Natural Selection: Who selects?

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: LeeCollins
I don't believe this. A rock can choose?? That is irrational.
Choose implies "comparing". Of the possible options, a subset is chosen.

The direction of your efforts is just wasting time on semantics. You are pretending that words which can, but don't have to, be used to discuss intentional intellegent interaction, can;t also be used as unintentional results of natural processes. You want to pretend that because the word "selection" is used, that something HAD to make an intentional informed decision. That does not promote an honest discussion.

PROVE that in the phrase "Natural Selection" that something HAD to make an informed intentional decision. And don't forget to PROVE that if in fact you CAN prove that something had to make the decision, that that something DOES exist.

Stop wasting our time in meaningless obfuscation. Your desire to pretend that "select" requires a mind does not make it so.

No inanimate object can choose anything.

Tell then that at the next football game when they use a coin flip to CHOOSE who kicks off.

But stop wasting our time on such obfuscation. If you have nothing to offer in the way of PROOF for your claims, besides claiming the words selected REQUIRE things they don't, admit it and move on.

What in nature? The dirt, the air, the water what in nature did this. NATURE does not have a brain so how can it choose? If, by NATURE, you mean natural/scientific laws that govern nature then which laws? If natural selection has forces and mechanisms that I am unaware of, please enlighten me.

Now if we can get past the dishonesty of pretending words have requirements they don't we can then actually discuss this.

If you want to assert that something outside of Nature is required for NATURE to operate NATURALLY, then provide PROOF for it.

If you truly are unaware of the factual and well supported laws of physics/ Nature that regulate the universe we exist in, then we can help educate you on them.

Such as in the other thread, your obvious lack of understanding of Evolution by claiming it involved "the first cell". Common mistake made by people that lack a full education in Evolutionary Theory. Or as often used by people that are intentionally using intellectually dishonest discourse to confuse the issue.

Abiogenesis is the scientific field which explores where "the first cell" may have come from. NOT Evolution.

Then one has to wonder which of the two catagories you fit in. Were you ignorant of the difference? Or were you intentionally lying about it?

I hope it was the first. That you were ignorant of the difference and thus the ignorance can be solved with a simple education.

If you are intentionally using lies, then we are all wasting time here.

I admitted already that the moths themselves DID NOT CHOOSE!! I said that the choice was made because action was taken. Do you see any cause/effect in this?

OK, a choice was "made". Unless you can show that something made an informed intellectual intentional predictive decision, then it is simply a matter of Natural Selection. Nature following the well established process of Natural Evolution.

Who

Now "who" DOES require "person".

Unless you can PROVE a requirement for an external intellegent agent "person" and overcome Ockham's Razor, there is nothing to talk about.

I can not see what physical law lead to the color change of the moths.

Your personal failure of vision seems to be the issue. Just because you either can not, or perhaps choose

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: TeleMad
The moths did not change color in response to changes in the environment: what changed was the RATIO of mottled to non-mottled moths. And what did the selecting was birds: they ate more of the moths that were more easily seen.

Ya well, overall correct, but one minor issue. The intial driving force WAS a change in environment.

"Peppered moths rest during the day on tree trunks, where they are vulnerable to being eaten by birds. In pre-industrial England, tree trunks were gray. As illustrated here, gray moths are well camouflaged on gray tree trunks; black moths stand out.
...
When industry developed in England, pollution from factories turned tree trunks in forests in industrial areas black. As illustrated here, on black tree trunks, black moths are well camouflaged; gray moths stand out.
...
In industrial areas, because black moths avoided being eaten by birds, they survived better and therefore reproduced more (had higher fitness.) As a result, each generation, more and more of the offspring born came from black parents and inherited the black coloration, since the color differences between moths (gray versus black) are genetic. After many moth generations, almost all the moths in industrial areas were black. Black coloration is an adaptation to an environment with black tree trunks; that is, it has evolved through natural selection because black individuals have higher fitness in forests with black tree trunks than do gray moths."
http://www.utm.edu/~rirwin/moth.htm



"The story of the peppered moth
...
Industrial melanism refers to the darkening of color that occurred in a number of species of insects following the Industrial Revolution. This change appears to be related to the increase in pollutants in the environment."

http://www.ncseweb.org/icons/icon6moths.html


The literal phrasing you used is correct.

The moths did not change color in response to changes in the environment

But it allows some confusion. You could have just said:

The moths did not change color.

And left it at that. The existing months did NOT change color. But the Environment was the major factor for the Evolutionary change of color of the

RATIO of mottled to non-mottled moths

Otherwise, nice concise job.

[LeeCollins]

Originally posted by: Tormod

Short, simple, and the most likely answer. Evolution in action.

Now that's reasonable.

So who evolved? and how was that evolution triggered?

