There is much misinformation about these two words, and yet, understandingthem is perhaps the crucial prerequisite for understanding thecreation/evolution issue.
Macroevolution refers to major evolutionary changes over time, the origin ofnew types of organisms from previously existing, but different, ancestraltypes. Examples of this would be fish descending from an invertebrateanimal, or whales descending from a land mammal. The evolutionary conceptdemands these bizarre changes. Microevolution refers to varieties within a given type. Change happenswithin a group, but the descendant is clearly of the same type as theancestor. This might better be called variation, or adaptation, but thechanges are "horizontal" in effect, not "vertical." Such changes might beaccomplished by "natural selection," in which a trait within the presentvariety is selected as the best for a given set of conditions, oraccomplished by "artificial selection," such as when dog breeders produce anew breed of dog. The small or microevolutionary changes occur by recombining existing geneticmaterial within the group. As Gregor Mendel observed with his breedingstudies on peas in the mid 1800's, there are natural limits to geneticchange. A population of organisms can vary only so much. What causesmacroevolutionary change? Genetic mutations produce new genetic material, but do these lead tomacroevolution? No truly useful mutations have ever been observed. The onemost cited is the disease sickle-cell anemia, which provides an enhancedresistance to malaria. How could the occasionally deadly disease of SSA everproduce big-scale change? Evolutionists assume that the small, horizontal microevolutionary changes(which are observed) lead to large, vertical macroevolutionary changes(which are never observed). This philosophical leap of faith lies at the coreof evolution thinking. A review of any biology textbook will include a discussion ofmicroevolutionary changes. This list will include the variety of beak shapeamong the finches of the Galapagos Islands, Darwin's favorite example.Always mentioned is the peppered moth in England, a population of mothswhose dominant color shifted during the Industrial Revolution, when sootcovered the trees. Insect populations become resistant to DDT, and germsbecome resistant to antibiotics. While in each case, observed change waslimited to microevolution, the inference is that these minor changes can beextrapolated over many generations to macroevolution. In 1980 about 150 of the world's leading evolutionary theorists gathered atthe University of Chicago for a conference entitled "Macroevolution." Theirtask: "to consider the mechanisms that underlie the origin of species"(Lewin, Science vol. 210, pp. 883 - 887). "The central question of the Chicagoconference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can beextrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution . . . the answer canbe given as a clear, No." Thus the scientific observations support the creation tenet that each basictype is separate and distinct from all others, and that while variation isinevitable, macroevolution does not and did not happen.
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