[allmendream]

It was new when they made it. It needn't be novel to be new. The mutations for producing an enzyme capable of digesting nylon might well have existed thousands or hundreds of thousands of times in the past for brief moments; but there was no survival advantage to having it and so it was lost through natural selection.

How is new information on how to digest nylon, an adaptation that led to an entire new way of life for these bacteria, considered devolution and not evolution? By what criteria?

[GourmetDan]

"It was new when they made it. It needn't be novel to be new."

The point is that you already admitted that wasn't true. That same protein undoubtedly exists in countless nylon-free environments around the world today. It is neither new nor novel.

"The mutations for producing an enzyme capable of digesting nylon might well have existed thousands or hundreds of thousands of times in the past for brief moments; but there was no survival advantage to having it and so it was lost through natural selection."

Not only in the past, but in the present in nylon-free environments. This means that it is neither new nor novel and your claim is destroyed.