Evolution, religion, and ignorance.

[Esquilax]

No, it isn't. rasetsu already explained this, and Mister Agenda kudoed it. To my knowledge they're not YECs, yet they see the error in your method. This isn't some creationist trick. Your argument is faulty - it's an extrapolation fallacy coupled with an argument from ignorance fallacy.

Not to give short shrift to Rasetsu or Mister A, since I consider them both to be smart little bastards ( ) but the requisites for who I agree with don't boil down to "not a creationist." I can, and do, disagree with them on this issue, and after going back and rereading Rasetsu's post, I can tell you why.

The problem, broadly speaking, is a failure to take into account what defines a species when making her argument. What, exactly, is she using to determine what belongs in one species and what belongs in another? Population genetics demonstrably change, as does physiology, and if those aren't markers of speciation, what are? Is the proposition that genetics and physiology don't change, in spite of the evidence we're able to produce in a lab? Or is it that they don't change enough, and if so, where does one draw that line, given the huge variances we get in, say, dog breeds over a relatively short period of selective breeding within recorded human history? Or the observed instances of speciation that we've produced in a lab? By all accounts, our ability to observe both speciation and vastly different physiologies is fairly comprehensive, so what is this definition of species we're using that ignores both of those in order to make macro-evolution some distant thing?

As to this idea that we're assuming that these mutations will continue in a single direction... first of all, no we're not, as I've acknowledged multiple times that they don't always go in the same direction, but this faux confusion as to where we'd even get the idea that they would is baffling: the mechanism of natural selection, which provides the incentive for those changes to propagate and intensify over time, has been understood and observed for many, many years. In fact, we have evidence that these changes do continue to intensify in certain situations: Here, have some italian wall lizards.

So, the changes occur, and we know it's possible for them to occur and continue to intensify in line with the predictive power of natural selection, and we also know that by any genetic or cladistic definition this would eventually vary an organism out of one species classification and therefore into another... maybe it is just an inference based on observable evidence, but that's kind of what science is.

And it's a hell of a lot better than the bare assertion that it can't happen because argument from ignorance.

Key line is, "At some point in their history..." This is the same as your skink. You see differences and assume change.

Would you quit it with this "were you there?" crap?

Further, IIRC the only definition of macroevolution introduced in the thread was given by Mister Agenda: "Macroevolution is evolution above the species level leading to taxonomic divergence." Speciation itself is not macroevolution by this definition.

And what defines taxonomic classifications if not genetic and morphological differences?