[LeeCollins]

The direction of your efforts is just wasting time on semantics. You are pretending that words which can, but don't have to, be used to discuss intentional intellegent interaction, can;t also be used as unintentional results of natural processes. You want to pretend that because the word "selection" is used, that something HAD to make an intentional informed decision. That does not promote an honest discussion.

PROVE that in the phrase "Natural Selection" that something HAD to make an informed intentional decision. And don't forget to PROVE that if in fact you CAN prove that something had to make the decision, that that something DOES exist.

Stop wasting our time in meaningless obfuscation. Your desire to pretend that "select" requires a mind does not make it so.

This is silly so i really can't discuss it too long. Rocks don't choose, cions don't choose. What Tormod
said made sense - the birds chose. I don't know if that is correct but it at least is POSSIBLE.
I didn't write dictionary. It attributes decision making to choosing. It also attributes decision making to selecting. So i am as correct or as incorrect as the dictionary.

Instead of trying to make it crystal-clear for me, you attack as pretending and being dishonest. If you have nothing in the way of answers then your replies are useless to me.

Your personal failure of vision seems to be the issue. Just because you either can not, or perhaps choose not to see, the obvious process of Evolution in it, does nt mean it is not there.

Is there any explaination in this reply? Is there anything that helps my vision in this reply?

[Tormod]

Originally posted by: LeeCollins
This is silly so i really can't discuss it too long.* Rocks don't choose, cions don't choose. What Tormod
*said made sense - the birds chose.* I don't know if that is correct but it at least is POSSIBLE.

For the record, I didn't say that, Telemad did.

The point is of course that the moths that survived where the less visible ones, ie - survival of the fittest. Who does the choosing has nothing to do with it.

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: LeeCollins

Is there any explaination in this reply? Is there anything that helps my vision in this reply?

There is only help if you choose to listen to it.

You had used what Richard Dawkins calls the "Argument from Personal Credulity". That just because you have trouble understanding/ accepting something, it must be wrong.

Originally posted by: LeeCollins
I can not see what physical law lead to the color change of the moths.

You also kept trying to twist words to require things they do not require. Again your "Argument from Personal Credulity" was the only thing you offered to support your claim that there must be some intellect involved somewhere along the way.

While in the example under discussion it was stated that birds could be considered the "decision makers" by their eating which ever moths were more visible. But this would require that they had specific intent of creating a change in the moth's cosmetics. This is not the case.

And in other examples of similar Evolutionary changes, we have the length of sparrow bills which increase or decrease in <u>average length</u> based on water table level in some environments.

If the bird was the "decision maker" in the moth case, then the water would be the "desicion maker" in the sparrow example. And we are back to the problem of your asserting a requirement for intellectual involvement in a NATURAL process.

So it is up to you as to whether my response will help your "vision" or not. You can "decide" to ignore the corrections to your acceptance of fallacies and usage of obfuscation, or not. I just present them.

[LeeCollins]

Thank you FreeThinker.
i think iunderstand what you are saying about the moths now. What i don't understand is this;was there a biological change involved in all this or(as Tormod said) did the moths that were less visible geteaten less and so had a greater reproduction rate therefore producing more less visible moths or both?

[TeleMad]

LeeCollins: What i don't understand is this; was there a biological change involved in all this or (as Tormod said) did the moths that were less visible get eaten less and so had a greater reproduction rate therefore producing more less visible moths or both?

Simply put, there was no biological change: that is, nothing new arose. There was preexisting biological variation ("dark" and "light" moths) and changes in the environment changed which one of those was the more easily seen. Consequently, the ratio of dark to light moths changed as the birds preferentially ate the more easily seen moths. When the environment changed again, the ratio of dark to light moths changed accordingly again (because of differential predation).

How is this evolution? After all, no new organ - or anything - was involved. It's evolution because evolution can be defined as a change in the allelic frequency of a population over generations. And this occurred.

The coloration of the moths is genetically controlled: basically, one allele codes for 'dark' and another allele codes for 'light'. As the birds ate more of one of those types of moths, the survivors (most of which were either dark or light) reproduced and spread their cryptic coloration advantage through the population. And over some generations, the allelic frequency (ratio of dark to light alleles) changed in the population. Evolution.

[LeeCollins]

So how then is evolution responsible for the all the changes required to go from reptiles to birds? These transitions require massive biological change. How would evolution account for the development of a lung? How would an organism wean itself off the old respiratory system?

This seems to be more than just "a change in the allelic frequency of a population over generations". Is there some more powerful mechanism at work in evolution?

[Uncle Martin]

Originally posted by: Freethinker
Some will emerge from the chrysalis to become adult moths......, If a moth while emerging from the chrysalis.....

Just a nitpick here to assure accurate information. The pupal stage of a moth is usually refered to as a caccoon, a chrysalis is that of a butterfly. Very different mechanisms are used in creating/becoming one of these two very different things.