Mutations Cannot Produce the Type of Change Necessary for Darwinian Evolution

"Maybe I should have said neo-Darwinian evolution, although I do describe what I mean (http://en.wikipedia.org......)." Normally I don't trust Wikipedia, but even this source says that before Neo-Darwinism, evolution still wasn't defined in terms of a tree of life. Darwin didn't even make a conjecture that there was a tree of life (although that was likely due to fear of religious backlash). All that Neo-Darwinism is, is an application of Mendelian genetics to changes in trait frequency. That's why Darwin said "trait frequency" and we say "allele frequency". "I'm sorry you do not seem to realize the imperative role mutations play in evolution. I clearly stated other mechanisms of change such as migration, genetic drift and natural selection; I am definitely not under the impression that mutations are the only mechanism for evolution." When have I ever said mutations are not important for Darwinian evolution? "My contention though is that mutations by all accounts cannot produce the type of change necessary (or useful) for the "tree of life" idea of neo-Darwinian evolution. I realize what the definition of evolution is and I know that definition does not involve Darwin's tree of life or the idea that all life has a common ancestor, but this is why I say Darwinian evolution. Sorry for the misunderstanding." Again, Darwin never defined evolution in terms of a tree of life. "I believe Dr. Werner Gitt's definition of information is suitable to describe the information-adding changes I am referring to." His definition describes not what information is, but how it is used and the role it plays in language. For a real solid definition of information, I would use the source I cited. And although this is nitpicking, I do have a .edu source for this. Information is the value of the output of processes. The process here is the genetic mutation, and because what an organism values is the perpetuation of its genes, then any mutation which is beneficial to an organism's gene perpetuation can be said to have added information. "You might argue that Darwin's theory has nothing to do with information because it has nothing to do with mutations" This is a straw man. I never said this. The quote you took from the Smithsonian that mentions information is using it as an imposed property. Again, information does not exist as an innate part of an object. Information is a descriptive property that changes via its relevance to verifying specific claims, see my cliff example. "I am not concerned with deleterious or recombinant types of mutations because those occur. I am contending the idea that mutations can change a scale into a feather, a fin into a leg, etc. This type of change requires additional information which no amount of deleting, duplicating, or scrambling of the DNA can bring about." The problem is, you haven't explained to me why changing a fin into a leg is "adding information" or why you are so convinced that deleting, duplicating, or scrambling DNA can't make these changes. Where is your distinction between adding information to an organism and removing information? If I see that a luminous fish has evolved to have a slightly redder light, is that adding information? Why or why not? Ultimately, these questions are futile because information simply verifies or falsifies claims. You could compile an infinitely long list of claims about an organism like this: It is multicellular. It has radial symmetry. It has bilateral symmetry. It lives unattached to the ocean floor. It has light-sensitive cells. It has a vascular system. It has leaves. It has cells that perform specialized functions. It is tube-shaped. It has a four-chambered heart. ... And then you could tell what "information" is in an organism by a long chain of zeroes and ones, and this would mean that any change in traits which you dismiss as deleterious can't be, because any and all changes essentially add some information and also lose some by definition. All of these lists, though, are essentially arbitrary because we can add any claim we like to them. Which brings me to my final point. You need to, and I cannot stress this enough, NEED to define what an "information-adding change" is, because until you do this debate will be unwinnable for me because any examples of trait changes I give you can be dismissed as "information-removing changes" or "information-scrambling changes". The fact of the matter is, evolution does care about supposed adding of information, it cares about changes in allele frequencies and that is it.