Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Darwin’s peppered myth: Turns out, peppered moths take care to protect themselves

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A Darwin cult (the peppered myth) developed during the twentieth century around the peppered moths, with the recent “resounding triumph” that it turns out that pollution effects do favour dark coloured moths over light coloured ones in the same species, with no important changes.

Whoop whoop. That is all Darwinism can come up with, in real life, after all this time.

But so? Snowbelt effects explain why the Canadian Groundhog Day groundhog is white and the American one is brown. No evolution was ever harmed in the making of the diverting nonsense.

In “Peppered Moths Without Evolution” (July 31, 2012), Creation-Evolution Headlines comments , noting a recent, more detailed study,

Kettlewell and Majerus didn’t take into account the moths’ behavior. They treated moths as passive creatures that would alight on tree trunks at random. They placed the selective power in the environment, with lower contrast producing greater camouflage, leaving the high-contrast moths vulnerable to birds.

The South Korean researchers found, instead, that moth behavior plays a vital role in the camouflage. They “found out that moths are walking on the tree bark until they settle down for resting; the insects seem to actively search for a place and a body position that makes them practically invisible.” A video clip embedded in the article shows the moths doing this.

The article avoids superstitious homage to Darwin as well, apparently. That’s a start  in the right direction.

We always thought that the moth had more interest in protecting its hide than the researchers did, and guess what? But how do the moths know if, when they feel invisible, they really are invisible?

See also: US Darwinists (US ranked 14th) wail over South Korea (ranked 1st), supposedly “not able to compete”

