With Friends Like This ....

 
Greta Christina has a blog called Greta Christina's Blog (naturally). She posts lots of interesting stuff about atheism and other things. Today she strayed into science and posted a video about macroevolution (see below) [Macro-evolution" Vs. "Micro-evolution": More Video Fun]. Greta introduced it with ...

First, just so everyone's clear: "Macro-evolution" and "micro-evolution" are made-up words concocted by creationists to make themselves sound scientific. Biologists don't use them. They're scientifically meaningless. They're just different stages in the evolutionary process; "macro" is just "micro" over a longer period of time.

I posted this comment on her blog.

I'm afraid you have been mislead. Microevolution and macroevolution are perfectly good scientific terms and they are used by evolutionary biologists all the time.

There is legitimate scientific debate about whether macroevolution is more than just lots of microevolution or whether macroevolution encompasses mechanisms not seen in microevolution. It's the sufficiency of microevolution argument.

I happen to be one of those scientists who agree with Stephen Jay Gould that there are many levels of evolution (hierarchical theory). Thus, macroevolution cannot be sufficiently explained by lots of microevolution. There are other things going on at the higher levels [Macroevolution].

The video is very misleading because it assumes a simplistic version of macroevolution. There aren't any evolutionary biologists who believe in that kind of macroevolution. Thus, I have to conclude that the makers of the video are as ignorant of evolution as the creationists they mock.¹

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¹The video was made by cdk007 who claims to have a Masters degree in Biology and a Ph.D. in Molecular Neuroscience.

[The science book covers pictured are:

Macroevolution: Diversity, Disparity, Contingency: Essays in Honor of Stephen Jay Gould

At the Water's Edge: Macroevolution and the Transformation of Life

Genetics, Paleontology, and Macroevolution]