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So even if there were no dark moths, they could have been spontaneously created by a mating between two gray moths quite often (but still be hard to find in the general population). This might explain their rarity. If they kept getting selected out, the gene for dark wouldn't have completely disappeared. So, when the pollution started pouring out, two grays mate, the AA happens to match up and since its dominant and selective pressures are gone, it takes over. So, even if there was no dark moth before the pollution, it didn't even mutate. But its called an 'abberant form.' Maybe scientists should learn a little bit more about their field of study.

This 'abberant form' excuse is just desperation on the part of scientists fearing the loss of their precious theory.



You presuppose that the peppered moth phenomenon is a gene shift and not a mutation (if we define mutation as a gene modification that didn't exist before). This presupposition is required because otherwise creationism would fall apart. Thus you're making the very mistake that you're accusing scientists of.

I think your moth gene shift explanation has an obvious logical flaw:

Gene shift model: (A = dark allele, a = light allele)
Before industrial revolution: aa aa aa aa Aa AA
After industrial revolution: AA AA AA Aa Aa Aa

Mutation model: (A = dark, a = light)
Before industrial revolution: aa aa aa aa aa aa
After industrial revolution: AA AA AA Aa Aa Aa

"A" is the dominant allele. Thus "Aa" is not just a little grey, it's really dark. If it existed in the moths before the industrial revolution, it would have lead to a dark moth in both the AA and the Aa cases. Those moths would have been eliminated by natural selection - they are more likely to be eaten. Therefore the "A" allele, even if it existed, would have been completely disappeared from the gene pool long ago.

Therefore, the mutation model is much more likely. And as you can see, even a micro mutation increases the variety of genes and doesn't reduce it. It creates a new allele "A" that didn't exist before.

Even if there's no 100% proof for the mutation model - what I posted is evidence, but not a proof - it's justified to mention this effect in school books as evidence for evolution.

However you don't need the peppered moth to prove mutations. Besides nature examples like the cave fish that's definitely a mutation, both harmful and helpful mutations have been observed a thousand times in the laboratory, and it would be absurd to deny them. Example:

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. Chao et al. (1977) grew wild type E. coli B in a chemostat. Once the vessel reached steady state they innoculated it with bacteriophage T7. The bacteria are sensitive to infection by T7. Needless to say, T7 grew like mad on the bacteria. After a short time, though, a mutation attributable to a single gene appeared in a cell surface receptor site which gave the bacteria complete resistance to T7. This bacterial stain was designated B1. Shortly after this a mutation occured in the virus which allowed it to infect strain B1 (strain T7.1). A second mutation occurred in B1 which made it resistant to this second virus strain as well as to the original virus strain (strain B2). All five of these critters happily coexisted in the same chemostat.



More on mutations:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html