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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).



Which is the scientifically correct thing to do. There's little to no information on exactly what's happening (evolutionists are more excited about discrediting creationists), and since this would be the lone example of new data being written, its safe to assume that it isn't the lone example...that it isn't the exception, but rather that its part of the rule.

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This presupposition is required because otherwise creationism would fall apart. Thus you're making the very mistake that you're accusing scientists of.



Its not required, it just makes sense. No one claims to know exactly where black moths came from. Logically, however, we would deduce that it didn't come from nowhere. Even if it was caused by a mutation, black scales (or melanism, or what causes the peppering) existed in the first place, so you have a long way to go in showing that it couldn't have just mutated to lose control of its color scheme, which is hardly an evolutionary change. Unfortunately we'll never know. It doesn't seem anyone was interested in testing population ratios before the 'melanic explosion', but we know they did find one in 1811, so its safe to assume that they did exist before the melanic explosion.

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"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.



Most of these moths that are phenotypically diametric (light and dark) have incomplete dominance. The peppered moth is no exception. That means that Aa won't be dark, it'll be a little bit darker than light (or gray). In reality a more accurate representation of the incomplete dominance would look more like AB, not Aa, but it doesn't effect the outcome. If you don't believe me then look up incomplete dominance. It might take a bit of searching (like it did for me) but you can also find essays from evolutionists saying that melanism is incompletely dominant.

I don't have the study off hand, but its been suggested that even in typical circumstances, the gray moths are only slightly less fit than the light moths. So it stands to reason that they could have existed before the melanic explosion, which would mean that the A (dark) gene could be floating around, while rarely producing a dark moth, and even in the rare chance that it happened, it apparently would have been selected out (without pollution), which would explain why we rarely found them. This is the logical conclusion, based on past experience, and not founded on wild guessing. If there are two explanations that are possible, it would be wise to go with the simplest of the pair.

But again, I'm not saying it wasn't mutated, I'm just saying that if it was, it wasn't a mutation that wrote 'dark scales'. Those dark scales already existed in the light moths (the peppering), just not as frequent, which suggest there was some genetic control mechanism over the pattern of the scales that could have gotten 'switched off'. I don't think that answer is likely, but its possible and still more likely than melanism being written from scratch, and still says nothing about evolution.

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it's justified to mention this effect in school books as evidence for evolution.



No its not. The fact that neither you or I has any real proof of what happened means that teaching it as evolution is jumping to a conclusion. Its not proof of evolution. Its proof of natural selection. Its possible they mutated (even if that didn't write anything new), but its more likely that they simply existed all along, but were hidden because they kept getting selected out. I like how mutations can write new stuff in 100,000 years, or 30 years, or a million years, or a billion years. Whatever fits the model of evolution best.

However, in this case, even with mutation it isn't evolution. No matter how much you reduce the genetic order of the moth, it'll always be that moth. It'll just be a little less of that moth than it was before.

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Besides nature examples like the cave fish that's definitely a mutation,



You argue as if I don't know mutations occur. They occur. But shutting off the growth of the eye, hardly explains how the eye could have been written in the first place. It happened to be beneficial, but I also don't disagree that there are beneficial mutations. I do, however, disagree as to whether or not an organism can write new data via chemically (or other source) induced mutations, or replication mistakes. All known mistakes of said variety reduce order, sometimes to the advantage of the organism, but typically they cause some kind of ailment or disease.

Creationists understand that bacteria are mutating to resist antibiotics (we're not blind to reality) we just don't come to the same conclusion as evolutionists. What evolutionists fail to do is look beyond the fact that these mutations are beneficial, and understand that they haven't written anything new. Nitro outlined a good example.

Another example is conjugation giving a bacteria a gene it never had before to resist something, but doesn't explain where the gene came from (except from another bacteria that already had it), or the cell membrane mutates so that it doesn't transmit material as well (degrading), so it doesn't take in antibiotics, but its harder for the cell to allow beneficial materials in. So on and so forth. There is no modern example (even in the quickly replicating cells of bacteria) of a creative, progressive, whatever you want to call it, mutation.

This illustrates why its so absurd to assume that moths could repeatedly and quickly evolve to become black. Germs can't even evolve on a large scale when they produce trillions and trillions and trillions of generations per year (instead of one like the peppered moth), why should we assume that such a drastic change has occured? Unless you mean we should take it on faith? I thought that was the antithesis of science.

Therefore, it is logical to assume that they [creative/progressive mutations] don't exist. Any other assumption is a fairy tale. Give me a bit more time to study more on genetics, and I'll be able to give a complete summary of why mutations are irrelevant to evolution. I'll probably throw it up on a website because I wouldn't be a true creationist if I didn't start my own anti-evolution website.

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I think both creationists and evolutionists need to think OUTSIDE the box on this one. In my opinion neither creation NOR evolution should be taught in high schools.



Actually, from my understanding of modern creationism, this is the general concensus. For instance, here's some examples.

1). Peppered moths existed as predominantly light (non-melanic) before the industrial revolution. After the revolution, soot built up on the bark of trees causing the lighter moths to become easy prey for birds. Shortly after the soot began to appear, a dark moth mutated, and quickly became dominant because it was hard to see on the now-darker bark. This is excellent evidence of evolution in action.

(The use of the words evolution and mutation is misleading).

2). Peppered moths existed as predominantly light (non-melanic) before the industrial revolution, but were created by God as both dark and light phenotypes. After the revolution, soot built up on the bark of trees causing the lighter moths to become easy prey for birds. Shortly after the soot began to appear, the melanic phenotype became dominant because it was harder to see. This is excellent proof of the ingenius nature of God's creation.

Of course, both of these involve faith-based assumptions. Here's the correct way to present this example.

3). Peppered moths existed as predominantly light (non-melanic) before the industrial revolution. After the revolution, soot built up on the bark of trees causing the lighter moths to become easy prey for birds. Shortly after the soot began to appear, a melanic phenotype began to quickly become dominant. This is excellent evidence of natural selection in action.


The third example is the best way to present it. We don't know where the dark moths came from, so allowing either camp to cloud our textbooks with assumptions is bad for the critical thinking skills of the student. If we present simply what we know as fact, and then allow the student to come to his or her own conclusion, then we've encouraged them to use evidence to form a hypothesis (some will think the dark moth was created, others will think it was evolved if they want). However, using this example (without proof) to come to conclusions for the student is indoctrination, considering students have no way of understanding the difference, they'll just assume what they hear is right. So its our job to present facts, not faith.

But the argument isn't over the accuracy of documentaries. It doesn't need to get that far. Pinning up moths, whatever, really doesn't matter. Birds aside, the fact is, we don't know what happened. Considering that many of these moths exist in england with diametrically opposed pheontypes, it would be safe to assume that the peppered moth did too. Without a time machine, we'll never know for sure.

Last edited by Irish_Farmer; 04/29/06 23:29.
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