"Microevolution" vs. "macroevolution."

Historically what is called microevolution was fully recognized before Darwin, so creos didn't create anything new. The terms came into existence to keep that ancient knowledge in view, which Darwinism otherwise obscures. Domestic breeding makes use of the same principle of selection that Darwin merely applied to nature, only the one is applied intentionally by people, and the other by nature according to principles of survival. This much seems acceptable to both sides. Yes that is what evolutionism says. Evolution insists that these processes are open ended, can continue indefinitely. Creationists say no, that they are limited to the gene pool of a given Species or Kind. As a YEC, I prefer the term variety to species myself, for the sake of clarity. Variety or breed or race are the older terms, which imply genetic variation within a Species or Kind without in any way implying a change in the Species or Kind itself.No, we can't yet define a Kind. But macroevolution, as it is now called in order to avoid confusion, has also not been proved. All that is known for sure about variation in living things, however, has always been known to humanity at least in its rudiments, and this is what is now called microevolution.

That is correct, except for rough categories like Dog, Cat, Horse, Cow etc.Nobody ever thought there could be variation beyond whatever a kind is until Darwin, and all Darwin did was suggest how it might be possible, which was nothing more than observing that the principles of domestic breeding occur haphazardly in nature.Strange though. All that shows is that Kinds vary in Nature too, only haphazardly. Nothing really terribly illuminating if you think about it. There's no more proof that macroevolution is possible by Natural Selection than by Domestic Selection. And really, that's all the ToE is, a suggestion of a possibility and it's now taken for gospel.{ABE: In fact, it seems to me that the controlled forced speeded-up conditions of domestic breeding could prove macroevolution if it really occurs, but in fact what is observed to happen is the reverse of anything in the direction of macroevolution. That is, the more you select, the less genetic potential you have for further breeding, as I've pointed out many times before.}I can't define a Kind to genetic specifications and you can't prove that macroevolution occurs.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-03-2006 01:01 PM

Nobody denies that. It was evidence FOR what you quoted me saying, "how it might be possible, which was nothing more than observing that the principles of domestic breeding occur haphazardly in nature." Evidence for Natural Selection. He did a good job of proving that. But Natural Selection does not prove macroevolution.And since Percy is on my case for taking Wounded's bait about proof (which is what the challenge to define the Kinds is about), I have to point out that this is off-topic according to Percy's reading of the OP.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-03-2006 01:12 PM

The only other actual evidence suggested by Darwin's chapter headings is the fossil record. All the rest must ultimately refer back to natural selection as the mechanism of change. And getting evolution out of the gradations of fossils may look logical but it is only a wild leap to interpret them as proving descent from one of these dead forms to another.Correct me if I'm wrong, but the MECHANISMS considered to lead to macroevolution remain the various forms of selection caused by a variety of environmental circumstances, of which Natural Selection is a specific subset. Really it's just one mechanism, selection by whatever circumstances abide. This is the same mechanism anciently observed and made use of in domestic breeding, and what Darwin did was show its operation in Nature, so the fact remains that if the domestic version didn't prove macroevolution, neither does the natural version.Actually there is not much to say about how the terms are used, is there? I think I said it myself in my first post. All that's left is the usual arguing for and against macroevolution.

I understand Percy. Forgive me, but I know where that point always goes, whether Wounded used the term or not, and it goes to claiming that if we can't define Kinds we have no proof.

OK, yes, that is right, but again, all Darwin did was suggest it as a possibility as it can no more PROVE macroevolution than its counterpart domestic selection can.And the idea of common descent was based only on the weird fact that the fossils appear to be graded in some way approximating the taxonomic tree, isn't that so?This message has been edited by Faith, 04-03-2006 01:47 PM

I have to quit here soon anyway so the offtopicking will end for me then. But you said the idea of common descent was already more or less accepted before Darwin found a mechanism to account for it, didn't you? And I thought that idea derived from the fossil record. If not, then what did it derive from? That's right, which is what I thought was taken for the basis of the idea of common descent. I can't think there's any other source of that idea. Yes, and I lump all the forms of selection together myself, as I think they all really amount to the same thing in the end (whether domestic or natural or sexual, or even all the ways populations are split by migration or bottleneck etc, all that is really just a way of selecting out types from other types). All these mechanisms do no more than domestic selection does as far as "evolving" a species into many varieties.But again, I thought your point was that the idea of common descent was already in place. And, apart from where that idea came from, my answer is that Darwin's mechanism of natural selection doesn't prove it in any case, any more than domestic selection does.

