I 'believe' in Evolution

[Creed of Heresy]

Well it's an article written by students, not professors, so the individual is technically an amateur, but then the student eventually usurps the teacher, so...maybe it can't be discounted. I do agree, though, I wish he had given reasons to what he stated to certain instances that have been proven to exist...

[IATIA]

A PhD is nothing more than a student that has passed the final exam.

[festive1]

Doctorate students have to write and defend an original topic doctoral thesis to a panel of professors (often PhD's themselves). My cousin's thesis was a few hundred pages long. Plus many PhD students teach intro classes and act as TA's for their advisors or other staff members. It's not as easy as simply taking an exam and passing or failing.

[IATIA]

Maybe a little over simplified, but the statement still stands. I did not suggest it was easy. I am still working on my master's, so I can fully appreciate the work involved.

Einstein did not graduate.

[Whateverist]

But if micro evolution over time doesn't account for macro evolution and clearly, in the fossil record, not all species have co-existed, just how do these nitpickers account for macro evolution? Even the primitive camel-herder account from the bible doesn't work. The appearance of new species over time shows that macro evolution is a fact or else some genie is busy blinking them into existence. Unless some under-handed god is laying down the appearance of all this in a faux fossil record to test the faithful ..

[The Grand Nudger]

Sigh sigh sigh, they're the same thing. The terms macro/micro evolution came about awhile back and have since utterly fallen out of favor, a distinction not worth making. The only people who insist on making this distinction are creatards who, for some reason, even though they love the fucking terms, can't get them right. The author of that article, for example, was making the claim that "microevolution" -by the definition he decided to give it at the start of the article- does not account for new organs. That many organs are retasked versions of older organs (that may no longer serve the same purpose) is fairly well understood, but lying that aside, new organs are not required for "macroevolution". We have hearts and so do rats. Again, the tears began at the beginning of the article when the author attempted to weasel in "the creation of new information/genes" as the criteria.

[Whateverist]

Sigh sigh sigh, they're the same thing. The terms macro/micro evolution came about awhile back and have since utterly fallen out of favor, a distinction not worth making. The only people who insist on making this distinction are creatards who, for some reason, even though they love the fucking terms, can't get them right. The author of that article, for example, was making the claim that "microevolution" -by the definition he decided to give it at the start of the article- does not account for new organs. That many organs are retasked versions of older organs (that may no longer serve the same purpose) is fairly well understood, but lying that aside, new organs are not required for "macroevolution". We have hearts and so do rats. Again, the tears began at the beginning of the article when the author attempted to weasel in "the creation of new information/genes" as the criteria.

I think I'm agreeing with you, Rythym. No organism evolves an entirely new organ in one generation. It is a gradual repurposing. A really huge change is a journey of many generations, none of them teleological. microevolution is just small changes. Macroevolution is just many microevolutions stacked up over time. Or else there is just no need to make the distinction at all.

The other perspective needed to truly understand evolution is how an embryo assembles itself to develop into the organism it will be, sometimes refered to as "evo devo". I've been struggling to get my head around this but it does -potentially- greatly influence how we understand the process of evolution. At the risk of including too large of a quote here is one from wikipedia entry for "evo devo" which gives more detail. I've bolded the parts I think suggest impacts for our understanding of evolution.

Evolutionary developmental biology is not yet a unified discipline, but can be distinguished from earlier approaches to evolutionary theory by its focus on a few crucial ideas. One of these is modularity: as has been long recognized, plants and animal bodies are modular: they are organized into developmentally and anatomically distinct parts. Often these parts are repeated, such as fingers, ribs, and body segments. Evo-devo seeks the genetic and evolutionary basis for the division of the embryo into distinct modules, and for the partly independent development of such modules.

Another central idea is that some gene products function as switches whereas others act as diffusible signals. Genes specify proteins, some of which act as structural components of cells and others as enzymes that regulate various biochemical pathways within an organism. Most biologists working within the modern synthesis assumed that an organism is a straightforward reflection of its component genes. The modification of existing, or evolution of new, biochemical pathways (and, ultimately, the evolution of new species of organisms) depended on specific genetic mutations. In 1961, however, Jacques Monod, Jean-Pierre Changeux and François Jacob discovered within the bacterium Escherichia coli a gene that functioned only when "switched on" by an environmental stimulus.[7] Later, scientists discovered specific genes in animals, including a subgroup of the genes which contain the homeobox DNA motif, called Hox genes, that act as switches for other genes, and could be induced by other gene products, morphogens, that act analogously to the external stimuli in bacteria. These discoveries drew biologists' attention to the fact that genes can be selectively turned on and off, rather than being always active, and that highly disparate organisms (for example, fruit flies and human beings) may use the same genes for embryogenesis (e.g., the genes of the "developmental-genetic toolkit", see below), just regulating them differently.

