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Author | Topic: Evolution doesn't make sense. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
mark24 Member (Idle past 5195 days) Posts: 3857 From: UK Joined: |
quote: 1/ That they are active at night demonstrates nothing. Background camouflage isn't going to work during flight anyway. 2/ They have to rest somewhere during the day, they don’t just dissapear, if its not on tree trunks, then somewhere else. This is when camouflage is important. When they rest. That they are, or are not on tree trunks is irrelevant. It is the surface colour that is important. 3/ The greatest testament to the use of the Peppered Moth as an example of natural selection is that the lighter moths are again resurgent, in accordance with reduction of pollution levels.
http://www.wm.edu/biology/melanism.pdf Textbook accounts of industrial melanism too often dwell in the past. They begin with pre-industrial England and end with Kettlewell. As a footnote they might add that melanism has been on the decline in recent years following clean air legislation. Yet, it is the record of the decline that is by far the strongest. During the last century and the early part of this one few people kept records about morph frequencies, so our picture of the rise and spread of melanism is sketchy. Documentation for the decline in melanic frequencies is vastly more detailed (e.g., Clarke et al. 1994, Cook et al. 1999, Grant et al. 1996, 1998, Mani and Majerus 1993, West 1994). No other evolutionary force can explain the direction, velocity and the magnitude of the changes except natural selection. That these changes have occurred in parallel fashion in two directions, on two widely separated continents, in concert with changes in industrial practices suggests the phenomenon was named well. The interpretation that visual predation is a likely driving force is supported by experiment and is parsimonious given what has been so well established about crypsis in other insects. Majerus allows that the basic story is more complicated than general accounts reveal, but it is also true that none of the complications so far identified have challenged the role assigned to selective predation as the primary explanation for industrial melanism in peppered moths. Opinions differ about the relative importance of migration and other forms of selection. It's essential to define the problems, to question assumptions, and to challenge dogma. This is the norm in all active fields of research. Majerus has succeeded admirably in communicating this excitement to the reader. I would add this: Even if all of the experiments relating to melanism in peppered moths were jettisoned, we would still possess the most massive data set on record documenting what Sewall Wright (1978) calledthe clearest case in which a conspicuous evolutionary process has been actually observed. Mark ------------------Occam's razor is not for shaving with.
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derwood Member (Idle past 1876 days) Posts: 1457 Joined: |
quote: The big fuss over this comes form the the late 19th century drawings of Haeckel. He had embellished them to help 'prove his point' - ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Bad drawings notwithstanding, vertebrate embryoes do in fact retain/exhibit features in common with each other, and Haeckel's OrP has long been discredited. It is therefore no surprise that the creationists still bring it up - it is easy to whip a strawman.
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gene90 Member (Idle past 3823 days) Posts: 1610 Joined: |
quote: Yes, "elsewhere" where the treetrunks were unstained, black moths would not predominate over peppered moths.
quote: But whenever the moths did happen to rest on tree trunks, the selection pressure was there. But I'm curious. If you have done the research to make this point, where *do* the moths normally rest, and how are you confident that pollution had nothing to with the color change? Or did the color just change, for no reason?
quote: Cite?
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heaththekiwi Inactive Member |
Hello Gene90 - I seem to recall your posts in the Yahoo! Clubs were very informative, but then you stopped posting.
Good to see you here
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gene90 Member (Idle past 3823 days) Posts: 1610 Joined: |
Likewise. I don't know if I'll be around for long though.
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heaththekiwi Inactive Member |
Why not?
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5872 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
Regarding Kettlewell's moths:
The observation that dark colored moths predominate in areas where industrial pollution has stained the trees where they rest is correct. Kettlewell's error was in attributing this to a mutation. It turns out that until the pollution changed one of the environmental factors there had been a relative equilibrium in the frequency of alleles for dark and light color in the population. After pollution stained the trees, it was simply a change in expression frequency. A change, btw, which is totally in accordance with evolutionary theory. Kettlewell had the mechanism wrong, not the observation and not the application of this change as evidence for evolution. This effect occurs in many populations where environmental change causes a change in allelic frequency. The fact that the "white moth" population is rebounding since the soot levels have been reduced and there had been no change in other populations not effected by pollution, provides even more proof of evolution - not less. Here's the point: if the environmental pressure had been continued over evolutionary timescales and over a broad enough area, natural selection would have eliminated all white moths from the population (although the trait may have remained as a recessive).
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joz Inactive Member |
quote: Yeah that was what I was thinking of glad to hear that was an exageration rather than a fabrication...
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Jex Inactive Member |
(Well, lets see if my english is (still) good enough.)
