is that big of a stretch?

Question

if one were to believe in micro evolution is it really that big of a stretch to think that macro evolution is possible? if so then why?


now don't yell at me i don't believe in it ..... it's just a question

Answer 1

Of course it's possible. And I think you are a product of it. WHy not? I don'tsee why Christian and the like really think that God in all his supposed infinite wisdom and power would go about creating all this in just a few shotr days or years. Maybe if he is out there watching he is watching how we grow and evolve. It would be more interesting that way don't you think? Really is arrogantof man to think a god going poof there is man made in it's likeness. Maybe god is evolving too. Now that would be Super Macro Evolution. HA ha

Answer 2

Totally. They are one and the same. It is just that most people don't put the thought into it. The first time I had an original thought like that my dad caught me thinking, smacked me upside the head, and told me idleness was the devil's work shop. He thought I was idle because he couldn't see me moving. Little did he know. The universe is made of galaxies are made of solar systems, that include planets like Earth that is made of the spheres, like the biosphere that is made of various plants and animals, that includes humans that are made of organs that are made of cells etc. You get the point. I do, too, believe that if your body can adapt to injury and disease, and can pass info on through genes (like my son having his father's eyes), the body can also pass on info that it has learned and adapted to. Evolution can also be social, but that's another topic.
PS my original thought was my first inkling that there couldn't have simply been God and the void, because you can't make something from nothing. So eventually, after a few years of studying this, the first tenant of my own beliefs became "There's no such thing as nothing. Everything That Exists has always existed in some form or another."

Answer 3

Yes. Micro evolution is change in a species. Macro is change in a species to result in a completely new kind of animal. It's like this: If I am in the sun, my white skin will change (micro evolution). But I will never become a lizard. Sorry.

Answer 4

don't even bother man. They just don't get it. Until something changes from a fish to a dog in front of thier eyes (an utterly ridiculous notion BTW) they still won't believe.
They can't understand and so they choose to believe that it's not true.

Answer 5

Yoda Green is correct. . . a fish changing to a dog IS a rediculous notion.

Simply can't happen.

Answer 6

Well, obviously, people will believe what they want to believe.
The question should be, where does one go to find the Truth?

Answer 7

Here are three definitions......I believe we continue to evolve........as I am not into the religious idealism we are asked to believe by some sections of society.



Microevolution

Microevolution is the occurrence of small-scale changes in allele frequencies in a population, over a few generations, also known as change at or below the species level.

These changes may be due to several processes: mutation, natural selection, gene flow, and genetic drift.

Population genetics is the branch of biology that provides the mathematical structure for the study of the process of microevolution. Ecological genetics concerns itself with observing microevolution in the wild. Typically, observable instances of evolution are examples of microevolution; for example, bacterial strains that have antibiotic resistance.

Microevolution can be contrasted with macroevolution; which is the occurrence of large-scale changes in gene frequencies, in a population, over a geological time period (i.e. consisting of lots of microevolution). The difference is largely one of approach. Microevolution is reductionist, but macroevolution is holistic. Each approach offers different insights into evolution.

Because microevolution can be observed directly, creationists agree that it occurs, though they tend to make a distinction between microevolution, macroevolution, and speciation.




Macroevolution

Macroevolution refers to evolution that occurs above the level of species, which is microevolution over long periods of time that leads to speciation. In contrast, microevolution refers to smaller evolutionary changes (described as changes in allele frequencies) within a species. In the Modern Synthesis school of thought, microevolution is the "normal" mode of evolution. The process of speciation (isolated populations) is the link between macroevolution and microevolution, and it can fall within the purview of either. Paleontology, evolutionary developmental biology, and comparative genomics contribute most of the evidence for the patterns and processes that can be classified as macroevolution.

Macroevolution is controversial in two ways:

It is disputed among biologists whether there are macroevolutionary processes that are not described by classical population genetics. One of these two views is becoming less and less tenable as the role for genome-wide changes and developmental processes in evolution become clearer.
A misunderstanding about this biological controversy has allowed the concept of macroevolution to be coopted by creationists. They use this controversy as a supposed "hole" in the evidence for deep-time evolution.
However, microevolution and macroevolution both refer fundamentally to the same thing, changes in gene frequencies, and the scientific controversy is only about how those changes predominantly occur. Either way macroevolution uses the same mechanisms of change as those already observed in microevolution.

