One of the things that is most commonly seen amongst the creationist community is the notion of microevolution, which states that evolution on a small scale, limited to mostly simpler organisms, does happen. Often, the term macroevolution is associated with this and says that large creatures can’t do the same.
The human body is made up of so many smaller cells, and bacteria works for us in so many ways… It’s hard to imagine that this supposed microevolution couldn’t happen for say… a few million years… and produce an entirely new species. At least it’s hard for me to imagine that.
But there’s an underlying issue here. One that is often overlooked, and one that I’d say many people don’t know about.
Intelligent Design proponents, also known as creationists, neo-creationists, or IDiots, state that organisms have appeared suddenly because certain features about them are too complex to have evolved. In fact, they say that small changes can happen in bigger animals (such as ‘Darwin’s finches’) but that some forms of bacteria can’t develop a flagella ‘motor’.
Overall, their main thing seems to be to deny that anything evolves in any way sometimes and then at other times assert that certain things do evolve. What a confused bunch.
Could this mean that they’re saying what some people want to hear and then coupling it with what they themselves want to hear? Wouldn’t that make them liars? Wouldn’t that make the whole prospect that they push anti-intellectual? Anti-science? Why yes, yes it would!
Let’s look at some examples for a site that is against evolution. First, this:
In case you tuned in late, here’s the simplified background. The flagellum is a little tail that bacteria spin to move from place to place. This little tail is driven by a very complex, incredibly tiny biologic motor. Intelligent Design proponents claim that there is no way such a complex motor could have evolved by chance. The basis of their argument is that all the parts have to be in place and functional for the parts to provide any survival advantage.
Yes. So if this couldn’t have evolved by chance… where does microevolution come in since, arguably, the changes in the DNA themselves are more complex per generation even if the changes aren’t so apparent…?
Source: Flogging the Flagellum
Notably, they never state what they mean by microevolution that I’ve seen yet. They first state the notion of irreducible complexity is true, and never even mention microevolution, even though the flagella ‘motor’ would be a case of microevolution in itself. Its evolution is exactly the same as the macroevolution they claim could occur in ‘Darwin’s finches’ (their beaks)! But yet macroevolution doesn’t happen?
Well, let’s see what another article on the site has to say about microevolution.
Evolution Confusion
This kind of variation is called “microevolution.” Microevolution is a real scientific process, which can (and should) be studied in a laboratory. No creationist organization that we are aware of disputes the reality of microevolution. No creationist organization that we are aware of protests the teaching of microevolution in public schools.
The disagreement is about “macroevolution,” which is an entirely different process. Macroevolution is not just a whole lot of microevolution building up over time. Microevolution is a process that involves the shuffling, and sometimes loss, of genetic information. Macroevolution would require the spontaneous generation of previously non-existent genetic information.
Natural selection can produce limited variation by selecting and combining the most advantageous existing characteristics. Natural selection cannot, however, invent entirely new characteristics from thin air.
Confusion arises because the term “evolution” is used for both microevolution and macroevolution. Evolutionists falsely claim that since microevolution has been proved to be true, macroevolution must be true as well.
Source: One Million Dollars!
Doesn’t it sound like they’re the ones confused? They state that no creationist organization disputes microevolution and then say it doesn’t happen on another article. Foot in mouth, or hook in mouth? Microevolution, as the name implies, pertains to small things. Macroevolution, as the name implies, pertains to large things. Funny is that neither term exists within science and is only laid out by the IDiot community. However, with DNA, not only does it shuffle, but it provably gets added from generation to generation. That’s also been observed! Where do they mention this? They won’t. They have an agenda, and it’s not pure.
As is said a lot: if small changes happen in small things in a short period of time, large changes happen in large things in a long period of time. That’s just how it works.
So let’s have a quick rundown:
- State that evolution doesn’t happen.
- Make sure you state that it doesn’t happen because even simple lifeforms are irreducibly complex.
- Say that it actually does happen…
- …But only by shuffling DNA to make someone grow an ear on their ass…
- …and fail to state that such is not evolution at all.
- Never retract statements on either side.
- Keep promoting both sides.
- Promote to gullible people.
- ???
- Profit!
