Author : Bryan Sharp
When a classmate asked about evolution, my junior high science teacher dodged the issue by asking, “Do you believe in change? Then you believe in evolution. Evolution is change and anyone who believes in change believes in evolution.” A mental giant he was not. It is a significantly simplistic view that lumps all evolution into one category and then claims that change is evidence of it all. Actually there are two broad categories of evolution and the changes observable in the living world are confined to one of these categories.
The two categories of evolution are micro-evolution and macro-evolution. The difference between micro-evolution (small-evolution) and macro-evolution (large-evolution) is the difference between limited change and limitless change.
For example, anyone who has bred horses, cattle, dogs, orchids or any other organism knows that by properly selecting the parents, offspring can be produced that are preferentially different than the parents. Through selective breeding, we produce organisms that are bigger, faster, leaner or more colorful than their parents. This limited amount of change is akin to microevolution. There is nothing in the Bible which refutes the fact that a limited amount of change does occur from one generation to the next. However, it should be obvious that there is a limit to the change that is possible.
Macro-evolution denies the obvious by claiming that an unlimited amount of change is possible. This general theory of evolution includes the ideas that life randomly arose from nonlife, that all plants and all animals developed from a common ancestor, and that over millions of years, monkeys became men. The first two chapters of Genesis refute the general theory of evolution.
What’s the point? The point is that micro-evolution is not macro-evolution on a small scale. In other words, the processes which lead from large dogs to small dogs or red dogs to black dogs will not change fish fins into legs, gills into lungs and scales into fur. Yet this is a main line of argumentation for many evolutionists. Even college textbooks blend the two types of evolution, citing small changes as evidence for larger ones.1
Furthermore, micro-evolution is scientific. That is, we can both observe it happening and genetically explain how it occurs. Macro-evolution is unscientific. We can neither see it nor explain it. Rather, our observations and genetic knowledge argue against it. Consider:
Observationally, if all life did gradually evolve from a common ancestor, then why do we not see a gradual blending of life forms? Why, for example, when we see an ape, do we know it is an ape and not a man? Why do we not become confused by creatures which are neither apes nor human, but something in between?2
Genetically, it is fantasy to claim that macro-evolution occurs quickly. This is the equivalent of claiming cows can give birth to whales. On the other hand, it is genetically unexplainable how macro-evolution could happen slowly. No one can fathom a detailed, working mechanism whereby a fish could be transformed piecemeal into a mammal.
So why embrace macro-evolution? Evolutionists claim we cannot see a gradual blending of life forms because the intermediates are extinct. Evolutionists argue that we cannot genetically explain unlimited change because our knowledge of genetics is incomplete. In other words, evolutionists embrace macro-evolution inspite of the evidence and base their beliefs on a lack of knowledge.
While unscience teachers may equate all change with evolution, all change is not equal. We should be aware of the illogic used in attempts to discredit the Bible and not be bullied into thinking we must choose between science and the Bible. When confronted with the false science-or-religion dilemma, demand that evolutionists be scientific by requiring proof of macroevolution which does not entail citing small changes as evidence of larger changes.
1 “Changes in…finch beak depth are microevolutionary events…the evolution of flight in birds (is) macroevolutionary…macroevolutionary changes can only be explained in terms of microevolutionary processes if enormous spans of time have passed….Natural selection may produce small changes each generation, such as a few…milliliters of beak depth,…but multiplied by 3.8 billion (years), small changes become large.” Freeman, Scott and Herron, Jon C. Evolutionary Analysis. 48-49.
2 Alleged fossil intermediates are the topic of other lessons.
