Title: Evolution 3The trouble is that this is a change in the distribution of appearance within a species. Light-colored and dark-colored moths existed at the beginning of the process, and still exist. No new species of moths came out of the process, and no new species has ever been observed to be created by natural processes.
New species have been created by deliberate selective breeding. (Or at least new varieties of the same species.) We have learned how to select examples of the kinds of plants and animals we liked, and propagate them so we get domesticated varieties. But that hasn't happened by itself so we could watch it.
We see new forms of viral diseases, and forms of bacterial diseases that are immune to certain drugs, but we don't know whether those kinds of changes could ever lead to something that would be considered a new kind of living thing.
In particular, we have never observed any animal as complex as a monkey changing to another kind of animal, and that's what the scandal of "evolution of species" is all about. The dispute is really about whether we are unique products of a Fundamentalist God's imagination or whether we are a kind of changed monkey.
The major stumbling block to resolving the conflict over evolution is the definition of natural selection based on "survival of the fittest". No one argues that selective breeding can produce new varieties of existing species, the question is what principle of selection works without man's intervention.
"Survival of the Fittest" is a catch phrase that encapsulates the notion that "tooth and claw", dog-eat-dog competition is the necessary selection mechanism.
While it is not grossly counterintuitive, it is not always clear how that works in specific cases. Under attack it became a dogma that was the central credo of the anticreationists.
Even as a myth or dogma "Survival of the fittest" has never been a concept that was comfortable for Christians, or even for secular humanist liberals. Those evolutionists who have a hard-nosed determination to hold to "Survival of the Fittest" are in a position that weakens their moral basis and makes them vulnerable to religious fundamentalists.
But we are not likely to find any humanistic approach in the Old Testament, hard-nosed fundamentalism of the creationists, either. The creationist notion that God created the universe in 4004 BC complete with the paleological evidence is certainly not disprovable.
The problem is that the date at which God is presumed to have created the universe is not determined by creationist theory in the way that evolutionary biology is timed by geology.
The Creationist's God could just as easily have created the universe five minutes ago, complete with Darwinians and Antidarwinians. If God can create paleological evidence for the fun of it, He can as easily create history books and peoples' memories and, for that matter, Bibles.
The only thing that fixes the date in creationist theory is the notion that God is subservient to the King James translation of the Protestant Bible, because creationists say that God is limited to doing what that particular edition of that particular book says He can do.
If the creationist's God were not constrained by the King James Version He could very well have created the universe a dozen billion years ago and let evolution play itself out. There is nothing except Jewish literary tradition that sets the date the creationists are fond of.
The interesting question about "creation science" is one of motivation. If God went to all that trouble creating a universe complete with a false history with no better reason than to have the excuse to send a few secular humanists to Hell, it seems an effort that doesn't justify the results. Surely He could have done that more easily with simpler temptations, such as sloth or avarice.
So for reasons that are as much theological and aesthetic as scientific I prefer to believe that the chronology of the paleogeologists is probably more-or-less correct.