Evolution is defined as increasing complexity of an organism through mutation. When you switch a few genes off or on you aren’t adding any information therefore no evolution has occurred.
Which is the application over time of adaptive changes
Jack Hydrozine post #33: "Evolution is defined as increasing complexity of an organism through mutation.
When you switch a few genes off or on you aren’t adding any information therefore no evolution has occurred."
Jack Hydrozine post #35: "When you have no additional complexity added to an organism you can't call it evolution.
If you add more genes you add more complexity and then you can call it evolution."
Axenolith post #28: "There's no difference between humans culling out the ones less adapted to cold or the cold achieving it on its own..."
First of all the scientific definition of "biological evolution" (as opposed to, say, evolution of automobiles) is: 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection.
That's it, period.
For sake of discussion, we sometimes divide evolution into short-term "adaption" and long term "macro-evolution", but they are exactly the same process: every generation comes with small genetic mutations which are selected for, or against, based on more-or-less natural conditions.
These changes accumulate over time, eventually making it more & more difficult for separated populations of the same species to interbreed.
Based on the resulting degree of difficulties, biologists classify various populations as separated "breeds", "sub-species", "species", "genera", "families", etc.
As for witnessing "beneficial" new mutations, they can be seen whenever DNA from two populations are matched up and compared, allele by allele.
In human beings, we see them in natives of high Tibet & Andes compared to all others.
The high altitude dwellers have special DNA adaptions (Tibetans different from Andeans), not found in everybody else.
The same is true of some African adaptions to fight malaria, and European adaptions for lactose toleration in adults.
So the anti-evo claim of "no new genetic data" is falsified by comparisons of species DNA to find recent mutations.
Bottom line: there's no difference in processes between "adaption" and "evolution" short term, or long term.
Evolution = adaption = evolution = adaption = etc.