Macroevolution and the distinction between microevolution/macroevolution are creationist fantasies

Irony: The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. Hypocrisy: The practice of professing standards, beliefs, etc. , contrary to one's real character or actual behavior, esp. the pretense of virtue and piety. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you with an act of hypocrisy. Namely, my opponent, who is a self-confessed creationist up and down the halls of YouTube, who apparently favors a world-view in which macroevolution not only exists, but where it is actual, current science, only to be torn down by creationism. “Hypocrisy” because my opponent will (and has in this debate even) just as quickly turn around and proclaim any such part of evolution as non-existent, incompatible with the truth, and impossible to reconcile with his religious beliefs. As many of you may know, if there is one particular part of evolution which is openly opposed in the creationist movement, then it is macro-evolution. Even my opponent has pointed this out in his own sources: James Tour is one such creationist who openly challenges (see the video and the papers laid before you by my opponent) the very notion of macro-evolution. He discusses the issues of macro-evolution in terms of chemistry. Unlike what my opponent eludes to, Tour is NOT, NOR HAS HE EVER BEEN, involved in bio-chemistry. He works and is known for working with nano-structures and non-bio science. And unlike Tour’s own assertions, we do know that Tour signed an Intelligent Design proposition (“A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism”, he’s near the BOTTOM RIGHT of the page) in 2001, and added his name to the list of less than 0.05% of scientists that take issue with evolution. (BTW: That number is actually 0.032%, i. e. eventually 700 “scientists and engineers”). My opponent’s own video has entire sections devoted to Tour rambling on about scripture. When was the last time your own High School science teacher told you biblical phrases to illustrate a point in evolution? How can anyone believe that Tour is not a creationist? I literally had to laugh when I read my opponents assertion that Tour doesn't consider himself one. Did Hitler consider himself a mass-murdering dictator? Facts are facts - Tour is a creationist! The other sources that my opponent has so “carefully” chosen do nothing more than illustrate my points in the earlier rounds: (1) Micro-macro is not accepted by the scientific community anymore. Just read some of the passages that my opponent has chosen, including Simons. Simons, in particular, CLEARLY makes that case. I have shown you two highly regarded, current scientists who differentiate between evolution and micro-macro concepts. They are not the same thing, and according to their statements (and they are not quote mined in onezie-twozie fashion as my opponent continues to) “micro-macro is bid a tierful goodbye”. (2) Micro-macro is mentioned in high-school level text books. Folks, don’t kid yourself: This is not current science! High school texts are often put through a political process – just read about the Texas educational panel and how Creationists, Democrats, and Republicans are continuously attempting to rewrite history, science, and everything in between in an attempt to skew student’s learning to their own views. This is the stuff that makes it into the national headlines – how much more junk sneaks into our books that we don’t know about (or fails to make it, for that matter)? (3) Most of my opponents quotes come from sources more than 10 years old. He is literally stuck in the world of Windows 2000 and the first version of Windows XP (before SP1 and SP2 came out). Guess what, science has “evolved”, and is "still evolving"! My opponent makes the following factually false statements: “James Tour, acclaimed synthetic biochemist, sharply distinguishes between microevolution and macroevolution. ” Actually, CON, he doesn’t. He does the same thing that every creationist does – he sharply denies that macroevolution exists! This is from a creationist website, quoting Tour: “I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me? … Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me. ” I wish you could explain to me exactly, CON, how Tour would like to further your idea that micro-macro evolution exists, when he OPENLY challenges the very notion of macroevolution ever happening? It would be like someone trying to explain the difference between vanilla and chocolate ice cream, and the whole time they adamantly denied the existence of chocolate! ? How can anyone back-paddle from that kind of willful ignorance (yours and Tours, for that matter)? ?? He even says this junk in the video you openly misreported as him stating some kind of advocacy for micro-macro! ?His paper [Simons] details the widely-understood distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. CON, I realize that Simons paper might be a bit difficult to understand and follow - after all he uses difficult concepts and a type of language most of us never read. But in the end - in the conclusion paragraphs of his paper, he makes the difficult concepts easy for us to follow. Guess what, he says EXACTLY what I'm saying. You can keep lying about it all you want (and yes, at this point I'm calling you a liar), but let me show our readers exactly what he says: This paper investigates the repercussions of a point thathas previously been acknowledged yet has been ignored:that selection for a bet-hedging strategy is not a specialcase of the way in which natural selection operates. I haveargued that the principles of bet-hedging theory should beconsidered as relevant not only to a broad range ofmicroevolutionary studies, but may also be appliedhierarchically to macroevolutionary time scales and toall phylogenetic levels. . .. Reddened selective extinctionthat is nonrandom with respect to traits shared at anyphylogenetic level thus results in organisms composed ofstructurally nested traits that have persisted through allenvironmental events occurring over the time periodsince the origin of the trait. The most recently evolvedtraits are most likely – and ancient, deeply embeddedtraits least likely – to be optimal over short time scales. Gould (1980) predicts a new, unified theory that isrooted in a hierarchical view of nature. .. A depiction of evolution basedon environmental unpredictability and trend reversalsoccurring concurrently at all levels of biotic organizationoffers a self-consistent and parsimonious perspective onshort- and long-term evolution, one that should beacceptable to both palaeobiologists and populationgeneticists. . .. Claims of qualitative differences in theprocess of natural selection depending on the severity ofselection events become unnecessary and thereforeshould bid a tierful goobye. Remember - this was YOUR OWN SOURCE! -------------------------------------------- I leave you with the following quote from WIKIPEDIA: “Macroevolution”: “Within the Modern Synthesis school of thought, macroevolution is thought of as the compounded effects of microevolution. Thus, the distinction between micro- and macroevolution is not a fundamental one – the only difference between them is of time and scale. As Ernst W. Mayr observes, "transspecific evolution is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within populations and species. .. it is misleading to make a distinction between the causes of micro- and macroevolution”. However, time is not a necessary distinguishing factor – macroevolution can happen without gradual compounding of small changes; whole-genome duplication can result in speciation occurring over a single generation - this is especially common in plants. Further down, it even has a section on how people like my opponent (creationists) like to kidnap the concept: The term "macroevolution" frequently arises within the context of the evolution/creation debate, usually used by creationists alleging a significant difference between the evolutionary changes observed in field and laboratory studies and the larger scale macroevolutionary changes that scientists believe to have taken thousands or millions of years to occur. They accept that evolutionary change is possible within what they call "kinds" ("microevolution"), but deny that one "kind" can evolve into another ("macroevolution"). Clearly, even WIKIPEDIA shows the problems with macroevolution. The standard High-school definition is good enough for high school kids, but it is not good enough for science. Eugenie Scott and others like her, real biologists working in the evolutionary field, have completely discarded the entire notion of micro-macro evolution. There’s no shame in not knowing that. There is shame in sticking your head in the sand, pretending that “this guy” said this and “that guy” said that when factually they didn’t, or their notions are superseded with new science, or their work is quote-mined with one sentence here or one title there. Shame on CON for doing this, and even still doing it after I’ve pointed it out for all to see. Readers, check my sources. Check my statements. Check CON’s sources and his own statements. He’s stuck in a situation where he has to make “left” look “right”, “up” look “down”, and “lies” look like the “truth”. Or in other words: He’s being a hypocritical creationist (is there any other kind)? The irony in all of this? Here is a creationist debating that macroevolution exists (completely against his own beliefs), and an evolutionist debating that a distinction between micro-macro doesn’t.