> Microevolution--that amount of biological change that does not challenge my
> theological position
>
> Macroevolution--that amount of biological change that DOES challenge my
> theological position.
Glenn, I think you nailed this one right on the head. Perhaps there is a
coherent definition of the genetic limitations on evolution, but I have
never seen one offered by any creationist. Ken Miller had a great answer
to this when Gish brought it up during one of their debates. The claim
was that you can make a slightly different fly, but it's still a fly.
And Miller applied this to the entire history of change. I hate to quote
this entire passage, for fear of sounding like Stephen Jones with his
penchant for long quotations, but the logic is impeccable and expresses
the point quite well.
"If evolutionary biologists were right on the money, if I was right
about every thing I said tonight, everything was absolutely true...and
you had been standing around when Triceratops evolved, and you saw some
Monoclonius running around with one big horn and the two little ones and
then some eggs hatched out, some more Monoclonius came out except these
had 3 big horns. I would say evolution. And you would look at me and
say, no, no, that's just a Monoclonius with two bigger horns, same
thing. If we were looking at the reptile to mammal sequence, and you saw
this progressive change in the dentary and you saw the inner ear things
coming, I would say, look that's evolution. And you would say, no it
isn't, it's just a reptile with a slightly different jaw. Etc, and so
on. Every single change that has occured in the fossil record, even if
evolutionists were absolutely right, were you there to observe the
change, even the really dramatic ones, you would simply say, there's a
Monoclonius with a couple of extra horns. That's nothing but a reptile
with these funny little things sticking out all over its body that were
later called feathers. That's nothing but a reptile with a different
type of jaw. That's nothing but a mammal whose legs look a little more
like flippers, etc and so on."
Ed