Research Topics
Some examples of subjects whose study falls within the realm of macroevolution:

The debate between punctuated equilibrium and gradualism
Speciation and extinction rates
Mass extinctions
Adaptive radiations such as The Cambrian Explosion
Changes in biodiversity through time
The role of development in shaping evolution, particularly such topics as heterochrony and developmental plasticity
Genomic evolution, like horizontal gene transfer, genome fusions in endosymbioses, and adaptive changes in genome size

History of macroevolution
The debate over the relationship between macroevolution and microevolution has been going on since the 1860s, when evolution first became a widely accepted idea following the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species.

The first theory of macroevolution, Lamarckism, developed by biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, asserted that individuals develop traits they use and lose traits they do not use, and that individuals pass the acquired traits onto their offspring. Lamarck asserted that when environmental changes changed the "needs" of a species, which caused it to develop different traits, leading to the transmutation of species.

Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, popularly known as the "father of modern genetics" for his discovery of the laws of genetic variation in his study of natural variation in plants, believed that the laws of inheritance provided no grounds for macroevolution. In a lecture on March 8, 1865, Mendel noted that his research described the mechanism of microevolution, but gave no grounds for belief in macroevolution, saying "No one will seriously maintain that in the open country the development of plants is ruled by other laws than in the garden bed. Here, as there, changes of type must take place if the conditions of life be altered, and the species possesses the capacity of fitting itself to its new environment. [However,] nothing justifies the assumption that the tendency to form varieties increases so extraordinarily that the species speedily lose all stability, and their offspring diverge into an endless series of extremely variable forms." To the contrary, he said, the tendency is toward stability, with variation being the exception, not the rule. (Henig, 141)

Darwin, on the other hand, saw no fundamental difference between microevolution and macroevolution. He asserted that "Certainly no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between species and sub-species — that is, the forms which in the opinion of some naturalists come very near to, but do not quite arrive at, the rank of species: or, again, between subspecies and well-marked varieties, or between lesser varieties and individual differences. These differences blend into each other by an insensible series; and a series impresses the mind with the idea of an actual passage." (Darwin, 77)

Although Mendel's laws of inheritance were published as early as 1866, his theory was generally overlooked until the early twentieth century, in part because it was published in an obscure journal and by someone from outside the mainstream scientific community. Darwin himself never read of Mendel's work, and his own proposed mechanism for inherited traits, pangenesis, was more useful for statisticians of the biometric school than it was for biologists. Darwin had discovered a variation ratio of 2.4:1 in a study of snapdragons which he published in 1868, similar to the 3:1 ratio that led Mendel to discover the laws of genetic variation. However, Darwin was not sure of its ultimate meaning. (Henig, 143) After the rediscovery of Mendel's laws in 1900, the statisticians and biologists argued against each other until they were reconciled by the work of R.A. Fisher in the 1930s.

In the late 1930s, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky devised the Modern evolutionary synthesis. In bringing macroevolution and microevolution to the English language, wrote "we are compelled at the present level of knowledge reluctantly to put a sign of equality between the mechanisms of macro- and microevolution" (Dobzhansky, 12). Some have argued that he was reluctant to equate macro- and microevolution because it went against the beliefs of his mentor, Filipchenko, who was an orthogenetist, and of the opinion that micro- and macroevolution were of a different mechanism and calibre. (Burian, 1994). From the writings of Dobzhansky, the modern synthesis view of evolution grew to its present prominence.

With the discovery of the structure of DNA and genes, genetic mutation gained acceptance as the mechanism of variance in the 1960s. This developing theory of evolution was then called the modern evolutionary synthesis, which remains prominent today. The synthetic model of evolution equated microevolution and macroevolution, asserting that the only difference between them was one of time and scale.

