'Micro' evolution vs 'macro' evolution

Yes.

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Originally posted by Peter:

Virus cells have been found on meteorites, and may have
an extra-terrestrial (I mean that literally NOT BEM's) origin.

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http://www.creationscience.com/"Living bacteria have been found in meteorites. For details and to see how this relates to the global flood, go to page 236. This amazing discovery does not mean that life on earth came from outer space. "Not virus', but bacteria. I have no idea why any creationist thinks sites like this, & AiG, are credible sources when they unashamedly turn out these lies.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

That makes even less sense than most of their mistakes because living bacteria crumbling out of meteorites would undermine their arguments against abiogenesis. So why go out of their way to be wrong?Ah, here we go. They believe that meteorites are Earth rocks that got hurled into space and are falling back down. Too bad it contradicts essentially everything we know about meteorite composition. NiFe being a common component in virtually all meteorite classes, is nearly absent on Earth (Josephinite, a very rare mineral, is the only occurence on Earth). These Creationists you cited are centuries behind in knowledge of meteoritics.

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[This message has been edited by gene90, 02-26-2002]

The Evolution Definition Shell GameThe term evolution often takes on several meanings in today's scientific circles, often in very misleading ways. A 1999 undergraduate college textbook on Biology states: "Evolution is a generation-to-generation change in a population's frequencies of alleles or genotypes. Because such a change in a gene pool is evolution on the smallest scale, it is referred to more specifically as microevolution"[1] [emphasis in original]. This type of "evolution" is widely accepted by evolutionists and creationists alike and is not in dispute. It really amounts to minor genetic variation that may result from selective breeding such as found in the different varieties of dogs, or from placing stress on a population resulting in adaptation to an environment (i.e. the peppered moth in England, or drug-resistant bacteria). Microevolution is a misnomer, since it is not evolution as most people understand the word, but instead is adaptation and variation within a kind of organism - the peppered moth is still a peppered moth!The same college biology book later defines macroevolution as the origin of new taxonomic groups, from species to families to kingdoms[2]. The problem with this definition is that it encompasses both large-scale change, such as invertebrates evolving to vertebrates (which creationists dispute), and small-scale change that results in speciation (which creationists do not dispute). Indeed a new species can easily arise by simple geographical isolation of segments of a population (called allopatric speciation). For example, there are six species of North American jackrabbits, all of which lost the ability to interbreed due to changed mating habits caused by geographic separation. Thus the term macroevolution is misleading by its inclusion of microevolution, a confusion confirmed by the very biology book that defined it, since the book later attributes speciation to microevolution on isolated populations![3]Finally, there is large-scale evolution that may be referred to as molecules-to-man evolution, a theory that organisms over a long period of time have evolved into more complex organisms through the improvement or addition of new organs and bodily structures. This is how the word evolution is generally understood by the public. In fact it was defined this way for many years until evolutionists began evolving the word![4]Molecules-to-man evolution is the type of evolution that my web site seeks to portray as a "fairy tale for grownups". It is unobservable, untestable, and has little, if any, evidence to support it. At best it should be labeled a low-grade hypothesis. Unfortunately, evolutionists continue to invoke microevolution and speciation as evidence that large-scale, molecules-to-man evolution is true. This is an invalid extrapolation, and is very misleading to the public. I believe that because of the lack of any tangible evidence for large-scale evolution, evolutionists have sought to create the illusion that evolution is true by reshaping and blurring the meaning of the word evolution.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Campbell, Reece, Mitchell, Biology 5th Edition, 1999, p. 432
2. Ibid. p. 445
3. Ibid. p. 451
4. Evolutionist G.A. Kerkut defined the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ in his 1960 book 'Implications of Evolution' as "the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form." Some dictionaries still define it similarly, such as the Oxford Concise Science Dictionary: "evolution: The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for the past 3000 million years."

You're a scientist Fred? Then you should take a sample of textbooks and some key terms and see how well they conform to each other.Good examples would be to look for definitions of say "civics", "democracy", "poem", "novel", "proof", "source code".Or how about "geography", "history" - even "English." I think you'll find a wide enough discrepancy in definition of the latter three to pick holes in.

