Originally posted by RJHinds
What mutation has ever been beneficial?
oh came on, you cannot be serious. Is this just an attempt at a sudden distraction from the fact that I have debunked your flawed 'deduction' that God had something to do with it? _I think it might be.
-anyway, OK, for what it is worth:
The experiment which the OP is about is one example of possibly many such mutations.
There are, of course, numerous examples of mutations beneficial to bacteria such as antibiotic resistance etc.
And there are at least two examples of mutations that have independently given mosquitoes DDT resistance -DDT being man-made and not found in nature means those mutations would have no known useful function in the absence of DDT before DDT use and there is every reason to believe that those mutations didn't exist before DDT use for there is absolutely no evidence that they existed before DDT.
There are numerous examples of useful mutations in plants, humans and many other animals:
http://bigthink.com/daylight-atheism/evolution-is-still-happening-beneficial-mutations-in-humans
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Beneficial_mutation#Vivid_examples_of_beneficial_mutations
"...Vivid examples of beneficial mutations
Lactose tolerance - why humans with significant European ancestry can digest milk as adults.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria - at least beneficial from the point of view of the bacteria.
Radiation resistant fungi[1] (and perhaps other lifeforms) inside Chernobyl
"German Superboy",[2] an individual example of a human mutation that not only doesn't cause any visible disfigurement or impairment, but if anything will probably make it easier to maintain a muscular physique and/or low weight. These are characteristics that could be considered desirable in the modern day, when food is abundant.
The ccr5-Δ32 mutation confers HIV-1 resistance to those with a double copy of the allele (homozygous) [3]. The mutation also confers resistance to plague and smallpox while increasing susceptibility to west nile virus.[4][5][6]
..."
I find this one quite interesting for it mentions, among other things, the newly evolved strain of nylon-eating bacteria:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/beneficial-mutation.html
some mutations are beneficial under some circumstances but harmful under other circumstance thus sometimes, but certainly by no means always, blurring the distinction between beneficial ones and harmful ones. Example: http://www.creationbc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=113&Itemid=81
in fact, there are many tens of thousands of known beneficial mutations documented and the list is growing all the time.
However, if you REALLY have the curiosity to wont to know the real truth (which I doubt, but I challenge you to surprise me!), just forget all the above for a moment but also just close your Bible for just one moment, stop looking at your religious calendar and leave behind all your religious prejudices against science just for one moment and patiently read through all of this link that really explains the whole issue of mutations properly:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html