A few non-Darwinian evolutionists remained, however, including Schmalhausen and Waddington, who argued that the processes of macroevolution are different from those of microevolution. According to these scientists, macroevolution occurs, but is restricted by such proposed mechanisms as developmental constraints. The concept can be summarized in: "Schmalhausen's Law," which holds that "When organisms are living within their normal range of environment, perturbations in the conditions of life and most genetic differences between individuals have little or no effect on their manifest physiology and development, but that under severe and unusual general stress conditions even small environmental and genetic differences have major effects." Non-Darwinian evolution points to evidence of great changes in population under conditions of stress; however, it is generally rejected by the scientific community because it provides no mechanism for larger changes at a genetic level under those circumstances. For a discussion of Schmalhausen's theory of "canalization," see this article.

In the late 1970's, Stephen J. Gould challenged the synthesis model of evolution, and proposed a punctuated equilibrium model, whereby major evolutionary changes took place in limited gene pools after radical climate changes. He said, "I well remember how the synthetic theory [of evolution] beguiled me with its unifying power when I was a graduate student in the mid-1960's. Since then I have been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution.....I have been reluctant to admit it — since beguiling is often forever — but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory, as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." (Paleobiology, Vol.6, 1980, p. 120).

Despite his rejection of the synthetic theory, however, he asserted that "Evolutionary theory is now enjoying this uncommon vigor. Yet amidst all this turmoil no biologist has been led to doubt the fact that evolution occurred; we are debating how it happened. We are all trying to explain the same thing: the tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy. Creationists pervert and caricature this debate by conveniently neglecting the common conviction that underlies it, and by falsely suggesting that evolutionists now doubt the very phenomenon we are struggling to understand."

Creationism
Though the details of macroevolution are debated within the scientific community, it is widely accepted. Macroevolution is largely disputed by many creationism and intelligent design advocates. Generally speaking, these groups differentiate between microevolution and macroevolution, asserting that the former is an undeniably observable phenomenon, but that the latter is not. They have proposed a number of limits beyond which they assert evolution cannot occur. Proponents of Intelligent design argue that the mechanisms of evolution are incapable of giving rise to instances of specified complexity and irreducible complexity. Proponents of creation biology assert that life was originally created in a finite number of discrete created kinds beyond which and between which no evolution can occur. The argument being that the dominant source of biological change is population isolation, genetic drift and mutation which causes the loss of the diversity of the original kinds and genetic information, rather than an increase of genetic diversity through mutation or other evolutionary mechanisms.


Evolutionary biology

Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change, multiplication, and diversity over time. One who studies evolutionary biology is known as an evolutionary biologist, or less formally, an evolutionist.

Evolutionary biology is an interdisciplinary field because it includes scientists from a wide range of both field and lab oriented disciplines. For example, it generally includes scientists who may have a specialist training in particular organisms such as mammalogy, ornithology, or herpetology, but use those organisms as case studies to answer general questions in evolution. It also generally includes paleontologists and geologists who use fossils to answer questions about the tempo and mode of evolution, as well as theoreticians in areas such as population genetics. In the 1990s developmental biology made a re-entry into evolutionary biology from its initial exclusion from the modern synthesis through the study of evolutionary developmental biology.

Its findings feed strongly into new disciplines that study mankind's sociocultural evolution and evolutionary behavior. Evolutionary biology's frameworks of ideas and conceptual tools are now finding application in the study of a range of subjects from computing to nanotechnology.

Artificial life is a subfield of Bioinformatics that attempts to model, or even recreate, the evolution of organisms as described by evolutionary biology. Usually this is done through mathematics and computer models.

History
Main article: History of evolutionary thought
Evolutionary biology as an academic discipline in its own right emerged as a result of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s, however, that a significant number of universities had departments that specifically included the term evolutionary biology in their titles. In the United States, as a result of the rapid growth of molecular and cell biology, many universities have split (or aggregated) their biology departments into molecular and cell biology-style departments and ecology and evolutionary biology-style departments (which often have subsumed older departments in paleontology, zoology and the like).

Microbiology has recently developed into an evolutionary discipline. It was originally ignored due to the paucity of morphological traits and the lack of a species concept in microbiology. Now, evolutionary researchers are taking advantage our extensive understanding of microbial physiology, the ease of microbial genomics, and the quick generation time of some microbes to answer evolutionary questions. Similar features have led to progress in viral evolution, particularly for bacteriophage.