Comments
DATCG, I am not thread owner. KFkairosfocus
March 10, 2017
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KF, I request you delete please starting with AK thru yours and Mat's comments. The take down by PaV of neo-Darwinism amid many other comments was great. I was so enjoying reading it. And I'd hope other readers would not see the distractions at the end. PaV deserves better. I'd suggest removing the last remaining comments by AK, politics, etc., and finally Mat's revisionist history on politics. It just killed a great thread. Remove my comment as well. And I hope PaV would do another post on this latest information if it was not already done. Thanks. Great work PaV! And all others!DATCG
March 10, 2017
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That paragraph reads like you're drunk. Answering a critic's charge is not "turnabout projective accusation and cross complaining". I don't know why you brought up marriage counseling and refuse to speculate. What really corrodes public discussion are reflexive accusations of disloyalty, race baiting and blaming your opponents for the problems your party has caused. I realize you're not an American and hope you remain safe on your tiny Carribean island that 99.99% of Americans couldn't find on a map. If you think you've got a negative view of American political culture, try living here for a while. The last time we had a born again Christian who thought he'd been sent by God to save America get into the White house despite losing the popular vote, we got attacked in New York and Washington, the born again fool started a war with an innocent country that we're still mired in, ISIS got started in the carnage of Iraq and the whole world economy collapsed. I can't wait to see what this one does. If I hated America, I'd be cheering, but the only people I see who are happy with the last election are ISIS, Putin, conservatives and especially conservative Christians who have finally elected a thrice married philanderer who makes Bill Clinton look like a choir boy. God only knows why.MatSpirit
December 1, 2016
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MS, turnabout projective accusation and cross complaining; something marital counsellors advise against for cause -- and which will utterly corrode public discussion; as in even assuming such as you project to be true it would be a call for across the board reform not tu quoque fallacies. I am not an American and at this point am inclined to have a very negative assessment of your overall political culture and future as a direct result. FYI, you would have been well advised to notice that I am responding to specifically abusive commentary and evasion of responsibility by AK, in part as establishing and defending standards of responsible behaviour at UD. Your attempted piling on simply demonstrates the need for what I am doing. Good day. KFkairosfocus
December 1, 2016
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KF: "You are further substantiating my point on the sort of hateful false accusations being tossed around without sound substantiation. In this case, on a matter that is normally a capital crime with very serious forfeiture provisions. The cumulative result of which is to utftterly corrode community. It is time to stop the foolishness." My point exactly. I've been listening to conservatives tossing hateful false accusations of treason around without any substantiation whatsoever since I was in high school and I know the history of such scurrilous accusations goes back decades further. I've watched it corrode my country. Pardon me if I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for conservatives who don't like it when maybe one tenth of one percent of what they so reclessly fling at others blows back in their faces. I think you're getting a little over excited here. Why don't you sit back, relax a little and take your mind things for a while? Maybe you could diagram some fishing reels or draw some world maps with important looking lines on them. Try to include at least one choke point. P.S. Could you even imagine violence during the Romney campaign? Of course not. He (and his father George) were the last of the decent Republicans. Not so for The Donald.MatSpirit
November 30, 2016
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MS:
US CONST, Art 3 Sec 3: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
You are further substantiating my point on the sort of hateful false accusations being tossed around without sound substantiation. In this case, on a matter that is normally a capital crime with very serious forfeiture provisions. The cumulative result of which is to utterly corrode community. It is time to stop the foolishness. KF PS: PAV is citing an actual recent very ugly incident.kairosfocus
November 30, 2016
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PaV, where did that happen?MatSpirit
November 30, 2016
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Hey PaV, can you get some courage and write up what you honestly believe about the medical community and HIV and whatnot? That would be funny to read.AhmedKiaan
November 29, 2016
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Instead, my win will be leaving in 4 months. I guess in retrospect it makes sense that the first African-American president is followed by a white backlash so severe that the President Elect is literally endorsed by the KKK, David Duke, the Alt-Right Neo Nazis, etc. It's just sad. But America had racist presidents in the past, and survived. I wonder how long Trump will be president before the damage is so severe that even the GOP pretends to have integrity and impeaches him.AhmedKiaan
November 29, 2016
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MatSpirit: In American politics, "criticizing" conservatives on the part of the Left means pulling them out of their cars and beating them to a pulp.PaV
November 29, 2016
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KF, This thread is about biology, but your not-so-politely-dissenting interlocutor AK seems to be upset for what happened earlier this month in the US and wants to vent his deep frustration in this thread. I feel sorry for him. This site does not seem to associate with any political party in any country, including the US, correct? I did not vote in the US election. Also, as far as I know, you're not a US citizen, hence didn't vote in the US election. Now, after reading AK comments filled with so much frustration, one can understand what he probably meant when he posted the following message in another thread the day before the US election:
AhmedKiaan @30: November 7, 2016 at 2:42 pm I’m going to be celebrating a win tomorrow night.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/btb-q-where-does-the-fscoi-concept-come-from/#comment-620414Dionisio
November 29, 2016
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In American politics, "traitor" means anyone a Republican doesn't like.MatSpirit
November 29, 2016