I was trying to say that most of those could be grouped either under selection or under the fossil record. Geographical distribution can be grouped under selection for instance. But you're right, he covered more kinds of evidence than just selection.The ToE has always been considered to be dependent upon Natural Selection as its driving force, as what makes macroevolution possible, which was what they were all crying out for in the days of Darwin -- a mechanism by which it might be possible. So he gave them natural selection, but, and as I said, that no more proves common descent than domestic selection does. It remains a suggestion of a possibility.Actually, hybridism couldn't prove macroevolution. Like selection we see it in breeding. Geographical distribution couldn't prove macroevolution. Ditto.Seems to me nothing in Darwin's chapter headings could be a proof of evolution, and since the mechanism of natural selection, on which so much seemed to depend at the time, proves no more than domestic selection does, and in fact less since it's a less controlled process, I see no proof of macroevolution whatever in any of that.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-03-2006 02:23 PM

OK. Last post was written before seeing your admin warning.Good luck keeping it off proof.

I'll have to go back over it but the idea of a single line of *evidence* was misspeaking if that's what I said. My point was that Natural Selection was supposed to be THE SINGLE MECHANISM that made evolution WORK, made it possible. Mechanism, not evidence. There may be a number of lines of evidence, such as the fossil record or vestigial organs and so on, but only this one mechanism.And I suppose this is off topic too, but that truly is what I meant. I didn't mean to suggest just one kind of evidence for evolution and if I fell into that way of thinking I was wrong.{ABE: OK, I went back to the original statement and here's what I said: I suppose the problem might have occurred with the phrase "all Darwin did" but I meant in relation to explaining how evolution could have occurred in nature, not in terms of the range of evidence he considered for evolution. And as I understand it his answer to HOW was Natural Selection, and my answer is that domestic selection ought to do as good or better a job of demonstrating macroevolution then, and since it doesn't Natural Selection certainly remains no more than the mere suggestion of a possibility about how macroevolution COULD have occurred.}This message has been edited by Faith, 04-03-2006 03:05 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 04-03-2006 03:06 PM

I'm glad you now understand what I meant to say. Just to clarify again, it wasn't so much that it "argues against" cross-kind change (unless that is perhaps implied) as that since it can be strictly controlled to produce variations faster than most natural processes do, it ought to be the standard, and if macroevolution cannot be proved by domestic selection then it can't be proved by natural selection either. Yes, again I misspoke. I knew that but I had in mind the general public or the Zeitgeist, not the few thinkers who had that idea. Now everybody thinks it. Darwin changed the world by coming up with the mechanism that could possibly make macroevolution happen (even if as I said it is really no better as a mechanism for that purpose than domestic selection already was).This message has been edited by Faith, 04-03-2006 04:42 PM

Yes, of course. That is the theory. But my argument is about what it would take to PROVE it, and since we are at a disadvantage in that we cannot witness the supposed changes over those aeons of time, my point was that even with this possible mechanism for it that Darwin supplied, it brought him no closer to an actual proof that (macro)evolution had occurred than we'd been without it. I don't think time can affect the principle involved. Microevolutionary variations don't automatically become macroevolutionary ones simply with the introduction of lots of time. This is an assumption of the ToE but there is no proof for it. We've always known about the micro level variations. As for intentionality I don't think that affects my point. I'm only talking about the processes of change, and any change that survives and reproduces, whatever particular mechanisms brought it about (natural selection is hardly the only one -- all the population splitting events do the same), serves the point. Yes, and I thoroughly enjoyed Darwin's reasoning when I first read the book, and that part of his work is valid. However, all he observed was the already familiar processes of what is now called "microevolution" via natural selection. He did not prove macroevolution, he simply had the intuition that natural selection would be the mechanism that would allow it, if it occurs. But there is no reason yet to think it occurs.To summarize: Time cannot possibly guarantee the kind of changes postulated, and intention is just one more way change is established, and as long as the change survives and reproduces it's all the same thing for the purpose of my argument.-------------------------
By the way, Omni, I still plan to send you some CDs from the theology class. Sorry it's taking so long. It may be three, it may be five.PS: Sorry to hear about your harrowing brush with death and glad you came through it.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-05-2006 06:51 PM