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Originally posted by Fred Williams:
The Evolution Definition Shell Game

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The term evolution often takes on several meanings in today's scientific circles, often in very misleading ways. A 1999 undergraduate college textbook on Biology states: "Evolution is a generation-to-generation change in a population's frequencies of alleles or genotypes. Because such a change in a gene pool is evolution on the smallest scale, it is referred to more specifically as microevolution"[1] [emphasis in original]. This type of "evolution" is widely accepted by evolutionists and creationists alike and is not in dispute. It really amounts to minor genetic variation that may result from selective breeding such as found in the different varieties of dogs, or from placing stress on a population resulting in adaptation to an environment (i.e. the peppered moth in England, or drug-resistant bacteria). Microevolution is a misnomer, since it is not evolution as most people understand the word, but instead is adaptation and variation within a kind of organism - the peppered moth is still a peppered moth!

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The same college biology book later defines macroevolution as the origin of new taxonomic groups, from species to families to kingdoms[2]. The problem with this definition is that it encompasses both large-scale change, such as invertebrates evolving to vertebrates (which creationists dispute), and small-scale change that results in speciation (which creationists do not dispute). Indeed a new species can easily arise by simple geographical isolation of segments of a population (called allopatric speciation). For example, there are six species of North American jackrabbits, all of which lost the ability to interbreed due to changed mating habits caused by geographic separation. Thus the term macroevolution is misleading by its inclusion of microevolution, a confusion confirmed by the very biology book that defined it, since the book later attributes speciation to microevolution on isolated populations![3]

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Finally, there is large-scale evolution that may be referred to as molecules-to-man evolution, a theory that organisms over a long period of time have evolved into more complex organisms through the improvement or addition of new organs and bodily structures. This is how the word evolution is generally understood by the public. In fact it was defined this way for many years until evolutionists began evolving the word![4]

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Molecules-to-man evolution is the type of evolution that my web site seeks to portray as a "fairy tale for grownups". It is unobservable, untestable, and has little, if any, evidence to support it. At best it should be labeled a low-grade hypothesis. Unfortunately, evolutionists continue to invoke microevolution and speciation as evidence that large-scale, molecules-to-man evolution is true. This is an invalid extrapolation, and is very misleading to the public. I believe that because of the lack of any tangible evidence for large-scale evolution, evolutionists have sought to create the illusion that evolution is true by reshaping and blurring the meaning of the word evolution.

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Then you think wrong, and display the typical creationist 'world-evolution-conspiracy' paranoia quite nicely. The word 'evolution' is older than evolutionary theory - of course it has many different meanings. We are talking about the evolution of life forms...not any other use of the word. And evolution of life forms includes so-called 'micro' evolution and 'macro' evolution (two terms invented by creationists in an attempt to draw a line between that which even they could no longer deny happens ('micro') and that which is difficult for us to see, because of time spans involved ('macro'). These words have no real meaning in the science of evolution, partly because creationists never care to give a definition of 'macro' evolution that they all agree upon (attempts at a definition usually involve the word 'kind' - another word they cannot agree on, as regards a definition).

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Originally posted by mark24:
http://www.creationscience.com/

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"Living bacteria have been found in meteorites. For details and to see how this relates to the global flood, go to page 236. This amazing discovery does not mean that life on earth came from outer space. "

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Not virus', but bacteria. I have no idea why any creationist thinks sites like this, & AiG, are credible sources when they unashamedly turn out these lies.

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Mark

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I hope you're not mistaking me for a creationist here ... my intent
was to point out extra-terrestrial life forms ... and I
never look at creationist web-sites to support my own claims ...
kinda pointless when you tend to disagree with them Besides I already retracted that bit because I cannot fing where
I read it in the first place ... so I must be mistaken entirely!!I admit it already!!!!

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Originally posted by Peter:
I hope you're not mistaking me for a creationist here ... my intent
was to point out extra-terrestrial life forms ... and I
never look at creationist web-sites to support my own claims ...
kinda pointless when you tend to disagree with them

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Besides I already retracted that bit because I cannot fing where
I read it in the first place ... so I must be mistaken entirely!!

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I admit it already!!!!