Why don't we burn or freeze. If consider the universe as unlimited, than even the most unimaginable thing WILL happen somewhere and sometime.No matter how many "earths" end as burning globes or "snowballs". I think the fact that we are able to live here does not meanthis world was made for us and only for us. We just had the "big prize" in the lottery of the universe mfgronin
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keenanvin Inactive Member |
I belive Lorenzo is misunderstanding Evolution. Evolution is the survival of the fittest. Those who are fit to survive can breed and have offspring which have their traits. One of your examples you 'tried' to prove false was of the peppered or 'speckled' tree moth. They were originally white with small black specks, and they blended into the houses of England ( since they were made of a stucco-like material). Birds had a hard time picking them apart form the buildings. That was fine and dandy till the industrial revolution. Coal was burned and smog and soot was produced. The soot covered the trees and now these moths stuck out like a sore thumb. A beacon to the birds, if you will. The white moths were picked off quite easily. They were almost to extinction when a moth was born with a black body and white spots, just the opposite of it's parents. A minor mutation, an "albino" sort. The birds missed that moth every time they passed over it. That moth mated with a white moth, and they had ( as close as we can approximate, out of 4 children they had 1 white, 2 grey and 1 black babies) The white ones were picked off and the Dominant traits become Black tone, instead of white. The Moths didn't pull a "Charmeleon" mutation or anything. Evolution is simple, read up about it and you might actually be taken seriously. -Kv
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Percy Member Posts: 22392 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
The Creationist view of the Industrial Revolution moth evolution example takes two forms:
Given the second point, the first point's primary importance is as an example of evolutionist dishonesty by taking an inconclusive example and presenting it as unequivocal evidence of evolution in action. There are so many examples of intra-species evolution (dogs, cats, cattle, horses, etc) that no Creationist objects to the possibility, but the moth example has a certain cachet because though caused by man, just like dogs and cats, it was completely unintentional, and it took place in wild, uncontrolled conditions. If we evolutionists have been carried away by our own enthusiasm then we should fess up to it. On the other hand, just because the actual evidence is not anywhere so simple and straightforward as that presented in grade-school textbooks (some Creationists blame scientists for grade-school textbooks, but that's another debate) does not mean the evidence is inconclusive. If someone could take a careful look at the evidence (such as it is on the Internet) then perhaps we could get to the bottom of this. --Percy
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TrueCreation Inactive Member |
"I belive Lorenzo is misunderstanding Evolution. Evolution is the survival of the fittest. Those who are fit to survive can breed and have offspring which have their traits. One of your examples you 'tried' to prove false was of the peppered or 'speckled' tree moth. They were originally white with small black specks, and they blended into the houses of England ( since they were made of a stucco-like material). Birds had a hard time picking them apart form the buildings. That was fine and dandy till the industrial revolution. Coal was burned and smog and soot was produced. The soot covered the trees and now these moths stuck out like a sore thumb. A beacon to the birds, if you will. The white moths were picked off quite easily. They were almost to extinction when a moth was born with a black body and white spots, just the opposite of it's parents. A minor mutation, an "albino" sort. The birds missed that moth every time they passed over it. That moth mated with a white moth, and they had ( as close as we can approximate, out of 4 children they had 1 white, 2 grey and 1 black babies) The white ones were picked off and the Dominant traits become Black tone, instead of white. The Moths didn't pull a "Charmeleon" mutation or anything. Evolution is simple, read up about it and you might actually be taken seriously."
--Just a quick note, sounds like something an Intelligent designer would give to his creation, ability to replicate and build veriety, If you turned this moth into a fly or a grasshopper, that would be interesting, Creation has no conflict with this accept that some claim that this is 'E'volution in action. --------------
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LudvanB Inactive Member |
I must say that as far as ID goes,the jury is still out as far as i'm concerned. But even if that was the case and that the earth and all its lifeforms were the result of an intelligent designer,why should we automaticaly assume that this designer was a supernatural God being? I have another theory on the subject. What if the earth is merely a vivarium set up by beings from a much older but very much non-supernatural civilisation? Couldn't ID also mean BIOLOGICAL LIVING intelligent designers? Could someone present me with evidence that this was not the case?
[This message has been edited by LudvanB, 01-26-2002]
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TrueCreation Inactive Member |
"I must say that as far as ID goes,the jury is still out as far as i'm concerned. But even if that was the case and that the earth and all its lifeforms were the result of an intelligent designer,why should we automaticaly assume that this designer was a supernatural God being? I have another theory on the subject. What if the earth is merely a vivarium set up by beings from a much older but very much non-supernatural civilisation? Couldn't ID also mean BIOLOGICAL LIVING intelligent designers? Could someone present me with evidence that this was not the case?"
--Seems logical, but then your right back to the question of where did they come from, being physical and biological living organisms of this extra galactic universe/civilization, we must ask the same questions of our existance and apply it to them, which ofcourse leads you to a dead end because we have no clue period if there is extra-terrestrial intelligence out there. ------------------
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LudvanB Inactive Member |
quote: I am not advancing that the world was created by extra-terrestrials...i am simply stating thatthere is no logical,sensible reason to believe that if the ID theory is accurate that this intelligence absolutely or even likely belongs to an all powerfull divine being. The simple fact is that we do not even know if there was an intelligent designer behind the many wonders of the world. One may chose to assume that there is,for whatever reason but ID is far from being a foregone conclusion.
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