Similarly, organismal form can be influenced by mutations in promoter regions of genes, those DNA sequences at which the products of some genes bind to and control the activity of the same or other genes, not only protein-specifying sequences. This finding suggested that the crucial distinction between different species (even different orders or phyla) may be due less to differences in their content of gene products than to differences in spatial and temporal expression of conserved genes. The implication that large evolutionary changes in body morphology are associated with changes in gene regulation, rather than the evolution of new genes, suggested that Hox and other "switch" genes may play a major role in evolution, something that contradicts the neo-darwinian synthesis.

Another focus of evo-devo is developmental plasticity, the basis of the recognition that organismal phenotypes are not uniquely determined by their genotypes. If generation of phenotypes is conditional, and dependent on external or environmental inputs, evolution can proceed by a "phenotype-first" route,[3][8] with genetic change following, rather than initiating, the formation of morphological and other phenotypic novelties.[clarification needed] The case for this was argued for by Mary Jane West-Eberhard in her 2003 book Developmental plasticity and evolution.[8]

[Polaris]

The issue with microevolution is the sample is extremely small, of just a small population nothing close to the size of the species. It's like saying that people who have similar ethnic characteristics are undergoing gradual evolution each time they pass on their genes. Microevolution is an analogy to evolution, but is not evolution.

[jonb]

The issue with microevolution is the sample is extremely small, of just a small population nothing close to the size of the species. It's like saying that people who have similar ethnic characteristics are undergoing gradual evolution each time they pass on their genes. Microevolution is an analogy to evolution, but is not evolution.

they are

[Brunitski]

The issue with microevolution is the sample is extremely small, of just a small population nothing close to the size of the species. It's like saying that people who have similar ethnic characteristics are undergoing gradual evolution each time they pass on their genes. Microevolution is an analogy to evolution, but is not evolution.

Hang on, are you still trying to support this stupid canard? There is only evolution. This has been comprehensively shown by a number of well respected scientists in a variety of peer reviewed journals. I can find references for you if you insist, but probably the best way forward is for you to stop taking your definitions from dubious Creationist retards. The use of the terms were hijacked by Timothy Wallace and latched onto by dickheads who want to teach their favorite magic mans creation myth in our schools.

Here; maybe this will help:

Microevolution and macroevolution are different things, but they involve mostly the same processes. Microevolution is defined as the change of allele frequencies (that is, genetic variation due to processes such as selection, mutation, genetic drift, or even migration) within a population. There is no argument that microevolution happens (although some creationists, such as Wallace, deny that mutations happen). Macroevolution is defined as evolutionary change at the species level or higher, that is, the formation of new species, new genera, and so forth. Speciation has also been observed.

Creationists have created another category for which they use the word "macroevolution." They have no technical definition of it, but in practice they use it to mean evolution to an extent great enough that it has not been observed yet. (Some creationists talk about macroevolution being the emergence of new features, but it is not clear what they mean by this. Taking it literally, gradually changing a feature from fish fin to tetrapod limb to bird wing would not be macroevolution, but a mole on your skin which neither of your parents have would be.) I will call this category supermacroevolution to avoid confusing it with real macroevolution.

Speciation is distinct from microevolution in that speciation usually requires an isolating factor to keep the new species distinct. The isolating factor need not be biological; a new mountain range or the changed course of a river can qualify. Other than that, speciation requires no processes other than microevolution. Some processes such as disruptive selection (natural selection that drives two states of the same feature further apart) and polyploidy (a mutation that creates copies of the entire genome), may be involved more often in speciation, but they are not substantively different from microevolution.

Supermacroevolution is harder to observe directly. However, there is not the slightest bit of evidence that it requires anything but microevolution. Sudden large changes probably do occur rarely, but they are not the only source of large change. There is no reason to think that small changes over time cannot add up to large changes, and every reason to believe they can. Creationists claim that microevolution and supermacroevolution are distinct, but they have never provided an iota of evidence to support their claim.

There is evidence for supermacroevolution in the form of progressive changes in the fossil record and in the pattern of similarities among living things showing an absence of distinct "kinds." This evidence caused evolution in some form to be accepted even before Darwin proposed his theory.

Now I know that you are probably go to wikipedia and look up Micro-evolution - just make sure there is no cherrypicking when you triumphantly report back.