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Peter,Not at all, I was just posting this as a "perhaps" this is where you got it from". I know you not a YEC Mark

I gather CROSoft isn't going to reply to this one on this board, either:Here was a particularly good one posed by Pat that CROSoft danced around, but steadfastly refused to answer: -(paraphrasing)
"Suppose there is an animal, that has fur, can to a degree be warm-blooded, and has a diaphragm. It also has reptillian skeletal features, has a single cloaca for elimination and reproduction, and has a sprawling reptilian posture.

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Is this a transitional? "

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We'll never know what CROSoft thinks. Or maybe he's had time to go learn a little about biology since he ducked out of that one. How about it, CROSoft? There's a lot of people with a lot of questions you ducked out on who'd like to know.

You're using the wrong terminology. That's mutation and speciation. Not microevolution and macroevolution. the only difference between "micro" and "macro"evolution is how quickly the organism in question reproduces.
You also seem confused as to how speciation works. Species don't move laterally the tree of life, they branch off. Humans and chimps, for instance, are two species of ape.
And two species ARE capable of breeding with each other. That's how you get mutts.Evolution on all scales of time, though, works the same way. Mutations in offspring.

X, are you sure you are able to contain any differences in meiosis and mitosis that may arise on your definition of rate of change for a taxogeny between fish and and say turtles. I may choose to support your idea for fish but if I have doubts for frogs I can sequentailly think that similariy is a bigger problem in the actual croc I may think about.

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Originally posted by toff:
Firstly, a couple of definitions, for the purposes of this thread:

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- 'micro' evolution is evolution which occurs within a species/kind; it might operate to make lions faster, over succeeding generations, or give leopards moer spots; it can never produce a leopard that is not a leopard.

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- 'macro' evolution is evolution which changes species/kinds, creating new ones, which are incapable of breeding with their parent species/kind.

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Now, if you are a creationist who (like most, it seems) accepts that 'micro' evolution is not only possible, but observed, but that 'macro' evolution is not possible, could you please explain why? What is there in 'macro' evolution that is impossible, given that 'micro' evolution is possible? Why cannot a large number of 'micro' evolutionary changes result in a 'macro' evolutionary change?

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Oh, and if you're going to cite some sort of inter-species boundary which evolution cannot cross, please cite some sort of evidence for such a thing. "We've never seen it happen" is not evidence that it cannot, or does not, happen.

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actually you pretty much said it yourself. micro-evolution can never produce a leopard that isnt a leopard. Micro evolution is natural selection and is based on already existing traits within the species, i dont consider micro evolution to be evolution at all. Macro-evolution would never happen because why would an organism produce offspring uncapable of breeding with anything? because it felt like it? because it randomly happened? even if macro evolution did occur what would it breed with? nothing. if it could still breed with its owns species than thats only natural selection because evolution requires speciation. thats my take on it.------------------
"Overspecialize and you breed in weakness" -"Major" Motoko Kusanagi

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[This message has been edited by KingPenguin, 03-22-2002]

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Originally posted by KingPenguin:
actually you pretty much said it yourself. micro-evolution can never produce a leopard that isnt a leopard. Micro evolution is natural selection and is based on already existing traits within the species, i dont consider micro evolution to be evolution at all. Macro-evolution would never happen because why would an organism produce offspring uncapable of breeding with anything? because it felt like it? because it randomly happened? even if macro evolution did occur what would it breed with? nothing. if it could still breed with its owns species than thats only natural selection because evolution requires speciation. thats my take on it.

