Macroevolution and the distinction between microevolution/macroevolution are creationist fantasies

My position (PRO) is that the entire concept of micro-evolution vs. macro-evolution is simply nothing more than feeble attempts by creationists to obfuscate the bigger picture of evolution. Biologists, for decades now, have had competing views on the differences between the two until collectively the entire concept has been thrown out. The fact that we all still know the words from our High School Biology classes is more an attestation to the lousiness of our education system, the terrible news sources that prefer to show us police chases every night rather than more relevant discoveries (there were TWO NEW TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS ANNOUNCED IN THE LAST 8 DAYS ALONE) and how backwards our grasp of current science really is. In the scientific community, as I will clearly expose, the arguments ended a long time ago. My opponent is still stuck in his creationist vision of the world where micro-macro exist and yet simultaneously macro is not viable. Make no mistake, readers: He is a creationist openly ridiculing the entire concept of evolution here. First of all, let's all reread CON's arguments: From a book entitled Macroevolution: Pattern and Process: "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid." (4) "The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolutioncan be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No." (5) These statements are lifted word for word from a CREATIONIST website which is clearly making statements that favor creationist concepts and attempt to debunk the very existence of evolution, and especially the entire concept of Macroevolution. It appears to me that my opponent has done nothing more than searched for the word "macroevolution" and then blindly posted several links and quotes without ever reading his own choices. There are several more passages in his self-deprecating diatribe which do absolutely nothing to help his cause, but in fact openly seem to not only further my side of the argument by an order of magnitude simply by going completely around the entire concept of negating the difference between microevolution and macroevolution (which is my position), but by going straight to the sublimely ridiculous nether region known as "creation science" where evolution in its entirety is a MYTH and macroevolution is nonexistent?! AaronRa to the rescue: http://www.youtube.com... http://www.youtube.com... You can frequently hear creationists argue how they accept microevolution but not macroevolution — one common way to put it is to say that dogs may change to become bigger or smaller, but they never become cats. Therefore, microevolution may occur within the dog species, but macroevolution never will. There are a few problems with these terms, especially in the manner that creationists use them. The first is quite simply that when scientists do use the terms microevolution and macroevolution, they don’t use them in the same way as creationists. The terms were first used in 1927 by the Russian entomologist Iurii Filipchenko in his book on evolution “Variabilität und Variation”. However, they remain in relatively limited use today. You can find them in some texts, including biology texts, but in general most biologists simply don’t pay attention to them. Why? Because for biologists, there is no relevant difference between microevolution and macroevolution. Both happen in the same way and for the same reasons, so there is no real reason to differentiate them. The “common sense” difference between the two, and I’m sure we all remember our High School Biology class when I say this, is the amount of time between the two. The problem with using “time” as the differentiator is that there is no clear definition between the amount of time for micro or the amount of time for macro, and even if it were defined, it would vary greatly from example to example, from species to species, and would continuously have to be edited and changed in light of more and more fossils being uncovered, which could wedge themselves between any two examples (for example, when going from archaeopteryx to the first birds, and finding 23 more transitional fossils between and before archaeopteryx just a few decades later). When biologists do use different terms, it is simply for descriptive reasons. When creationists use the terms, however, it is for ontological reasons — this means that they are trying to describe two fundamentally different processes. The essence of what constitutes microevolution is, for creationists, different from the essence of what constitutes macroevolution. Creationists act as if there is some magic line between microevolution and macroevolution, but no such line exists as far as science is concerned. Macroevolution is merely the result of a lot of microevolution over a long period of time. To put this in perspective, let’s imagine the “evolution” of the car. Throughout the process, from the very first horse carriage to the latest Ferrari, there were small improvements (sometimes relatively large ones) from one model to the next one, and clearly from one model to the next a great deal of similarity exists. If we were to look at an Egyptian carriage vs. a Daimler motorcar from the early 20th Century, with a time difference of several thousand years, one could easily be forgiven for believing that they are completely different objects with completely different jobs, different design methodologies, etc. The fact is that they were all engineered in a similar manner, using “design – test – improve” methods (i.e. six-sigma) over many manufacturing cycles, and for reasons that are essentially similar (moving people and material). In other words, creationists are appropriating scientific terminology which has specific and limited meaning, but they are using it in a broader and incorrect manner. This is a serious but unsurprising error — creationists misuse scientific terminology on a regular basis. A second problem with the creationist use of the terms microevolution and macroevolution is the fact that the definition of what constitutes a species is not consistently defined. This can complicate the boundaries which creationists claim exist between microevolution and macroevolution. After all, if one is going to claim that microevolution can never become macroevolution, it would be necessary to specify where the boundary is which supposedly cannot be crossed. "Creationists' view of microevolution is similar to that of evolutionary biologists, but the two groups understand macroevolution very differently. Creationists accept micro evolutionary processes affecting genetic variation of populations, and most also accept speciation, or the branching of a lineage into reproductively isolated groups. After all, both have been observed within the last few hundred years, and at least the speciation issue is NECESSARY for the whole “Noah’s Ark” story to even be partially palatable. But creationists take literally the evolutionary biologists' definition of macroevolution as "evolution above the species level," and infer that major groups of living things such as phyla and classes — the upper taxonomic levels characterized by body plan differences — have a qualitatively different history than lower levels such as populations and species. Yes folks, this is where we get to hear CON tell us all about what a “KIND” is, just like all his other creationist brothers have attempted for eons now. http://www.youtube.com... They view the distinguishing features of phyla and classes as appearing suddenly, denying that such structures as segments, appendages, exoskeletons and the like could evolve through micro evolutionary processes. Their definition of macroevolution thus overlaps only slightly with that of evolutionary biologists because they concentrate only on the emergence of new body plans or major features which distinguish "major kinds" of living things. Effectively, macroevolution to creationists equates to the inference of common ancestry, which they reject. Their view is that because God created living things as separate "kinds," major groups and the features distinguishing them could not have come about through natural processes, micro evolutionary or otherwise. Their position is "micro yes, macro no."" The problem is that creationists give no criterion for identifying "kinds" (do they correspond to the biological genus? The family? Are all flies members of one kind, or of different kinds?), so we cannot judge what they see as the limits to evolutionary change. But creationists all agree on one thing: Homo sapiens is a "kind" by itself, and therefore must have been created. Yet there is nothing in either the theory or data from evolution implying that evolutionary change could be limited: as far as we can see, macroevolution is simply microevolution extended over a long period of time. Why Evolution Is True, Jerry A. Coyne Evolution vs. Creationism An Introduction, Eugenie C. Scott http://www.youtube.com... In conclusion: Micro and macro evolution are the same thing. They are a shortcut method employed by our “wonderful” staff of educators to explain the infinite variety of evolution, and how all things still remain interconnected. The concept is not science, it has become nothing more than a folk-tale reiterated by creationists in order to be able to get to step #2, which is to then attempt to dispel macroevolution (aka: Evolution) altogether. There are no chemical, machanical, or even logical differences between the two EXCEPT their use by creationists.