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Author Topic:   Evolution doesn't make sense.
mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 16 of 80 (2300)
01-16-2002 3:54 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Lorenzo7
01-16-2002 12:06 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Lorenzo7:

Second, darkcolored variants of a certain moth species evaded predation by birds because their color matched the sooty tree trunks of industrial England.
Although light and darkcolored moths did vary in expected ways in some regions of England, elsewhere they didn't. Further,
textbook photographs showing moths resting on tree trunks in the day, where birds supposedly ate them, run afoul of the fact that the moths are active at night and don't normally rest on tree trunks. After learning about the problems with this favorite Darwinian example, an evolutionary scientist wrote in the journal Nature that he felt the way he did as a boy when he learned there was no Santa Claus.

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) called
the clearest case in which a conspicuous evolutionary process has been actually observed.
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Lorenzo7, posted 01-16-2002 12:06 PM Lorenzo7 has not replied

  
derwood
Member (Idle past 1876 days)
Posts: 1457
Joined: 12-27-2001


Message 17 of 80 (2305)
01-16-2002 5:18 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by joz
01-16-2002 1:38 PM


quote:
Originally posted by joz:
I thought this one WAS spurious....
Who did the research?

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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by joz, posted 01-16-2002 1:38 PM joz has replied

Replies to this message:
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gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 18 of 80 (2306)
01-16-2002 5:24 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Lorenzo7
01-16-2002 12:06 PM


quote:
Although light and darkcolored moths did vary in expected ways in some regions of England, elsewhere they didn't.
Yes, "elsewhere" where the treetrunks were unstained, black moths would not predominate over peppered moths.
quote:
Further,
textbook photographs showing moths resting on tree trunks in the day, where birds supposedly ate them, run afoul of the fact that the moths are active at night and don't normally rest on tree trunks.
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:
scientist wrote in the journal Nature
Cite?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Lorenzo7, posted 01-16-2002 12:06 PM Lorenzo7 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 19 by heaththekiwi, posted 01-16-2002 8:42 PM gene90 has replied

  
heaththekiwi
Inactive Member


Message 19 of 80 (2308)
01-16-2002 8:42 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by gene90
01-16-2002 5:24 PM


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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 18 by gene90, posted 01-16-2002 5:24 PM gene90 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 20 by gene90, posted 01-16-2002 9:12 PM heaththekiwi has replied

  
gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 20 of 80 (2309)
01-16-2002 9:12 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by heaththekiwi
01-16-2002 8:42 PM


Likewise. I don't know if I'll be around for long though.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by heaththekiwi, posted 01-16-2002 8:42 PM heaththekiwi has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by heaththekiwi, posted 01-16-2002 10:04 PM gene90 has not replied

  
heaththekiwi
Inactive Member


Message 21 of 80 (2310)
01-16-2002 10:04 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by gene90
01-16-2002 9:12 PM


Why not?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 20 by gene90, posted 01-16-2002 9:12 PM gene90 has not replied

  
Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5872 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 22 of 80 (2321)
01-17-2002 5:34 AM


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).

  
joz
Inactive Member


Message 23 of 80 (2322)
01-17-2002 8:20 AM
Reply to: Message 17 by derwood
01-16-2002 5:18 PM


quote:
Originally posted by SLP:
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.

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


Message 24 of 80 (2356)
01-17-2002 5:54 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Lorenzo7
01-15-2002 10:38 PM


(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 mean
this world was made for us and only for us.
We just had the "big prize" in the lottery of the universe
mfg
ronin

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Lorenzo7, posted 01-15-2002 10:38 PM Lorenzo7 has not replied

  
keenanvin
Inactive Member


Message 25 of 80 (2360)
01-17-2002 10:14 PM


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

Replies to this message:
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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 26 of 80 (2478)
01-19-2002 2:19 PM


The Creationist view of the Industrial Revolution moth evolution example takes two forms:
  • The data was not nearly so unequivocal as it had been made to seem. The moth population did change toward the darker coloration, but this trend varied greatly across regions of industrial England. From the Creationist perspective this raises suspicion of misrepresentation, while from a scientific perspective it says the story is more complex, perhaps involving complex interactions between environment, varying predator populations, etc.
  • This type of evolution is accepted by Creationists. The observed changes, regardless of how widespread or uniform, drew upon variation already present in the moth population's gene pool. Creationists accept evolution within a species.
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

  
TrueCreation
Inactive Member


Message 27 of 80 (2489)
01-19-2002 3:48 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by keenanvin
01-17-2002 10:14 PM


"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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Replies to this message:
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LudvanB
Inactive Member


Message 28 of 80 (2817)
01-26-2002 12:07 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by TrueCreation
01-19-2002 3:48 PM


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]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by TrueCreation, posted 01-19-2002 3:48 PM TrueCreation has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 29 by TrueCreation, posted 01-26-2002 12:42 PM LudvanB has replied

  
TrueCreation
Inactive Member


Message 29 of 80 (2819)
01-26-2002 12:42 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by LudvanB
01-26-2002 12:07 PM


"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.
------------------

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by LudvanB, posted 01-26-2002 12:07 PM LudvanB has replied

Replies to this message:
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LudvanB
Inactive Member


Message 30 of 80 (2822)
01-26-2002 1:12 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by TrueCreation
01-26-2002 12:42 PM


quote:
Originally posted by TrueCreation:

--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.

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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by TrueCreation, posted 01-26-2002 12:42 PM TrueCreation has replied

Replies to this message:
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