Hey people,

This is my first post after being a long-time fan of the podcast. I actually heard about apologia on Stephen L Gibson’s “truth driven thinking” podcast who I recommended Zach’s evolution 101 to in an email. I had heard Zach about evolution 101 on “the ordinary guy” podcast. It’s a small world. I’m also a big fan of all Dan’s podcasts (why is Antithesis already finished! Thankfully there was a reprobates hour to feed my podcast hunger) and a big fan of a lot of podcasts in general (the Linux action show (I’m a bit of a geek), Skepticality, the 7th son series, the bible geek, the nature podcast, the science podcast and a lot more).

I’m posting a huge post here, I apologize in advance for the size, I just couldn’t stop. I also apologize for my English (I’m dutch, my name would btw be pronounced in english as Frake)

So my point is:

Why do you all, in the podcast, make a distinction between micro and macro evolution?
Isn’t macro just a long stretch of micro, like micro is a long stretch of nano?

Where should I draw the line? Should I draw it between the changing of allele frequencies and mutation adding to this change? Should I draw the line based on time spans, can, for example micro evolution take place within a human lifespan and macro evolution is all evolution taking longer than this? Should micro evolution allow for evolution but not for speciation?

The questions may sound ridiculous and you might argue that it is just a figure of speech. I argue that one should not make any distinction even just for illustrative purposes because by acknowledging the existence of two ranges of evolution you damage the strength of the theory and give non-evolutionists a window for argument where there is none.

The line could be drawn between allele frequency changes and mutation helping alleles to be heterogeneous. This would mean one who accepts micro evolution but not macro evolution, does not accept mutation. I would suggest this person to irradiate any living material to various degrees and observe the effects. This procedure is often practiced by beer makers to mutate yeast, subsequently the yeast cells which produce most alcohol per time unit are selected for further “breeding”. This is called classical strain enhancement by the way, as opposed to the non-classical way which is to induce mutations in a directed fashion. My point is, mutation is undeniably a source for genetic variation on which selection can take place and it is used every day.

If the line is drawn based on time scale, well, will we change the definitions of micro and macro evolution based on the human reproductive cycle? What if that changes? It makes no sense to draw a distinction based on time span as well.

Well, do we draw the line based on the species argument; there can be evolution but not speciation? Let’s consider the following case:

Imagine a river starting at point A, going through point B (1000 km downstream of A) and ending in the sea (1000 km downstream of B). As the rivers flows towards the sea, the landscape, climate and soil mineral levels all change. Now we put a couple of rabbits on point A. The rabbits will spread and eventually they will live all along the river banks. Because the environment changes, the rabbits will change their allele frequencies because natural variation will give some rabbits an advantage in each location, A, B and at the coast. Now we wait for a very long time (20.000 years?). At this point, mutations have accumulated and have led to even more ways the rabbits’ gene pool can adapt. Now let’s say that it pays to be very big at point A, it pays to be of intermediate size at point B and you really should be small to survive at the coast. We will find when we return to our rabbits (or what we once called rabbits) they will have different sizes when comparing rabbits from A, B and at the sea. When we put A, B and sea rabbits together they will have sex. However, daddy rabbit from A will make such huge embryo’s that mama sea will die as they grow, if not during copulation. Daddy sea cannot really please mama A anymore and any attempts at coitus are unsuccessful. Daddy B however is still big enough to give mamma A fulfillment and subsequently healthy offspring. Mama B’s womb can still take daddy A’s big embryos and will raise them well. Mama B kind of likes daddy A and daddy sea can still put a smile on her face. We are now in a situation where A and B are one species, B and sea are as well but A and sea are not according to our definition (A is B, B is C, A is not C).

So, A has experienced micro evolution with respect to B but macro evolution with respect to sea. B rabbits have only micro evolved and… well you get the point. Needless to say, this approach will not give us a good understanding of micro versus macro evolution.

So please explain to me the difference or agree with me that making this distinction only leads to confusion. I really see no place for the theory that states that there can be micro evolution but not macro evolution. This is like saying if you walk slowly you will never get anywhere and then simply forgetting that you might get anywhere if only you have the time.

Please forgive the length of this piece by now, thanx for sticking with it but there is still one open possibility I can think of that you might throw at me: “Ok, you can alter DNA but not in such a way that you add information or complexity to it and thus speciation cannot take place.”

Well first of all, who says that a species with what one might call “degraded DNA” does not actually have higher fitness? And second, our genome is packed with “erroneously” duplicated genes (I mean the genome contains four copies, two from daddy, 2 from mama) which are free to mutate and gain other functions because the original gene is conserved. And also second, our genome is easily enlarged by the incorporation of (retro) viruses. Think about it, what virus might be more successful, a very virulent strain which enhances its host or a lethal virus which kills within hours?

Let me conclude with the point in short:

There is no such thing as micro and macro evolution, there is only just evolution. To make a distinction between micro and macro allows for non-evolutionists to see a window for god where there is none in my opinion.

Looking forward to your responses.

Last edited by Freek (05-12-2009 13:53:02)