Lies evolutionists tell: Microevolution over time leads to macroevolution

People who militantly defend evolution (AKA evolutionists) like to look down their noses on the “lay” public and smugly drone on about how science is the key to knowledge, how evolution is the most rigorously tested theory in science, and how they only go where the evidence leads. If that were true, why do they feel the need to tell lies to support their theory? I'm not talking about a mere difference of opinion – like how I believe the earth is around 6,000 years old and they think it's 4 billion years old. I'm talking about continuously repeating things that are objectively false. The sad thing is, many members of the public have heard these lies repeated so often, they assume they are true.

I've written series in the past where I list 5 or 10 of some of the most egregious examples but I'm not going to write a series now. Instead, I'm going to visit this topic from time to time and make each, entire post about a single lie. If you want to read all the posts published under this topic, click “lies evolutionists tell” in the label cloud in the left column.

Having said that, on to the next lie!

Microevolution plus time equals macroevolution

It's a fact that animal populations change over time. Natural selection is a real thing and animals can adapt to their environments. This is all observed and no creationist I know denies this. The question is this: when populations “change” does it mean they “evolve”? The short answer is, no. Let me explain.

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Natural selection is an observed phenomenon that removes traits from a population that aren't suited to the environment. Imagine a hypothetical population of rabbits. In a wooded environment, white rabbits, for example, wouldn't be very camouflaged. Grey or brown rabbits would be harder for predators to spot so they might get eaten less often. The white rabbits get eaten, the darker rabbits live to reproduce, and, over time, all baby bunnies are born with grey/brown coats. The gene for white fur is eliminated from the gene pool and the grey/brown population is better adapted to that environment.

Are you with me so far? Then let's move on.

Well meaning creationists sometimes call the small changes we observe, “microevolution.” They may even say something like, “I believe in microevolution but not macroevolution.” That is, they believe the small changes that can turn a wolf into a dog, aren't the kinds of changes that could turn a dinosaur into a bird. I agree for the most part, but I discourage using the word, “evolution” to describe it. Evolution doesn't happen – neither “micro-” nor “macro-”.

Evolutionists, on the other hand, call any kind of change, “evolution.” When creationists say micro- but not macro-, it doesn't make any sense because to the evolutionists, the only difference between micro- and macroevolution is how long the change occurs. After all, if we can see small changes happening, they could accumulate over time (as in, “millions of years”) to become big changes. Here's a quote from Berkley.edu that makes this very point:

Microevolutionary change might seem too unimportant to account for such amazing evolutionary transitions as the origin of dinosaurs or the radiation of land plants — however, it is not. Microevolution happens on a small time scale — from one generation to the next. When such small changes build up over the course of millions of years, they translate into evolution on a grand scale — in other words, macroevolution!

At first hearing, arguments like this can sound very persuasive. Don't be fooled. There are at least 3 reasons why the types of changes we observe could never accumulate to become the big changes necessary for evolution to occur.

The changes must be in one direction

Even the most famous examples of “evolution” usually involve slight variations back and forth around the mean. When Darwin observed the finches in the Galapagos, he noted the differences in the sizes of their beaks. In the 150 years since then, we've seen that beaks tend to be larger during periods of drought and smaller during periods of rain. In other words, after a century and a half of observation, there has been no accumulation of small changes. There has only been back and forth variations in response to back and forth changes in the environment.

For evolution to be possible, the changes must continuously be in one direction – like finch beaks only getting bigger. Back and forth changes over time means there are no net changes – not even microevolution.

The change cannot have a boundary

In another famous example of “evolution,” the peppered moth, a population of moths changed from mostly light, to mostly dark, to mostly light again in response to changes in the environment. You can see immediately that this is another example of back and forth variation like I just discussed in my first point. However, there is something else at work here.

Suppose the change did occur in only one direction. In the case of the peppered moths, for example, what if the population only continued becoming dark? Eventually, the entire population would become 100% dark and the change would stop. The change in the frequency of the dark allele could not increase any more. If anything, it could only decrease and the population would start becoming light again (see point number one).

The change must be adding something

In order to turn a reptile into a mammal, you would have to add hair. The imagined first-living-thing didn't have hair. Neither did it have scales or even skin. It didn't have bones or blood or organs of any kind. For evolution to be possible, organisms would have to acquire new traits. To turn a microbe into a man, it would require millions of traits being continuously added generation after generation. “Changes” in a population, that don't add new features to the population, cannot allow a population to evolve.

I've said before that natural selection is the opposite of evolution. Natural selection can only remove traits from a population. And like I've just explained, evolution requires populations to acquire traits. You can't acquire traits by continuously losing traits – it doesn't matter how long it continues! Think back to my example of rabbits. Continuously removing white rabbits would never add, say, blue rabbits to the population even if it continued for millions of years!  Think about it: removing colors from a population, will never add colors to the population. You cannot turn a molehill into a mountain by continuously removing dirt.

Time is like a magic ingredient in a fairy tale, that can turn a frog into a prince... it just takes millions of years! But as you can see, time alone isn't enough to turn the small changes we observe into the kinds of changes that could make evolution possible.

If you want to say evolution is possible, show me some examples of animals acquiring new traits. Don't show me examples of natural selection and say, “just give it some time.” That's a lie!