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MS, that matters not, cross complaining in blanket style as you just did does not erase the fact that AK accused someone of a capital crime, ducked the challenge to substantiate or withdraw and has now clearly implied utter want of substance through evasiveness and attempted compounding of unsubstantiated accusations. Tolerance for such false accusations -- for cause -- is zero. KFkairosfocus
November 29, 2016
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BTW, some of you might find this Phys.Org article interesting.PaV
November 29, 2016
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wd400:
. . . [you] show no ability to learn anything tha[t] conflicts with the story you’ve created.
Weren't they just having a conference in England to move from the Modern Synthesis---your field---to the "Extended Synthesis." It seems like it's your "story" that needs correcting. Or am I missing something?PaV
November 29, 2016
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kairosfocus @188 "AK, in another thread, you have accused the President Elect of the USA of treason. You have been challenged to substantiate, to apologise, to withdraw or face consequences. Running off to another thread and pretending that something serious is not on the table that potentially decisively goes to character is NOT an option here at UD. KF" KF, apparently you are not familiar with American politics. As long as I can remember, which goes back to the early 50's and the Republican/McCarthy era, members of the President Elect's party have knowingly, deliberately and habitually called the members of the Democratic party traitors, corrupt, liars (at a Constitutionally mandated State of the Union address no less), Communists and any other scurrilous lies that enter their heads. Are you now threatening to ban a poster for reflecting that talk back to its source?MatSpirit
November 29, 2016
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AK, you now try to further complain that he is a racist. Again, that would need warrant but the primary issue still stands, you have put treason on the table, substantiate or withdraw. And this is not "republican ideology," it is the premise that we should not accuse people of capital crimes without providing serious substance. I say this as a general principle, I have never nor will I endorse Mr Trump, as though that would be of relevance. It is evident from your evasive response that you do not have substance to back your accusation, but wish to dance wrong but strong. You are not welcome at any thread I own, good day. KFkairosfocus
November 29, 2016
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Donald Trump got in trouble multiple times for refusing to do business with people who share your ethnicity, KF. And there's no doubt he is corrupt, and has no moral character. UD really shouldn't enforce a Republican political ideology. That would be a bad idea.AhmedKiaan
November 29, 2016
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"show no ability to learn anything than conflicts with the story you’ve created." That's especially rich coming from a Darwinist.bornagain77
November 29, 2016
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It would be much more becoming to simply say you were wrong. The spam that you've spewed forth to cover this is also wrong, but you've been told this many times and show no ability to learn anything than conflicts with the story you've created.wd400
November 29, 2016
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PaV @ 189: Brilliant.Truth Will Set You Free
November 29, 2016
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PaV, I think your analogy between evolutionary biology and 'The Blob' is very good and deserves to be headlined, but I could be a crank who just likes old cornball science fiction movies. :) Life Form: Oddly Appropriate Segues - GEICO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7n5wrFdmgIbornagain77
November 29, 2016
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Ahmed K:
There aren’t many smart cranks. For the most part, they just keep typing, year after year.
I think that Nobel Prize winning physicists who believe in the "multiverse" theory are cranks. How about you?PaV
November 29, 2016
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wd400:
The reason you keep bringing up the “infinite allele” model is that you don’t know what it means.
Well, I've just gotten out my worn, highlighted copy of Gillespie's Population Genetics: A Concise Course. I even had a marker on p.29, where I have highlighted: "infinite allele model." Let me quote Gillespie: When a mutation does occur, it is assumed to be to [sic] a unique allele, one that differs by state from all alleles that have ever existed in the population. A population that has been around for a long time will have seen a very large number of different alleles. Consequently, our model of mutation is often call the infinite allele model. So, you see, I do know what the 'infinite allele model' is. Will you retract your claim?
Apart from all the noise, do you mind explaining why you think a “modification factor” that segregates in a simple Mendelian fashion isn’t an allele?
I've already answered your question in my own way. You can't seem to grasp it. Not my fault. Let me try another way. Here goes: Evolutionary theory is like the "Blob"! Do I have your attention? Yeah, exactly like in the movie, where this strange, alien life form invades earth, and absorbs into itself whatever it comes into contact. This is what evolutionary biologists do. There are too many protein polymorphisms found through gel electorphoresis, so Kimura, basing himself on the genetic load involved (and following here one of the patriarchs of pop. gen., Haldane) disjoins himself from "biological evolution," and begins to talk about "molecular evolution". This is otherwise known as the Neutral Theory. Well, the wars were waged. Now, Kimura's Neutral Drift, a challenge to Darwinian theory, is considered to be just another part of evolutionary theory; not a challenge. You see, it got "swallowed up" by the great big "Blob"known as Darwinian evolutionary theory. Then there's the familiar story of "junk DNA." Why, of course, there's no such thing as "intelligent design" because look at all of the "junk" in DNA. This is just all leftover stuff from gene duplications that went nowhere. You know: pseudogenes. Then pseudogenes are found to have function. All kinds of other "junk DNA" is found to have function, and the evolutionary biologists---like you---say: "We've known that all along. It only makes sense that all of this DNA should have some kind of function." You see, it, too, got "swallowed up" by the great big "Blob"known as evolutionary biology. And, along these same lines, when evolutionary biologists were convinced of that only "coding" DNA was significant (while, in fairness, acknowledging that non-coding DNA was likely involved in regulation of some sort), "genes" meant "coding" DNA, and nothing else. Now that function is found for "junk DNA", or "non-coding" DNA, this, too, is now termed "genes"---swallowed up by that great big "Blob" known as evolutionary biology. What confusion this causes. But to use different terminology would be to admit evolutionary biologists missed something big time---a "no-no" not permitted publicly by evo. biol. And, now, with a TE found inserted into an intron of the very "icon" of evolution, the peppered moth, you blithely say: In this orginal thread (the one that you think is vindicated by the new paper) you claimed there was no allele for this trait . . .. So, it, too is an "allele"---whatever that means. Like whatever a "species" means. Or whatever a "gene" is supposed to mean. A science that survives through equivocation is not going in the right direction. Evolutionary biology is an alien life form. Have I made my point clear?PaV
