JFoard

To infidels.org:
This is my first post. I am very honored to be invited to be a part of your debate forum. Thoughout the history of man, from the ancient Greeks and the Hindu schools of thought through the middle ages and to today, debate over issues relevant to our position and status in the universe has been central to our understanding of ourselves, our origin and our destiny.
You are carrying on in this tradition, and I appreciate the fact that you are allowing those of diverse opinions other than the ones you hold yourselves to be expressed in your site,
May God bring us all to a knowledge of the truth,
James Foard
Evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller has written an interesting FAQ on peppered moths. This website is in the public domain at <a href="http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html" target="_blank">http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html</a>
I have made a critique of Miller's arguments, which Jim Lippard has presented already on his Webpage on the internet, (http://www.discord.org/~lippard/ridiculous.html).
It should be noted that everything that I am putting down here has been put up on the web by Mr. Lippard ALREADY.

Since Lippard responded to my critique publicly, which is on his webpage, so I am going to present his critique, along with my rebuttal to him, publicly.

Lippard wrote (at the Webaddress above)
"I enjoyed reading this, I think Miller responded quite ably. I know
he knows what he's talking about, it is not apparent that you do
(especially since you seem, by your own admission, to be unclear on
the difference between evolution and speciation--see
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html</a> for a
primer on the former, <a href="http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/speciation.html" target="_blank">http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/speciation.html</a>
for the latter).

MY RESPONSE TO LIPPARD (NOT FROM AN EMAIL)

BTW-Mr. Lippard has stated that he does not want to hear from me again, and has refused to debate.

Dear Mr. Lippard:
Regarding Miller's "responding quite ably," Miller answered none of my arguments, he spent most of his letter trying to say that I had stated that the peppered moth was not evidence of natural selection, which I had never said.
Your Email was forwarded along with a batch of others from one of your evolutionist collegues, Ed Babinski.
When I answered him you were automatically, and unintentionally on the list.
BTW, I am very familiar with evolutionist hairsplitting over the terms evolution and speciation, but I wanted to know what Miller would say about it.
Your (Futuyma's) definition of evolution could have come out of an abstract Mahayana Buddhist treatise and is typically evasive and vague, "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel."
The definition of speciation was worse, with their admitting that there were numerous problems with the definition. Since the "Koran" of evolutionists is Darwin's Origin of Species, perhaps you could tell me, in your own words, the difference between evolution and speciation. I would love to hear it,
Don't bother to write, unless you have something new and intelligent to add to this discussion,
James Foard

HERE IS THE TOPIC THAT WE ARE DISCUSSING, MY CRITIQUE OF MR. MILLER'S ARGUMENTS:

Regarding Miller's dissertation on Kettlewell <a href="http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html" target="_blank">http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html</a> :
Long before it became well known that Kettlewell had pasted the moths onto the tree trunks, this so-called evidence for evolution was challenged: Creationists pointed out correctly that there was no new genetic information, simply a shifting in population averages.
And nobody disputes the change in the population statistics of peppered moths, this was never an issue, despite Kettlewells pasting of the moths on tree trunks:
The real question is, what does it represent? Is natural selection "evolution in action"?
The peppered moths still remained peppered moths.
Natural selection was borrowed by Darwin from Blyth, a creationist, who correctly saw in it a limiting element meant to preserve the integrity of a species.
The evidence still shows that there was nothing at all like evolution taking place, and indeed, Miller seems to get sort of muddled in his thesis and apparently contradicts himself, for he wrote "What he (Marjerus- Miller mispells his name farther down on his FAQ) reported, first of all, was that Kettlewell's experiments, indicating that moth survival depends upon color-related camoflage, were generally correct:"
Yet almost immediately after this Miller wrote "since his work it has become clear that birds see ultraviolet much better than we do, and therefore what seems well-camoflaged to the human eye may not be to a bird."
He further wrote: For example, in testing how likely light and dark moths were to be eaten, he placed moths on the sides of tree trunks, a place where they rarely perch in nature."
This would invalidate the industrial melanism hypothesis in the first place, and it gets worse: Miller also confesses that "In addition, neither Kettlewell nor those who checked his work were able to compensate for the degree to which migration of moths from surrounding areas might have affected the actual numbers of light and dark moths he counted in various regions of the countryside."
Thus he is invalidating Kettlewell's own thesis while supposedly defending it. If indeed "what seems well-camoflaged to the human eye may not be to a bird," then the entire scenario of industrial melanism is worthless, and if some of the darker moths might just have flown in from migration, that explains nothing as to where the darker moths came from in the first place, except other dark moths: there was no new genetic information produced, the peppered moths came from peppered moths and remained peppered moths.
To extrapolate this variation within an existing population into a thesis that fish changed into amphibians and that yeast and horseshoe crabs and anacondas all evolved from some common ancestor is scientific fraudulence of the highest order.
This type of weak, paultry excuse for evidence of evolution, being trumpeted as "Melanism - Evolution in Action" reveals the desparate tactics that evolutionists are resorting to for so-called "proof" of their theory.
And Miller, after demolishing the idea of industrial melanism by his own words, has the hubris to state "Until these studies are done [testing the migration ratio and vision of birds], the peppered moth story will be incomplete [understatement of the decade].Not wrong, but incomplete."
Uh huh, not wrong, just incomplete. Sounds like a lot of backtracking here while trumpeting, "I'm right, just you wait and see, I'm right, I was right all along, uh, I have to go now, I think I hear my mother calling me."
Thats pretty much what Millers argument amounts to, nothing more than an embellishment of a schoolboys fib, the myth of evolution, one of their best "proofs" of "evolution in action".

