11th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism: Macro Evolution
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 1:00 am
I wrote about this topic a bit in this thread:
http://www.booktalk.org/yes-evolution-t ... l?start=15
Where someone suggested that macro-evolution has never been seen.
Really, macro-evolution is a largely un-necessary term. All evolution is only ever micro-evolution. Meaning minute changes caused by reproduction and changes in genetic code. Nothing too drastic ever really takes place to the point where something so un-like the parents comes from a birth that they are a differen thing entirely. Your children will always look a lot like you, and necessarily they will be the same kind of animal that you are.
It is only through long chains of successive generations that changes emerge to the point that a new kind of animal, distinct and unable to cross breed with the original species emerges. This is the practical barrier that people like to label macro-evolution. Speciation, or the divergence of sister descendants until they are no longer able to interbreed.
All that really is though is micro-evolution acumulated over time. There is no macro-evolutionary event. No birth of the cross-species monster, born of two different beasts but different from both. That's only ever seen in horror movies where some lady has the child of the devil and a monster emerges, or from anti-science denialists who claim the only way to confirm evolution is if a duck gives birth to a snake.
But a duck giving birth to a snake is definitely not what macro-evolution is, nor is that kind of thing even remotely permitted by the laws of evolution.
As Aron points out, this would be the exact kind of result which would DISPROVE evolution, not make the case FOR it.