November 29, 2016
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AK, in another thread, you have accused the President Elect of the USA of treason. You have been challenged to substantiate, to apologise, to withdraw or face consequences. Running off to another thread and pretending that something serious is not on the table that potentially decisively goes to character is NOT an option here at UD. KFkairosfocus
November 28, 2016
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As the experiments in post 181 indicated, Darwinists have no clue how genotypes generate phenotypes
With a Startling Candor, Oxford Scientist Admits a Gaping Hole in Evolutionary Theory - November 2011 Excerpt: As of now, we have no good theory of how to read [genetic] networks, how to model them mathematically or how one network meshes with another; worse, we have no obvious experimental lines of investigation for studying these areas. There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/11/with_a_startling_candor_oxford052821.html Not Junk After All—Conclusion - August 29, 2013 Excerpt: Many scientists have pointed out that the relationship between the genome and the organism — the genotype-phenotype mapping — cannot be reduced to a genetic program encoded in DNA sequences. Atlan and Koppel wrote in 1990 that advances in artificial intelligence showed that cellular operations are not controlled by a linear sequence of instructions in DNA but by a “distributed multilayer network” [150]. According to Denton and his co-workers, protein folding appears to involve formal causes that transcend material mechanisms [151], and according to Sternberg this is even more evident at higher levels of the genotype-phenotype mapping [152] https://uncommondescent.com/junk-dna/open-mike-cornell-obi-conference-chapter-11-not-junk-after-all-conclusion/
To put it more clearly, the 'form/shape' any particular organism may take simply is not reducible to the 'bottom up' materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution:
What Do Organisms Mean? Stephen L. Talbott - Winter 2011 Excerpt: Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern. Lewontin went on to remark: "Unlike a machine whose totality is created by the juxtaposition of bits and pieces with different functions and properties, the bits and pieces of a developing organism seem to come into existence as a consequence of their spatial position at critical moments in the embryo’s development. Such an object is less like a machine than it is like a language whose elements... take unique meaning from their context.[3]",,, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean "Last year I had a fair chunk of my nose removed in skin cancer surgery (Mohs). The surgeon took flesh from a nearby area to fill in the large hole he’d made. The pictures of it were scary. But in the healing process the replanted cells somehow ‘knew’ how to take a different shape appropriate for the new location so that the nose now looks remarkably natural. The doctor said he could take only half the credit because the cells somehow know how to change form for a different location (though they presumably still follow the same DNA code) . — I’m getting the feeling that we’ve been nearly as reductionist in the 20-21st century as Darwin and his peers were when they viewed cells as little blobs of jelly." leodp - UD blogger https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/whats-this-about-the-strange-inevitability-of-evolution/#comment-563451 The Insurmountable Problem of “Form/Shape” for Darwinian Explanations – video (2016) https://youtu.be/WQxJRvpCOK0
And since Darwinian explanations can not possibly explain the 'form/shape' of an organism, then any claim that 'bottom up' Darwinian processes can explain the transformation of all species on earth from pre-existing forms of life is pure hogwash.bornagain77
November 28, 2016
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Smart cranks eventually realize their job is to understand how they got it so wrong. There aren't many smart cranks. For the most part, they just keep typing, year after year.AhmedKiaan
November 28, 2016
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You guys seem to think if you play enough word games, something will happen. But the word games have been going on for decades, and nothing happens. Scientists keep doing science. Science keeps advancing. Cranks keep posting long screeds to blogs. I'm originally from the physics world, and I saw this all the time. Every week we got manifestoes in the mail about how Einstein was wrong, quantum theory is wrong, the round earth is wrong, etc. Cranks do a lot of typing, but they never accomplish anything.AhmedKiaan
November 28, 2016
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The reason you keep bringing up the “infinite allele” model is that you don't know what it means. Here's the last thing I asked you in the "old" version of this thread.
Apart from all the noise, do you mind explaining why you think a “modification factor” that segregates in a simple Mendelian fashion isn’t an allele?
Still seems pretty relevant, to me. In this orginal thread (the one that you think is vindicated by the new paper) you claimed there was no allele for this trait (bizarrely while also accepting in segregates in Mendelian fashion...). this paper found the allele. Are you sure it's a vindication for you?wd400
November 28, 2016
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This quote from one of BA77's posts above is worth looking at in isolation:
Pauli’s ideas on mind and matter in the context of contemporary science – Harald Atmanspacher Excerpt: “In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of ‘natural selection’ in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific’ and ‘rational,’ they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’”
Wolfgang Pauli (pp. 27-28) http://www.igpp.de/english/tda/pdf/paulijcs8.pdf It's like reading one of my posts! Now, wd400, you know why I keep bringing up the use of the "infinite allele" model.PaV
November 28, 2016
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