Macro and Micro evolution for dummies.

[Kirbmarc]

Bacteria don't have the genetic information to produce a backbone, arms and legs.

Correction. Bacteria don't have genes that produce proteines that create a backbone, arms or legs. You can call that " genetic information" if you want (many do. I think that the term is misleading), but those genes were acquired merely by a (long) process of mutations and selections. Not by artificial additions of "information".

Evolution assumes that mutations can indeed create such new information. Information can be lost by damaging mutations, or by selection, whether natural or artificial.

Evolution assumes that mutations and selection create and trasmit new genes. Whther mutations are damaging or not depends on the environment, not on the mutations themselves. For example, alpha-thalassemia may be considered a damage or an adantage according to the environment: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1435778/

Mutations can be either "loss" or "gain" of "information" according to the environment. Trying to argue that there is qualitative difference between macro and micro evolutionin terms of "gain" or "loss" is misleasding.

The terms "macro" and "micro" evolution are misleading, too. "macro" changes are simply the result of series of "micro" changes. There is plenty of foossil evidence for this claim, see for example here:http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html.

Rigorous phenotypic selection likely resulted in a loss of genetic information

Again, you presented me with another example of the analogical use of the terms information. What the paper argues is the loss of genetic variety within the species because dogs were selected according to specific traits, while wolves communities maintained a higher variety of phenoypes.