MILLER'S RESPONSE:
Again, because I am not allowed to post Email, even after it has been publicly presented on Lippard's website, I will give the reader the link to Lippard's site for the response from Miller:http://www.discord.org/~lippard/ridiculous.html.

MY RESPONSE TO MILLER (Again, already public domain information):
Mr. Miller,
Thank you, I am very glad to hear you admit that there was no evidence of speciation, and that is precisely the point.
You have also slightly mistated the case: if you read what I wrote to you, I never said that it was not a case of natural selection, however your claim is that it is "evolution in action" is an extrapolation that is a far cry from the truth.
In one breath you claim in your letter that the peppered moth is not evidence of speciation, which would make your entire FAQ worthless and your claim that it is "evolution in action" meaningless dribble, and yet this is still supposed to represent evidence for evolution.
Please explain the difference between evolution and speciation.
You stated "No one has EVER maintained that the moths became anything other than moths."
True, but you state that it is evidence of evolution; you imply that speciation does occur from this with your claim on your site of "evolution in action", which is a misnomer at best, and a fraudulent overstatement at worst.
You make the traditional evolutionist mistake of extapolation of the evidence to imply that somehow variation within a species through natural selection is evidence for evolution: "Rather, the case of industrial melanism has been used as an example of
natural selection, which is the ability of forces in nature to alter the phenotypes of living organisms over time."
The trick in the deck are the words "over time". This in your scenario is meant to mean that this variation can go on and on until there is some new type of creature, something other than the peppered moth, which we have no evidence for at all.
This is not science, this is fantasy. So you see, far from being pointless, I have merely pointed out the inadequacy of your claims that the peppered moth is evolution in action.
Thank you for your kind response,
James Michael Foard

Postscript:
Creationists acknowledge natural selection, as I pointed out, it was a creationist concept long before evolutionists and Darwin fooled with it, but this does not introduce newe species, it only reduces the gene pool, and the natural selection did not create new species, by your own admission the dark colored ones could have migrated from somewhere else.

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scigirl

Well this post seems ok - sorry about the hasty removal earlier, we just have to cover our bases as a forum.

My question though is. . . what is your point exactly? Perhaps you have a specific question you would like us to address or debate? Personally, I'm not a fan of "he said she said" type debating, (I could care less what Miller or Lippard said, SHOW ME THE DATA!) but then again I'm just a lowly scientist.

scigirl

KC

1. Speciation is a result of divergence. Divergence is the result of genetic differentiation. Differentiation is the result of changing frequencies of alleles between populations. Frequencies of alleles change between populations due to the interaction of a) Generation and accumulation of variation by mutation and recombination, b) natural selection, c) Other stochastic processes such as genetic drift , migration, etc.

2. Evolution is defined as genetic change within populations over time. Speciation is merely a stage in genetic divergence of populations due to that change. The peppered moth is an example of a portion of that process in action (natural selection resulting in a change of allelic frequencies). No single example can represent the entire process, and nobody has ever implied that it does. There is a curious obsession with anti-evolutionists over the use of the expression 'evolution in action' (you are one of many I have seen beating this drum), as if you are demanding that the one example has to demonstrate all aspects of the theory before it can be used. Balderdash! I often hear the term 'democracy in action' used to describe various sub-divisions of the democratic process. Do you object to the use of that expression as well? If not, why not?

3. 'The Koran' of evolutionists is 'Darwin's Origin of Species"? Spare us the lame hyperbole. It may be de rigeur in creationist chatrooms, but it is simply silly here.

4. You need to read Majerus a bit more. HIs results (from many years of working with these insects), and Bruce Grant's research have convinced both that differential bird predation is the primary (not sole) cause of industrial melanism in Biston betularia. Feel free to disagree. But be prepared to cite the research supporting your conclusion. I look forward to discussing it with you.

Cheers,

KC

JFoard

ksagnostic

So is that the data?

JFoard

Hello Scigirl,
Well, I agree with you, I don't like this he said/she said business either.
Sorry for that. Okay, what's the point?
I have pretty well stated that in my post, but I suppose I will have to reiterate.
Evolutionists have used the famous peppered moth scenario as one of the best examples of "evolution in action" this is Miller's quote,(see Miller's website)but it is nothing of the kind.
Even Miller himself stated that it was not a case of "speciation", i.e. no new species, simply natural selection taking place, which originated no new genetic material, no new species, simply an alteration in population statistics. This was merely a case of variation within a species, nothing dramatic, and you can only extrapolate this to absurd conclusions to think that it is evidence for bacteria turning over time into fish and carrots and kangaroos.
Now, we can quibble about the differences between evolution and speciation, KC stating that it is simply a part of the evolutionary process but lets face it, if we don't have speciation, we don't have evolution.
What you and KC are doing is extrapolating the fact that since we have variation within a species then this must be able to go on forever, with unlimited bounds for genetic potential and novelty. This is a specious conclusion as best, and a blatant scientific fraud at worst.
KC wrote a long and interwoven explanation of evolution with these causes for it
The first being
A) Generation and accumulation of variation by mutation and recombination, (This has been dealt with so thoroughly and completely rebutted by many creation scientists it is almost sad to have to answer it again, however I will give one example, this from the ape/human mutation problem by Fred Williams at <a href="http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/" target="_blank">http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/</a>
This deals with the problem of mutation rates:


"The evolutionary squeeze

The evolutionists are in a squeeze, and it's devastating. We have seen from the analysis above that it is implausible for evolution to occur at such a high deleterious mutation rate. But what if you lower the rate? Well, then all kinds of new problems pop up for the evolutionist! A slower rate means a smaller portion dedicated for those rare "beneficial" mutations, so there will be fewer substitutions of new traits over time. Consider that population geneticists typically estimate that only 1 in 50 beneficial mutations have a chance to even reach fixation15. This problem is aggravated by the fact that a cost must be incurred to spread any new trait through the population (those without the trait must eventually die off). The famous geneticist J.B.S. Haldane showed that under favorable assumptions only one new, beneficial substitution could be completely substituted in a population every 300 generations. So in 10 million years, twice the time since the alleged chimp/human split from a common ancestor, only 1667 beneficial substitutions could occur.16 That's only a 0.001% difference between human and chimp genomes. The entire number of substitution differences between man & chimp, ranging from harmful to neutral to beneficial, is estimated to be between 1-3%, or 30-90 million substitutions. Surely 1667 is not enough to make a man out of a hairy, armpit-scratchin, dung throwin' ancestor! Evolutionists need to add about another 1000 trillion years to their cake mix just to get an ape with manners!"

In essence, the harmful mutations are so much more numerous than beneficial mutations that they would swamp any possibility of the few beneficial mutations being able to improve the over all quality of a species, or develop some new, more fit species. You can't save pennies and spend dollars and make money

So lets throw out A)"generation and accumulation by mutation and recombination.
Next we have b) natural selection,. As I pointed out in my original Post, which I presume KC read, natural selection was a process first written about by Blyth, a creationist, later used by Darwin. It is a conserving principle, reducing the amount of genetic material, not originating it.
c) Other stochastic processes such as genetic drift , migration, etc.
This is actually recombination again, however there are serious problems with this.
Again, this was used by Miller to explain the possible shift in population of the peppered moth, and again, there was no new genetic material, unless you believe that the two kinds of peppered moths came from two distinct phylogenies and did not have a common ancestor, i.e. that in some remote pocket of time peppered moths arose twice from whatever pre-peppered moth ancestor they were supposed to have had, both phylogenies with unique, separate genetic material, and then interbred mysteriously after thousands of years of isolation, never having shared genetic material before.
This is nonsense, you are simply reshuffling the cards in the same deck and arriving at different combinations, you have no new cards, no new genetic material to work with through migration and genetic "drift", unless you are postulating an entirely different evolutionary phylogeny all the way back to two distinct speciation events for both the dark and light peppered moths from something that was not a peppered moth.
Your reasoning, KC, is fallacious.
Good Lord, this doesn't take a doctoral dissertation to understand, it just takes a little bit of logic and common sense.
As far as my "beating the drum" for evolution in action KC, you obviously didn't read very far in my post, because this was the claim made by MILLER for proof of evolution, not myself.
Before you take off half-cocked in some type of rebuttal, you need to familiarise yourself with the material you are trying to rebut.
As far as bird predation being the main cause, I merely quoted Miller again, and you are entirely missing the point. You are chasing after irrelevancies: Whether or not it was birds (and the argument is among evolutionists, I have no PROBLEM with that), it was merely a case of natural selection.
You are extrapolating this to try and use it as some step in the nebulous process of evolution, you state "Evolution is defined as genetic change within populations over time."
BUT, there are limits to that change, it does not go on forever, this is your logical mistake. Then you build on that assumption, stating "Speciation is merely a stage in genetic divergence of populations due to that change."
Variation within a breeding population represents divergence, but this divergence, as I have stated, has limits, there is no evidence that it goes beyond the species barrier.
You are using Alice in Wonderland logic, it is simply amazing that you cannot see the unwarranted assumption and extrapolation of your statements.
You state "The peppered moth is an example of a portion of that process in action (natural selection resulting in a change of allelic frequencies", but again, this was never contested, but there was no new genetic material, simply a change in already existing alleles.
What was contested was your unwarranted conclusion that this can go on and on until we have a new species.
You began with peppered moths and that is what you ended up with.
You are dealing with fantasies KC, evolutionary suppositions that masquerade as fact under a garment of scholastic nomenclature, when in essence you have provided no evidence for evolution at all.
As far as citing my research, I have cited Miller's research, he is a reputable scientist, and shown, by his own words, that he was erroneous in his conclusions. I have also cited your data and shown there too that you have reached erroneous conclusions. If plain spoken logic won't convince you and you want more data, then here <a href="http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/wellsmillermoth041702.htm," target="_blank">http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/wellsmillermoth041702.htm,</a> and here <a href="http://www.tsoup.org/id2.shtml," target="_blank">http://www.tsoup.org/id2.shtml,</a> and here <a href="http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ104.HTM" target="_blank">http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ104.HTM</a> and here <a href="http://www.iconsofevolution.com/articles.php3" target="_blank">http://www.iconsofevolution.com/articles.php3</a>
and here <a href="http://members.tripod.com/aslodge/id83.htm." target="_blank">http://members.tripod.com/aslodge/id83.htm.</a>
and here <a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4105.asp" target="_blank">http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4105.asp</a> and here <a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v6n4_moth.asp" target="_blank">http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v6n4_moth.asp</a> (this last written by John Creeper, B.A.,B.Ed.,Dip.T.,Grad.Dip.R.Ed.,Dip.L.Ed. )
Many of these sites are written by well established scientists, so please don't go making some fawning appeal that I haven't provided you with any data.

Your logic is similar to a little boy's logic that since he can run a mile in fifteen minutes, and after two months of running every day he can a mile in ten minutes, then after a year he should be able to run a mile in one minute.

This is fantasy, not science, and it is the logic that you are using to substantiate evolution

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Doubting Didymus

You are posing to many questions to answer in a single post. Please limit yourself to one or two main points per post if you are interested in a serious debate. I only have time to answer one or two of your objections.

1) "if we don't have speciation, we don't have evolution."

