Once again, since we have identified the human genome, and can now read the genes of archeological remains many thousands of years in age. We have identified multiple cases of beneficial mutations causing increased brain capacity and survival oriented physiology.
The most recent and glaring occasion being the rise of lactose tolerance. In several places, in several locations in Africa, The Middle East, And in Europe, over the last 20,000 years different mutations have arisen. Each mutation produced a different gene, but each time the gene caused the body to produce Lactase through adulthood.
Lactose tolerance turned out to be a very important survival factor, and quickly spread through continental populations.
Meyer seems to claim the chance of such a beneficial mutation occurring once is so infinitesimally small as to be impossible. So how did it happen three different times in three discrete populations?
We gained lactose tolerance into adulthood about ten thousand years ago but sadly lost the ability to synthesis vitamin C about ten million years ago. Our ancestors used to be able to make it just like we do vitamin D. Due to the abundance of fruit in our food supply when that mutation first appeared, the mutation persisted. That abundance of dietary C caused it to spread to the entire population of our direct ancestors when they were still swinging from the trees in the African tropics. That would have been a nice capability to retain.
We still have the genes for it, but they are turned off by a mutation that occurred before we diverged from gorillas and chimpanzees, so they lost it too, providing yet another proof of our relatedness to the gorillas and chimpanzees. We all three have the very unfortunate mutation that turned off the gene for synthesizing vitamin C, proving a common ancestor for the three of us (i.e., the one in which the gene got turned off by a random mutation).
PS Why would an intelligent designer give us (humans, gorillas, and chimpanzees), the gene for manufacturing vitamin C, then turn that gene off so it didn't function? If he didn't want us to have that ability, why not just leave that gene out altogether?