Thousands of years do it for me. And yes, it would take astronomical amounts of time if we explain it all as evolution does, but that doesn't PROVE it happened that way. Actually NO amount of time would suffice. That's the real objection to the time scenario. CAN, but excuse me if I have to say that I find the Flood sufficient explanation for the landscape changes you mention. Yes, and given the science of his day that was all a great contribution. And I can see why it dazzled everybody. But in the end there is nothing in all his work that proves that evolution actually happened. He proved that selective processes work in nature and account for the great variety we observe, and genetics has shown the way it happens internally. But none of that proves macroevolution. All of that is quite consistent with microevolution, or the ordinary processes by which it has always been known that life forms are capable of change, but it doesn't get you one notch closer to macroevolution.And I have no problem at all explaining the fossils and the extinct species by the Flood, and the new "species" by microevolution.
. But all of that is quite consistent with microevolution, or the ordinary processes by which it has always been known that life forms are capable of change, but it doesn't get you one notch closer to macroevolution. And I mean no disrespect when I say that the evidence that appears overwhelming to you has been seriously rejected by me and not out of hand. I was already frustrated long before I became a Christian with the answer "time, time and more time" I always got to my serious doubts about how evolution could possibly work. Because if it can't work it can't work, and aeons of time isn't going to make something work that just can't work.The main objection I always had was that evolution seems to imply a teleology. This is denied, but what the theory actually posits seems to imply it. How do you get anything at all that functions, let alone functions in the complex ways living things function, out of a process that randomly affects genetic material? My doubts tended to focus on the increments of development that would have to occur before you had a fully functioning organism or organ, the millions of years of stubby-to-middling antlers before the five-point stag could exist for instance (I spent hours thinking about the evolutionary requirements to arrive at the antlers mounted on the wall at a place I was visiting once when I was 20. I wasn't a Christian until I was 45). And since those degrees of antlerdom wouldn't be lethal, why aren't there a bazillion of similar kinds of increments of development across many different species found in the fossil record? Why does everything appear finished? The number of mistakes before you got a viable option would have to be beyond astronomical. It boggles the mind to think of blind evolution coming up with the most rudimentary organized creature. And all you guys can say back is, well, it doesn't boggle YOU, it just had to have happened.And the genetic system itself from which all this develops would have had to have been formed by the same means. That alone would have had to take a few bazillion years of trial and error. But I know this is a familiar objection, and basically is the same question as How much time would it take a million monkeys to type the works of Shakespeare? Answer: It can't happen. And that will just be dismissed as "the argument from incredulity" as if that means anything. I know you guys think the evidence is there. I don't, and I didn't before I had a reason to "{reject} it out of hand for philosophical or theological reasons." Long answer but the point is no, I'm not dismissing it out of hand.On another note, wondering if the experience of your mother's presence did anything to influence your ideas concerning the supernatural?

But you aren't starting with pennies, you are starting with all the atoms in the universe from which you need to get very specific combinations. Calculate the probability of getting DNA from that.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-06-2006 03:27 PM

As I've said before, I see the evidence for the flood almost everywhere I look. I guess I needed to specify that I was using the term "species" in the sense of "varieties" of a Kind. All the Kinds were represented on the ark, but many varieties that had microevolved to that point were drowned. So there would have been two cats on the ark but a whole bunch of types of cats would have perished -- sabre-toothed tiger for instance. Or if tiger is a Kind unto itself then the sabre-toothed variety of that Kind perished. The word is very problematic for a creationist. That definition doesn't define anything but a variety of a Kind to a creationist. We'd happily use the term for a Kind except the evolutionists are using it to mean something else. Yes I'm saying that and it's nonmacro because it's still the same Kind and will never lead to anything but that Kind. Also, the great change you are talking about is usually accompanied by a reduction in genetic possibilities which in some cases is what confines the creature to its own population. There is nothing "macro" about that condition.