Creation Moment 4/7/2021 - Pesticide Resistance is NOT evidence of evolution

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways,... Proverbs 6:6

"A favorite icon of evolutionists, i.e. oft-cited by them as evidence of

evolution, is the phenomenon of pesticide resistance.

On the evolution-proclaiming PBS website for example, the diminished efficacy of rodent poisons and insecticides is because “we have simply caused pest populations to evolve”. And no doubt wanting to prove that evolutionary theory has practical relevance, the PBS Evolution Library paints a grim picture of how this “evolution” is making life harder for us:

“It has the menacing sound of an Alfred Hitchcock movie: Millions of rats aren’t even getting sick from pesticide doses that once killed them. In one county in England, these ‘super rats’ have built up such resistance to certain toxins that they can consume five times as much poison as rats in other counties before dying. From insect larvae that keep munching on pesticide-laden cotton in the US to head lice that won’t wash out of children’s hair, pests are slowly developing genetic shields that enable them to survive whatever poisons humans give them.”

Having now got the reader’s attention, and warning that “the problem is getting worse”, the PBS article comfortingly (?) says, “but the pests are only following the rules of evolution”.

However, looking past the evolutionary assertions, the PBS article makes it clear that pesticide resistance is not evidence of evolution at all:

“Every time chemicals are sprayed on a lawn to kill weeds or ants for example, a few naturally resistant members of the targeted population survive and create a new generation of pests that are poison-resistant.”

And again:

“Individuals with a higher tolerance for our poisons survive and breed, and soon resistant individuals outnumber the ones we can control.”

  

----So the mechanisms that allow pests to tolerate pesticides are already present in “a few naturally resistant members of the targeted population”, which survive to reproduce themselves, thus passing the genes conferring pesticide resistance to the next generation.----

*Thus pests are not “slowly developing genetic shields” because the “genetic shield” already exists, i.e. it has not “evolved” out of thin air. What is happening is that the “genetic shield” becomes more widespread in the population, as an astute reader will discern from the PBS article’s subsequent explanation of what happens when farmers, noting lowered kill rates, increase the dosage:

 

“Farmers spray higher doses of pesticide if the traditional dose doesn’t kill, so genetic mechanisms that enable the pests to survive the stronger doses rapidly become widespread as the offspring of resistant individuals come to dominate the population.”

And the spread of the genetic mechanisms conferring resistance can be very rapid indeed—coming to “dominate the population” in just a few generations, in fact." CMI