It’s a confused bunch, must say. Strangely, this is actually something I learned from my lawyer uncle: trap people. Find statements they have made that disagree with other things they’ve said, then make sure they still agree with both. If they do… well… you know what happens next.
The intelligent community seems to be killing themselves to live. Let’s say one thing, then say the exact opposite, then tell both sides when each side is warranted!
Yeah, it’s not working, guys.
An interesting resource on this topic can be found over at TalkOrigins.
Basically, there is an argument for intelligent design that goes like this:
This sounds pretty reasonable, but there’s two problems with it.
Firstly, evolution takes time to happen. Lots and lots of time. It took millions of years for chimps and humans to evolve their seperate paths starting from their common ancestor, and that’s only a 2% change in our DNA. That’s really, really slow. Evolution should only be expected to be observable on geological timescales.
Secondly, despite the fact that we shouldn’t expect to see evolution as it happens, we can see it happening anyway!
At the end of the day, if someone wants to have faith in the literal word of the Bible and if rebranding creationisim as ‘intelligent design’ makes them feel better about it, that’s their business. But it annoys me to no end when these very same people try to pretend that intelligent design is science.
I know I’m just using a straw-man argument to repeat you – but I just thought you might find it interesting. That and I’m waiting for a Bill Hicks skit to download, and needed to kill the time doing something.
No, what they are doing is taking their argument to a gullible public that slept through much of their 9th grade biology. They lost this argument years ago in the halls of science and are creating a populists movement and are using the argument of free speech to get this nonsense back into the schools. I blame the evolutionists for doing a crappy job of popularizing their science and Dawkins is an embarrassment to Darwinism.
Erik John Bertel
Author of Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot and the MillenniumWriting.com Blog
It sounds like you’re on our side but then you go on some tirade about Darwinism, which doesn’t exist. Y’know, the theory of evolution has passed far beyond the realm of what Darwin had to say…
Maybe I just misunderstood what you were saying, but microevolution is not for small creatures and macro for large. Is is over the size of the changes – such as the different types of dogs, but they are all still dogs. No evolution (in the sense of macroevolution or Darwinian evolution) has taken place.
Microevolution and macroevolution are terms not recognized by the scientific community.
Why not?
Because those microevolutions you see in animals such as dogs eventually lead to macroevolutions into new species. But this takes millions of years to happen. A dog is a dog, since we’ve only been breeding them for about 10,000 years.
If you walk one foot per hour you’ll eventually reach a mile.
Evolution works in the same way. Different coats of fur, different strides, different snouts, different teeth, different sizes, different shapes, etc. All of this can be seen within the same species, but eventually if those traits change enough (we’ve made interesting strides from wolves to the chihuahua) we’ll be left with something that isn’t a dog.
This is fact. This is observable.
If you’ve any links to deny this, bring them up and I will destroy them publicly, because I have the science.
These changes have limits. We may be able to observe microevolution and have changes to produce bigger and bigger wows, but we will never get a cow as big as Texas. Roaches may become resistent to a spray, but not to a sledgehammer.
That’s not how evolution works.
You can’t crush roach after roach and then eventually one notices and says, “hey, I should do something to prevent that…”
Instead, what you may have is a unique type of roach that has evolved something like armor (we see this in millipedes, which are a similar and related form of bugs) which would favor the survival of that species.
Or it might not matter and that species gets killed anyway.
Evolution works in respect to the environment. Dinosaurs were so huge because the atmosphere at that time had enough air of the right quality to allow them to grow to gigantic sizes, of course the same goes for the ancestors of the millipedes that were many many feet long and could stand eye to eye with a human being.
If there were a creature so big that it couldn’t even breathe or walk, evolution wouldn’t favor that and it would die out.
That’s the reason many creatures died out and ended their own branch: they weren’t fit to survive in whatever environments, because evolution is random and thus does make negative changes occasionally.
Your argument is an argument of ignorance. You should really read some evolutionary textbooks.
Actually, if we wanted to get pedantic about it the natural selection pressure of random sledgehammer attacks would probably select for roaches that could dodge out of the way of a sledgehammer rather than select for roaches that could withstand the blow if struck.
If the environment is just so hostile that a lifeform can’t possibly survive it, then you’re going to get extinction – not evolution.
And unfortunately, extinction does happen. The reality of extinction is actually a part of our understanding of evolution.