Someone (may have been Gould, I'm not sure) explained the non-difference between micro- and macroevolution like this:
Suppose you close your eyes and walk ten steps. When you open your eyes, the scene around you will appear largely the same. There will be a few tiny differences - that tree will be a tad closer, you may be standing on a grassy patch instead of a sandy one, and so on. Close your eyes again, and walk 100 steps. You'll open your eyes to a scene yet more different from your starting point. Close your eyes and walk a thousand steps, then a million steps, then one billion steps. All of those tiny differences have accumulated until your environment is completely different, and nothing looks like it did when you started out.
It's a flawed and incomplete analogy, to be sure (all analogies are), but the gist is correct - macroevolution is the result of accumulated microevolution. To accept the former while denying the latter is to miss the point entirely. If you accept that microevolution occurs, you are implicitly acknowledging the fact of macroevolution.
This is one of the things that makes creationists very stupid people.
Boru
Suppose you close your eyes and walk ten steps. When you open your eyes, the scene around you will appear largely the same. There will be a few tiny differences - that tree will be a tad closer, you may be standing on a grassy patch instead of a sandy one, and so on. Close your eyes again, and walk 100 steps. You'll open your eyes to a scene yet more different from your starting point. Close your eyes and walk a thousand steps, then a million steps, then one billion steps. All of those tiny differences have accumulated until your environment is completely different, and nothing looks like it did when you started out.
It's a flawed and incomplete analogy, to be sure (all analogies are), but the gist is correct - macroevolution is the result of accumulated microevolution. To accept the former while denying the latter is to miss the point entirely. If you accept that microevolution occurs, you are implicitly acknowledging the fact of macroevolution.
This is one of the things that makes creationists very stupid people.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
