evolutionists will readily admit that the genetic structure of a human is far more complex than that of a amoeba, but science cannot explain how the new information was added, using any accepted scientific method of research.

Mutations add genetic information to the population. What ever a mutation can do, another mutation can undo. If you admit a mutation can result in a loss of information, then you must acknowledge that another mutation can add information.

Mutations do not add information, they change existing information. All deleterious mutations produce loss of information.

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If a deleterious mutation produces a loss of information, what does an insertion mutation do?

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ORIGINAL: Veritas
When an organism has a mutation, the population now has the original DNA plus the changed DNA. By any reasonable measure of information, there is an increase in information in the population.

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But what if individuals with a good gene A carry a bad gene B. having the larger value of |s|. Does the bad gene not carry the good one down to disaster? What of the situation that bad mutations must enormously exceed good ones in number? ... The essential problem for the Darwinian theory in its twentieth century form is how to cope with this continuing flood of adverse mutations, a far cry indeed from the trite problem of only the single mutation in (1.1). Supposing a favourable mutation to occur among the avalanche of unfavourable ones, how is the favourable mutation to advance against the downward pressure of the others?" (Hoyle, F., "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, pp.8-9)

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It now appears that a considerable number of genes, perhaps even the majority in higher organisms, are completely or at least partially redundant. One of the major pieces of evidence that this it the case has come from so-called gene knockout experiments, where a gene is effectively disabled in some way using genetic-engineering techniques so that it cannot play its normal role in the organism’s biology. A classic example of this came when a gene coding for a large complex protein known as Tenascin-C, which occurs in the extra cellular matrix of all vertebrates, was knocked out in mice, without any obvious effect. As the author of a paper commenting on this surprising result cautions: “It would be premature to conclude that [the protein] has no important function …[as] it is conserved in every vertebrate species, which argues strongly for a fundamental role.” The protein product of the Zeste gene in the fruit fly drosophila, which is a component of certain multi-protein complexes involved in transcribing regions of the DNA, can also be knocked out without any obvious effect on the very processes in which it is known to function.

The phenomenon of redundant genes is so widespread that it is already acknowledge to pose something of an evolutionary conundrum. Although in the words of the author of one recent article, “true genetic redundancy ought to be, in an evolutionary sense, impossible or at least unlikely,” partially redundant genes are common. As another authority comments in recent review article: “Arguments over whether there can be true redundancy are moot for the experimentalist. The question is how the functions for partially redundant genes can be discovered given that partial redundancy is the rule.

And it seems increasingly that it is not only individual genes that are redundant, but rather that the phenomenon may be all-pervasive in the development of higher organisms, existing at every level from individual genes to the most complex developmental processes. For example, individual nerve axons, like guided missiles or migrating birds, are guided to their targets by a number of different and individually redundant mechanisms and clues. The development of the female sexual organ, the vulva, in the nematode provides perhaps the most dramatic example to date of redundancy exploited as a fail-safe device at the very highest level. A detailed description of the mechanism of formation of the nematode vulva is beyond the scope of this chapter, suffice it to say that the organ is generated by means of two quite different developmental mechanism, either of which is sufficient by itself to generate a perfect vulva.

It seems increasingly likely that redundancy will prove to be universally exploited in many key aspects of the development of higher organisms, for precisely the same reason it is utilized in many other areas–as a fail safe mechanism to ensure that developmental goals are achieved with what amounts to a virtually zero error rate.

Now, this phenomenon poses an additional challenge to the idea that organisms can be radically transformed as a result of a succession of small independent changes, as Darwinian theory supposes. For it means that if an advantageous change is to occur, in an organ system such as the nematode vulva, which is specified in two completely different ways, then this will of necessity require simultaneous changes in both blueprints. In other words, the greater the degree of redundancy, the greater the need for simultaneous mutation to effect evolutionary change and the more difficult it is to believe that evolutionary change could have been engineered without intelligent direction.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

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ORIGINAL: Veritas
When an organism has a mutation, the population now has the original DNA plus the changed DNA. By any reasonable measure of information, there is an increase in information in the population.

No, rather the mutation is generally passed down, but that means the normal state has been lost and the post mutational state is what is passed. Nothing new, just different.

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ORIGINAL: Veritas

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

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ORIGINAL: Veritas
When an organism has a mutation, the population now has the original DNA plus the changed DNA. By any reasonable measure of information, there is an increase in information in the population.

No, rather the mutation is generally passed down, but that means the normal state has been lost and the post mutational state is what is passed. Nothing new, just different.

How is something different not new? If it's different, it's new. The normal state is not lost immediately. A mutation does not strike all members of the population at the same time. A mutation results in a gain of information in the population, because you have the original unmutated individuals carrying the original DNA information plus the individuals carrying the mutation which is, as you noted, different information. If you take a pool of information, add some different information, you have an increase in information.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

Darwinism will ultimately collapse as a valid theory of life origins because :

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ORIGINAL: