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Book by: Thomas F. Heinze · ©2005 · 96 pgs.
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Moths and butterflies have an amazing life cycle. They start life as an egg from which a caterpillar hatches, eats, grows, and then goes through the pupa (chrysalis) stage, often after spinning a cocoon. In this stage the caterpillar actually melts to liquid goo which is then transformed into a butterfly or moth with two compound eyes rather than the six simple eyes of the caterpillar, six legs instead of the original 16, etc. It has reproductive organs that caterpillars did not have, and wings which fill out, open and fly off into the sunset. The process is called metamorphosis. With no flying or navigation lessons, monarch butterflies can not only fly with their new wings, but use their new instruments to fly thousands of miles to the spot, sometimes to the very tree, in California or Mexico where their ancestors spent the last winter.
Evolutionists claim that all animals evolved from a primitive one-celled creature as natural selection worked on mutations: errors in copying the DNA to pass it on to the next generation.
| Which evolved first, a complex flying moth, or a relatively simpler caterpillar with no wings or reproductive organs? Neither! When Mrs. Moth lays an egg, its DNA already contains the directions that make the caterpillar, and then the pupa stage in which its organs melt into a liquid, and then the moth. Try to find a selective advantage that would make natural selection choose melting into liquid over being a caterpillar! There is none. All the information is already present in the DNA to direct the process from egg to caterpillar to liquid goo to butterfly or moth. To my knowledge, no reasonable way has ever been discovered, or even dreamed of, by which mutations could modify DNA, to produce the complex programs for all four of the moth's greatly differing but perfectly coordinated stages: egg, caterpillar, pupa, and moth.
The Best Evidence? Despite having no idea how a moth could have evolved, almost every textbook promoting evolution from the 1960s on has used the peppered moth as the prize evidence to back up its teaching that evolution happens. You probably remember the pictures of light and dark peppered moths resting on light and dark tree trunks. (See Figure 1.) Before the industrial revolution, almost all the peppered moths in England had a generally light colored mixture of light and dark scales on their wings. At rest, they looked very similar to the white lichens which covered many tree trunks. Then, with the coming of the industrial revolution, the lichens died and the tree trunks became dark with the smoke of industry. This robbed light colored moths of their protective coloration. Textbooks claim that birds then saw them resting on the trunks and ate them. Before long the majority of moths were dark. |
Richard C. Lewontin, Adaptation, Scientific American, Sept. 1978, pg. 212. Figure 1 |
Despite how scientific textbooks make this "proof of evolution appear, the experiments behind the statements have come under attack. A recent book explains:
"They were, and still are, hailed as 'Darwin's missing evidence' ...'evolution in action.' Yet the history of the peppered moth has lately become a battlefield, the controversy becoming more inflamed by the moment." (1)
Why all this interest in a study of moths? In the early 20th century, Darwin's theory began to spread widely. However, evolutionists were becoming desperate. It was increasingly obvious that no scientific evidence was being found to support the theory. Perhaps this change in the peppered moth population might be the proof needed to confirm Darwin's theory.
Bernard Kettlewell, a medical doctor, and a moth and butterfly expert, studied the peppered moth. He became convinced that the darker peppered moths were becoming more numerous because their camouflage was better on the smoke-darkened tree trunks. He set up his experiments to show just that. Hooper writes that Kettlewell's moths:
"...became the most celebrated experiment ever in evolutionary biology. By the 1960s the moths had conquered all the textbooks, influencing the minds of four decades of biology students. It is the slam dunk of natural selection, the paradigmatic story that converts high school and college students to Darwinism, the thundering left hook to the jaw of creationism." (2)
Before the moths' left hook thundered, other exceptionally powerful evidences for evolution had come smashing into the jaw of creationism. For 40 years Piltdown man skillfully beat up creationists until 1953 when it was discovered that this famous ape man was a deliberate hoax: a recent ape's jaw had been tinted and paired to an older human skull! After Piltdown had been beating up creationists for 40 years, someone noticed that his teeth still showed the marks of the file that had been used to make the lower teeth fit better with the uppers. Embarrassed evolutionists abandoned the Piltdown hoax.
A series of horse fossils then became the most powerful proof of evolution. These fossils were claimed to show the stages through which an animal with three and four toes passed as its foot became more and more simple (not more complex) gradually evolving into a modern horse with one toe on each foot. This left hook to creationism gradually lost its punch as more and more fossils were discovered. These creatures had not lived one after another in a neat evolutionary progression after all. They had galloped through the forest together.
Craig Holdrege, an American biology teacher who used the moth experiments to teach his students, was reading something by an English peppered moth researcher and friend of Kettlewell when he was struck by these words:
"In 25 years we have found only two betularia [peppered moths] on the tree trunk..." (3)
Kettlewell's whole proof of moth evolution depended on the moths resting on tree trunks where birds would see and eat them. Holdrege realized that what he had taught for years was not true. Under natural conditions peppered moths almost never rested on tree trunks! In fact, peppered moths are active at night, but spend their days on the lower side of branches in the shade of trees. (4)
The pictures of moths on tree trunks in textbooks are of two kinds. For the first pictures Kettlewell placed living moths on tree trunks.(5) Later pictures show dead moths stuck to the trunks.(6) Hooper says,
"By the early 90s, if not before, it was known to a small circle of scientists that what every textbook in the Darwinian universe said about industrial melanism was untrue." (7)
"Industrial melanism" is used here to refer to natural selection favoring dark moths after industry had smoked up the environment.
Most scientists, however, had no idea there were problems. Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago Professor, learned when he read Michael Majerus's 1998 book, Melanism: Evolution in Action. When Coyne realized that what he had been teaching for years was at least partly faked, he was "horrified." He wrote in his review of Majerus's book for the journal Nature:
"My own reaction resembles the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents at Christmas eve." (8)
With the increased scrutiny, evolutionists have found many other problems with "the most celebrated experiment ever in evolutionary biology." Here are a few:
- For his famous experiment, Kettlewell brought in dark and light moths early in the mornings and put them on tree trunks where they do not normally rest, to see whether the birds would eat more dark or light moths. Since moths normally move around at night, if released then, they would have moved to their normal positions in the branches where neither Kettlewell nor the birds would be apt to find them. During the day, moths stay where they are put. (9)
- The experiment was based on the assumption that natural selection favored dark moths due to birds seeing lighter colored moths on tree trunks and eating them. This assumption was not accurate, both because moths don't normally rest on tree trunks and because birds seem not to eat many of them. (10)
- The findings were artificial. Setting out large numbers of moths on a few tree trunks taught birds to come there to find food. Because of the unusual concentrations of moths put in unnatural and particularly obvious places, one critic called the experiment a study of "unnatural selection." (11)
- Some of the birds Kettlewell listed as eating his moths seem not to eat them at all under natural circumstances. (12)
- When Kettlewell did not get the results he wanted, he changed the design of his experiments until he did. (13)
- Both diet and temperature have also been found to cause dark forms of the moths to be produced. Perhaps the gene for dark moths is always present, but is sometimes turned off. (14)
- Hooper writes that this is not one of those experiments that has been verified by lots of other scientists. She quotes one who tried and said:
"It doesn't happen... David West tried it. Cyril Clark tried it. I tried it. Everybody tried it. No one gets it." (15)Once people understand that this famous experiment does not show what it is claimed to show, they generally take one of two attitudes. Michael Majerus wrote the book that first exposed the problems and the false science. He says it teaches kids to believe in natural selection, which is true, so we should still use it even though the experiment itself was false.
The other attitude is seen in Jerry Coyne, who wrote the review of Majerus's book. He was horrified to find that he had been conned into teaching something false. Because he desires honesty in science and science books, he refused to continue teaching the contrived evidence.
What will the school books do? At the moment, this "proof of evolution" is still the standard textbook evidence that evolution is taking place,(16) but the two most recent textbooks I have checked don't have it.
"Uphill Evolution" a Myth
An even greater problem is the fact that this most convincing argument for evolution has never shown any uphill evolution, but only horizontal. Dark peppered moths are not more highly evolved than light peppered moths, and peppered moths never became anything other than peppered moths. None ever became bats or humming birds, or even a different kind of moth. Only the color changed. What's more, when ecological awareness later led to the cleaning up of the industrial smoke, many of the trees returned to their former light color, and so did the moths!
Whether or not future textbook authors will use the peppered moth argument, when I was in school many considered it "the story that converts high school and college students to Darwinism, the thundering left hook to the jaw of creationism." (17)
If you believe in evolution, some of what convinced you was probably the story that birds picked peppered moths off tree trunks.
To impress on us the influence the moth story has had, Hooper named her last chapter, "A Damn Good Story." Sure, it was a really convincing story, and that is what she meant, but it is also a damning story. Jesus Christ said:
"I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6)
Many have not come to the Father through Jesus Christ because their school books have convinced them to believe in the way of evolution, a way that has led many into doubt, skepticism and atheism. No one comes to the Father except by Jesus Christ. We have that on the authority of Jesus, who is the truth.
If peppered moths helped build your faith in Darwinism, your faith is partially founded on evidence you now know was faulty. Not all the evidence was false, but even what was true was not uphill. The peppered moth is an example of horizontal evolution. It only shows that peppered moths can come in more than one color.
Endnotes
1 Judith Hooper, Of Moths and Men: an Evolutionary Tail, 2002, p. XV.
2 Judith Hooper, Of Moths and Men: an Evolutionary Tail, 2002, p. XVII.
3 Ibid., p. XVIII.
4 Ibid., pp. 260, 262, 265-266.
5 lbid., pp. 172:5-6, 264.
6 Ibid., pp. 172:16-17, 264.
7 Hooper, p. 265.
8 Jerry Coyne, "Not Black and White," a review of Michael Majerus's Melanism: Evolution in Action, Nature 396, 1998, pp. 35-36, reported in Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution, Science or Myth? 2002, p. 157. See also Hooper pp. 283-286.
9 Hooper, pp.110, 114, 260.
10 Hooper, pp. 218, 265.
11 Hooper, p.267.
12 Hooper, pp.243, 258.
13 Hooper, pp. 256-257, 292.
14 Hooper, pp. 280-282, 287.
15 Hooper, p. 296, quoting Professor Bruce Grant of the College of William and Mary in Virginia. See also p. 272.
16 Prentice Hall, Biology, the Living Science, 1998, p. 233; Adison-Wesley, Biology, 2nd Edition, p. 251; and most biology textbooks.
17 Hooper, pp. XVII.
<http://www.creationism.org/books/HeinzeVanishing/HeinzeVanishChap01_en.htm>
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