We do have speciation. It has been observed many times, over and over, both in the lab and in the wild. See <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html" target="_blank">This Page</a>

2) "you are simply reshuffling the cards in the same deck and arriving at different combinations, you have no new cards, no new genetic material to work with through migration and genetic "drift".

Mutations can sometimes duplicate lengths of chromosome. These new lengths do nothing when they first appear, but they are free to begin evolving into something else. This is how you get new cards.

"Shuffling": Most of our DNA is not active, creating no phenotype changes until they are recombined and become active. So a new organisms 'DNA shuffling' is more like trying to draw a better hand from a huge deck that just reading the whole deck.

3) Deleterious mutations

Deleterious mutaions pose no problems for evolution at all. Natural selection just takes them all out. Beneficial mutation fixation may be 'rare' (from a human perspective of time) but deleterious mutation fixation is almost non - existant.

monkenstick

speciation has been observed in the mosquito culex pipiens: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=102000 79&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">http://www.ncbi.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=102000 79&dopt=Abstract</a>

Here is a very interesting article about rate of evolution of reproductive genes, and the implications it has for speciation;

"Nature Reviews Genetics 3, 137 -144 (2002)

THE RAPID EVOLUTION OF REPRODUCTIVE PROTEINS

Willie J. Swanson & Victor D. Vacquier
Preface

Many genes that mediate sexual reproduction, such as those involved in gamete recognition, diverge rapidly, often as a result of adaptive evolution. This widespread phenomenon might have important consequences, such as the establishment of barriers to fertilization that might lead to speciation. Sequence comparisons and functional studies are beginning to show the extent to which the rapid divergence of reproductive proteins is involved in the speciation process."

JFoard

You have totally missed the point and also have apparently not read very much into the FAQ: It was MILLER (the evolutionist)who claimed it wasn't speciation, not myself, and your (talk-origins) examples of speciation were the pathetic fruit-fly examples and the Faroe Island house mouse. You started out with fruitflies and you ended up with fruitflies, and not a better, more equipped more advanced fruitfly with improved survival potential.
You began with a mouse and wound up with a mouse. You have missed the point entirely, variation within a species or kind is no proof for evolution. Again, with deleterious mutations, natural selection would also shuffle out the beneficial ones as well, and at a greater rate. You really need to read Fred Williams link. You can't save money by saving pennies and spending dollars. I said it once, but it bears repeating.
The rate of harmful and fatal mutations would overwhelm any chance of beneficial mutations surviving to make any kind of new species. This has been proven, again at <a href="http://www.evolutionfairytale.com." target="_blank">http://www.evolutionfairytale.com.</a> The evolutionists are in a squeeze, and it's devastating. We have seen from the analysis above that it is implausible for evolution to occur at such a high deleterious mutation rate. But what if you lower the rate? Well, then all kinds of new problems pop up for the evolutionist! A slower rate means a smaller portion dedicated for those rare "beneficial" mutations, so there will be fewer substitutions of new traits over time. Consider that population geneticists typically estimate that only 1 in 50 beneficial mutations have a chance to even reach fixation15. This problem is aggravated by the fact that a cost must be incurred to spread any new trait through the population (those without the trait must eventually die off). The famous geneticist J.B.S. Haldane showed that under favorable assumptions only one new, beneficial substitution could be completely substituted in a population every 300 generations. So in 10 million years, twice the time since the alleged chimp/human split from a common ancestor, only 1667 beneficial substitutions could occur.16 That's only a 0.001% difference between human and chimp genomes. The entire number of substitution differences between man & chimp, ranging from harmful to neutral to beneficial, is estimated to be between 1-3%, or 30-90 million substitutions. Surely 1667 is not enough to make a man out of a hairy, armpit-scratchin, dung throwin' ancestor! Evolutionists need to add about another 1000 trillion years to their cake mix just to get an ape with manners!"

As far as your claim that any new DNA from mutations are "free to begin evolving into something else", this has never been scientifically documented, this is pure fantasy,
James

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{edited by scigirl to fix the link above}

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Albion

"variation within a species or kind is no proof for evolution"

Well, to the extent that nothing can PROVE evolution, you're right. But of course variation within a species is an evolutionary step. The whole idea of evolution in species that reproduce sexually is that it occurs through variation within populations and by natural selection among the individuals.

When something takes hundreds of thousands of years to occur naturally, you're wasting your time expecting to see it in the lab in a few weeks or months.