[ARCHIVED] - Creation vs. Evolution

[Tiberius]

First, the mutation was a loss of information, not a gain. No one has ever observed a species GAINING info.

Not true. The E. coli long-term evolution experiment conducted by Richard Lenski has been going on for the last 20 years (project site here: https://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/ ) and has seen the evolution of one of the 12 groups of E. coli to use citrate as an energy source. A normal strain of E. coli doesn't have this ability, nor did the original strain that Dr. Lenski started off with 20 years ago. The citrate was present in the growth solution at the beginning of the experiment, but none of the E. coli were able to use it for a food source. The mutation that occurred in one of the strains he was monitoring enabled the strain to use the citrate, which was a beneficial mutation in the environment (it meant that more of the species survived).

Second, although the beetles changed, they did not turn into a totally different species, like a frog. I believe that a species can change within its species, but that there are limits.

Species do not suddenly change families (or indeed phylum as your beetle -> frog example has). The theory of Evolution says that species change into different species. The definition of a species is an organism that can only produce fertile offspring within its own group of organisms. So although a lion and a tiger can produce offspring together, they are never fertile. So all that is required for speciation (the change of a species into another) is a mutation that causes the organism to not be able to breed successfully with its ancestor. There is a list of observed instance of speciation here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html if you are interested.

So whilst species to species evolution has been well observed and documented, what you are really after is when organisms change entirely into very different organisms (as ancient bacteria has evolved to become humanity for example). This is of course not observed by scientists because it takes millions of years to occur, as it is the result of millions of examples of micro-evolution, gradually changing features of the species over time. Since we cannot see this in action, we need to look at the fossil record, which luckily records a lot of life that has existed on Earth. The fossil record shows a large number of animals that were alive at different periods, and the subtle differences between them can be seen as they gradually evolve and branch off into different species, from the ancient single-celled organisms to all of life today.

So basically, the beetles are an example of micro-evolution. That's all that has EVER been observed. What evolutionists typically refer to as evolution is Macro-evolution, which has never been observed.

As I hope you can see, there are no "macro" or "micro" evolution. There is only one type, and scientists do not refer to either as "micro" or "macro" (they are words generally made up by creationists). If anything, "macro" evolution is just lots and lots of "micro" evolution, naturally selected over time.