from answers.com: evolution: Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
I believe that natural selection is accepted by creationists. (most?) But the definition of evolution ends with the result being a new species.
Am I missing something that that natural selection is now being referred and officially termed micro-evolution? Is there a reason for this beyond the promotion of evolution into an area accepted by creationists?
Beware the penguins.........
When proponents of evolution decided to make natural selection synonomous with evolution.
Creationists realised there was confusion in the general public (encouraged by the MSM) over the the difference between natural selection/microevolution (which can be observed, tested, etc.) and "macro" evolution,)which can't be observed, tested, because it supposedly occurs over periods of millions, or billions of years, which is beyond the lifetime of a person to observe and test.)
And that definition is in turn complicated by the need to define an equivalence relation for "species" (i.e. a definition with the property that, there does not exist any set of three animals X, Y, and Z such that X is of the same species as Y and Z, but Y and Z are not the same species as each other.).
Actually, even if one accepts a fairly tight definition of species, it's not inconceivable that a population which is geographically split into disjoint populations which are geographically incapable of interbreding (e.g. because an ice flow transported them too far apart) might, over enough succeeding generations, diverge enough to be called different species.
On the other hand, accepting that a rare combination of events could occur on occasion to produce a new species still leaves open the 'problem' for evolutionists that there is way too much diversity of life on this planet for such events to account for all of it (or even most of it).
This is interesting. Creationists do not have any qualms with natural selection. We call it speciation, not evolution...certainly not macroevolution.
"I believe that natural selection is accepted by creationists. (most?) But the definition of evolution ends with the result being a new species."
This is the kind of hazy understanding of evolution that you get listening to creationists.
"Macroevolution" is nothing more than "microevolution" acting over a much longer period of time (making it hard to observe). There's no fundamental difference between the two aside from that. There is also no such thing as a definitive point in time when something becomes a new species. As I said on another thread:
"That's because defining a specie, from an evolutionary standpoint, basically involves drawing arbitrary lines to break up a smooth continuum. 'Species' are a human-imposed division used to make classifying things easier for study. There is no absolute natural definition for one."
Basically, after something microevolves long enough to be an obviously different type of organism, it gets called a different species and people look back and say that it macroevolved.