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Hi KP: I think you may be a bit confused about certain concepts. Although you're right that NS operates on existing traits within a population (actually, it operates on the phenotype of an individual organism, but close enough), you seem to be equating macroevolution with saltation (Goldschmitt's "hopeful monster"). Evolution doesn’t proceed by sudden leaps — saltation — in major morphology. The basic reason is that the larger the effect of a given mutation, the more likely it will be deleterious — and kill the mutant. That’s not to say small mutations can’t have a deleterious effect on the organism, just that large ones would be almost invariably fatal. What normally happens is that a small mutation occurs in a population, splitting the species into two different varieties. Now if these two varieties lived close by one another, the odds are that they would interbreed, and the mutation would be suppressed or eliminated. Allele frequency tends to be pretty hard to budge once fixed in a population. However, what would happen if a portion of the population carrying the mutation were to become geographically isolated from the parent population? The mutation, if it provides a net survival advantage in the new area, will rapidly become fixed in the new population. In addition, both populations continue to change due to environmental conditions, or even chance (genetic recombination, additional mutations, etc leading to changes in allelic frequency in both populations). If the two populations are reunited eventually, and they don’t interbreed, then we can say they are in fact two distinct species. The longer they are apart, the more differences we would expect.Here’s the catch: from observation of living ecosystems, we see that the heaviest competition occurs between very closely related species. In the above allopatric speciation case, the species that is best adapted to the current environment is likely to survive, while the other goes extinct. Guess what this would most look like in the fossil record? The sudden miraculous appearance of a new species.Alternatively, the parent species may no longer be living in the region when members of the daughter species return. Climatic conditions, new predators, disease, or whatever may have either killed the parent species or forced it to move away. It disappears from the fossil record. The daughter species, which because of the vagaries of fossilization didn’t get into the record before (or hasn’t been found), is now miraculously discovered in the new area. The sudden appearance of a new species.Neither of these changes actually occur overnight. When a paleontologist or biologist talks about sudden, they’re not talking about a year, or a few millenia. Even 100,000 years is barely an eyeblink registry in the geological record. In fact, my geologist friends tell me that it isn’t even always possible to give an absolute date to a strata within even 1 million years (depending on age, obviously). So sudden, in this context, could literally mean millions of years. Voila, your lack of saltation — fossils found at a given geological site will not exhibit gradual series of small morphological changes if the evolution happened somewhere else.(Just a bit of evidence to show I’m not making this up: there are fossils of relatively modern hippos and lions in England dated to ~120,000 ya. Obviously, there are none living there now. Did hippos go extinct? No, their descendants moved south when the English weather turned too cold for them at the start of the last ice age series. If they don’t fossilize in Africa, a future paleontologist could logically (albeit erroneously) say they went extinct during the Pleistocene!)As a final note: you seem to share the common (not just with creationists, btw) misconception that nomenclature has some intrinsic reality (the name of the thing is the thing) when it comes to changes in classifications (like genus, order, family, etc). I'm sure you know scientists classify life based on species, genus, etc. I'm also sure you're aware that these classifications are how scientists show relatedness. What isn't immediately obvious (although it would be if you think about it), is that all these different hierarchies are simply larger or smaller groups of species - which is itself simply a group of related organisms. A genus is a bunch of species that are really closely related - sharing some traits, being different in others. Familes are a group of genera, etc. All these categories are simply names given to ever-larger groupings of related species - nothing more. IOW, any mechanisms (say, natural selection) working at the population or species level will axiomatically operate in identical fashion at the level of a class or even phylum, etc. Why? Because a phylum is simply a very large grouping of species that share some common trait (such as a spinal cord). So when scientists talk about transitions between, say, orders, especially within the fossil record, they're saying they've found a species that shares traits across order boundaries (which, with the relatively new science of cladistics, really gets blurry anyway). In short, they're merely describing the relative closeness of members of two species. There isn't some mystical barrier based on taxonomic nomenclature. It's just two different species - more or less related - and ultimately identical to comparisons between two living species of hare (say, between Lepus arctus and Lepus townseii). So although the trick (and lots of glorious arguments among paleontologists) is to determine, based on morphology, just how related two temporally separated fossils are, if they share enough traits we can be fairly confident that they are related. Hope this helps to show what we're trying to describe when we talk about macroevolution showing change in higher taxa (above species). Taxonomic classifications don't refer to a "begat" like in the Bible, they represent a relationship between two groups of species (and ultimately between two individual specimens). An abstract description with no ability to cause or prevent anything - including so-called "macroevolution".

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Originally posted by KingPenguin:
actually you pretty much said it yourself. micro-evolution can never produce a leopard that isnt a leopard.

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But according to creationist "baraminologists," leopards, lions, tigers and other cats share common ancestry:
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/sum35_1.htmlSo if microevolution can't cause that to happen, what did?

Bump