Evolution?

Question

Would you agree that while microevolution can be seen and proven that macroevolution is based on circumstantial evidence. It cannot be directly proven or seen?

Answer 1

Microevolution, better known as adaptation, has been demonstrated and documented many times. Macroevolution is the change (over millions or even billions of years) of changes from one species into another, as is believed (by some) to have happened as an ape "evolved" into a man. I don't know of any real documented evidences that support this theory. To back up this theory, there should be many evidences of "partially evolved" species (the famed "missing link" for instance), but as far as I know all of the supposed evidence is fabricated or at least not scientifically provable. There are no examples of a partially developed eye, for example, which makes sense, because the eye is, in scientific terms, irreducibly complex, that is, it cannot have developed by a series of small steps.

Answer 2

No. I would not agree. There are two HUGE things wrong with that statement. First, the definition of 'microevolution vs. macroevolution' that you seem to be using. And second the idea that science divides things between that which can be 'seen and proven' and that which cannot, which completely misunderstands science.

First, the definition of microevolution vs. macroevolution *as used by biologists* is NOT two different and separable *processes*. To biologists they are two different levels of *studying* the same process. Biologists make a distinction ONLY for purposes of study ... there is no such division found in nature itself.

It's like the difference between the words 'microbiology' vs. 'macrobiology' ... this is not a distinction that holds that one exists and the other does not ... it's just that you need a microscope to *study* one and not the other. Or the difference between 'microgrowth' vs. 'macrogrowth' of a tree ... again, we do not look at tree cells under a microscope and say "we see cells dividing, so we can 'see and prove' microgrowth ... but nobody has ever witnessed a redwood tree grow noticeably overnight, so macrogrowth cannot be 'proven or seen'."

In other words, creationists deliberately misinterpret the definitions of 'microevolution' vs. 'macroevolution' as a division in *nature*.


The second problem with the statement is the use of the words 'seen and proven', as if this was some meaningful distinction in science. It is not. There are things we observe directly, and others we observe indirectly ... but they are *both* valid ways of doing science.

For example, how do we know the sun is made of hydrogen? Nobody has ever been to the sun (or ever will). No probe has ever landed on the sun to bring a sample back. Scientists *conclude* the sun is made of hydrogen by *indirect observation* ... looking at the light coming from the sun and analyzing its spectrum to see the unmistakeable signs of hydrogen atoms.

Both microevolution and macroevolution *each* use both direct and indirect observation. Some microevolution takes decades or centuries to occur, and we rely on indirect means to confirm them. And some macroevolution is *directly* observable in a matter of months in a laboratory ... such as the speciation (separation into separate *species*) of fruit flies.

Scientists have indeed shown conclusively that evolution occurs, that is it caused by natural selection and mutation, that it can cause speciation (branching into separate, non-interbreeding species), that it can generate new information in the form of new genes coding for new proteins, that DNA evidence can show common ancestry between any two species of life ... all are as unmistakeable signs of evolution (both micro and macro) as the light from the sun shows unmistakeable signs of hydrogen atoms.


The burden falls on the creationists to show how microevolution *cannot* lead to macroevolution ... that they are separate processes.

Answer 3

Depends on what you mean by macroevolution. Are you talking about the evolution of new taxa? Then the answer is that it can be seen. There was an island formed in the Great Salt lake within historic times. It has a mouse found nowhere else, probably a result of genetic drift.

If you define macroevolution the way Schmalhausen did, then you might be right.

Answer 4

No, I would not, thats like saying micro time can be observed but not macro time. Its the same exact thing, just over longer periods of time.

I personally do not subscribe to this micro/macro business... its an unneccessary and illogical distinction. We have several fossils to document the transitions from many different lifeforms (somewhat odd statement considering every species is a transitional species), I think the arguement that all the species we see, which are now extinct, in the fossil record would seem a crazy arguement if they did not dissappear by adaptation. Or if you believe in a creator, that would indicate a huge lack of foresight on its part, wasting all of those species. Given large amounts of time and habitat isolation, it is the inevitable result that new species will form.

Answer 5

No.

[1] Cumulative microevolutionary changes have been observed many times - like the perrenial examples of antiobiotic-resistant bacteria, cichlids in African lakes, industrial melanism of the peppered moth, and so on.
[2] Speciation - populations that have become unable to interbreed after isolation - has also been observed in the lab and in nature:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

Add [1] to [2] and you have "macroevolution":
The populations can no longer interbreed and will therefore accumulate *different* microevolutionary changes over time.

Answer 6

don't know if this awnsers your question, but i've once read in a respected dutch populair-scientific magizine about a population of lizards, getting split in half, and each put on a diffrent island. one island had higher grass then the other. After a couple of year's they checked the length of the legs of the two population, and concluded that the leggs of the lizards on the long-grass island where on avarage significantly longer

Answer 7

No Macro evolution has also been documented.

This does not mean that an intelligent designer was not involved. The Bible says "God said "Let the earth bring forth the creatures of the sea" That's evolution.

Answer 8

There is no absolute proof that macro evolution is a fact.

Evolution is the part of the creation package. Evolution theory is a theory, bunch of hypothesis.

Answer 9

Evolution is a bunch of garbage, see anything craw out of the water lately and become anything?