So say a predator of butterflies in the Owl Butterfly's environment takes a liking to butterflies with big eye spots. Maybe it's just that good at spotting real owls. If it's effective enough at catching those butterflies, the spots have suddenly become a liability. A Butterfly with smaller spots has a better chance of evading the new predator. Sooner or later, a butterfly will have a mutation that makes its spots smaller. If it survives and breeds, which it has a better chance of doing, the smaller spots will become more prevalent.
I don't see what's difficult about this. It's like arguing that you can't breed for nectarines because the odds of getting one by chance is remote. No one planned nectarines, they were a mutation (as YJ likes to remind us, 'by chance'). But horticulturists liked them, and introduced selection pressures to get more of them. By similar methods, we got sweet bananas and red Anjou pears.
When I was a kid, long before gene-editing technology, there was so-called 'mutation breeding', where plants were exposed to mutagenic chemicals and radiation; literally thousands of new varieties were created by sifting through the results to find plants with desirable new mutations. That was a lot faster than evolution, which has slower mutation rates and no gardeners picking the winners and losers; but evolution does the same thing, it just takes a lot longer.
I don't see what's difficult about this. It's like arguing that you can't breed for nectarines because the odds of getting one by chance is remote. No one planned nectarines, they were a mutation (as YJ likes to remind us, 'by chance'). But horticulturists liked them, and introduced selection pressures to get more of them. By similar methods, we got sweet bananas and red Anjou pears.
When I was a kid, long before gene-editing technology, there was so-called 'mutation breeding', where plants were exposed to mutagenic chemicals and radiation; literally thousands of new varieties were created by sifting through the results to find plants with desirable new mutations. That was a lot faster than evolution, which has slower mutation rates and no gardeners picking the winners and losers; but evolution does the same thing, it just takes a lot longer.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.