M
Medjai
Guest
The English peppered moth, Biston betularia, has been a longtime favorite example in evolution section of zoology text, and it has been equally prominent in creationist literature attacking evolution. According to the traditional evolutionary account, this moth species comes in two basic colors: mottled white, and black. The mottled white form beautifully matches the lichens on many English trees; the black moths stand out against the background and are easier targets for moth-hungry birds. During the Industrial Revolution, when pollution from factories killed the lichens and the trees reverted to the darker color of natural bark, all of a sudden it was the white form that was conspicuous.
Black moths soon outnumbered white ones, until comparatively recently, when a crusade against air polution has again tipped the scales back in the white variety's favor: the lichens are back in force, and now it is the black moths whose life expectancy is the lower of the two. Here, evolutionist asserts, is adaptive evolution --- natural selection monitoring environmental change. The moths best suited to prevailing conditions are, on average, more likely to to survive and reproduce. The pepperd moths provide a beautiful case of small-scale evolution.
It comes as no surprise, then, to find these English moths well represented in creationist literature, too. And it was only a minor departure from their usual course to see that, rather than trying to debunk the example, creationist such as Gary Parker and Duane Gish accept the facts of the moth story --- of , claiming that it somehow supports the creation model.
But I was not prepared to find creationist --- particularly Parker and Gish, perhaps the two most eloquent creation "biologist" --- actually accepting the moths as examples of small-scale evolution by natural selection! Modern creationist readily accept small-scale evolutionary change and the origen of new species from old. That, to my mind, is tantamount to conceding the entire issue, for, there is utter continuity in evolutionary processes from the smallest scales (microevolution) up through the largest scales (macroevolution.
How can creationist admit that evolution coccurs while sticking to their creationist guns and denying that avolution has produced the great dinersity of life? Creationist simply insist that the sorts of examples of evolution that biologist give have nothing to do with the wholly new, the truly different. The Creationist model is clear on this point: the Creator created "basic kinds," each kind peplete with its own complement of genetic variation.
Creationist see nothing wrong when they admit that natural selection and reproduction isolation have worked within each basic kind, sorting out this priordial variation to produce various specialized types. Creationist R. L. Wysong, a veterinarian, likens the process to the production of the panoply of dog breeds by artificial selection ---the great array of different dogs all springing from the same ancestrial pool of genetic variation.
Creationist deny that mutations fill the bill as the ultimate source of new variation. Mutations they claim, are nearly always harmful and are in any case exceedingly rare --- precisely the arguments seen as a serious intellectual challenge to Darwinian theory in the earliest days of genetics, untill their resolution in the late 1920s and 1930' With the the advent of molecular biology, genetic variations within species has been shown to exceed by far all previous estimates, and most mutations are small-scale and neither especially harmful nor beneficial when they occur.
It fits the evolutionary view of the world that mutations are random with respect to to the needs of organisms: mutations don't occur because they help an organism; rather they are mistakes in copying the genetic code ---in this sense, no different from the mistakes monks occasionally made when copying medieval mauscripts like the Testaments. That some of these biological mistakes may ultimatly prove beneficial is all evolutionist have ever claimed.
Black moths soon outnumbered white ones, until comparatively recently, when a crusade against air polution has again tipped the scales back in the white variety's favor: the lichens are back in force, and now it is the black moths whose life expectancy is the lower of the two. Here, evolutionist asserts, is adaptive evolution --- natural selection monitoring environmental change. The moths best suited to prevailing conditions are, on average, more likely to to survive and reproduce. The pepperd moths provide a beautiful case of small-scale evolution.
It comes as no surprise, then, to find these English moths well represented in creationist literature, too. And it was only a minor departure from their usual course to see that, rather than trying to debunk the example, creationist such as Gary Parker and Duane Gish accept the facts of the moth story --- of , claiming that it somehow supports the creation model.
But I was not prepared to find creationist --- particularly Parker and Gish, perhaps the two most eloquent creation "biologist" --- actually accepting the moths as examples of small-scale evolution by natural selection! Modern creationist readily accept small-scale evolutionary change and the origen of new species from old. That, to my mind, is tantamount to conceding the entire issue, for, there is utter continuity in evolutionary processes from the smallest scales (microevolution) up through the largest scales (macroevolution.
How can creationist admit that evolution coccurs while sticking to their creationist guns and denying that avolution has produced the great dinersity of life? Creationist simply insist that the sorts of examples of evolution that biologist give have nothing to do with the wholly new, the truly different. The Creationist model is clear on this point: the Creator created "basic kinds," each kind peplete with its own complement of genetic variation.
Creationist see nothing wrong when they admit that natural selection and reproduction isolation have worked within each basic kind, sorting out this priordial variation to produce various specialized types. Creationist R. L. Wysong, a veterinarian, likens the process to the production of the panoply of dog breeds by artificial selection ---the great array of different dogs all springing from the same ancestrial pool of genetic variation.
Creationist deny that mutations fill the bill as the ultimate source of new variation. Mutations they claim, are nearly always harmful and are in any case exceedingly rare --- precisely the arguments seen as a serious intellectual challenge to Darwinian theory in the earliest days of genetics, untill their resolution in the late 1920s and 1930' With the the advent of molecular biology, genetic variations within species has been shown to exceed by far all previous estimates, and most mutations are small-scale and neither especially harmful nor beneficial when they occur.
It fits the evolutionary view of the world that mutations are random with respect to to the needs of organisms: mutations don't occur because they help an organism; rather they are mistakes in copying the genetic code ---in this sense, no different from the mistakes monks occasionally made when copying medieval mauscripts like the Testaments. That some of these biological mistakes may ultimatly prove beneficial is all evolutionist have ever claimed.
