Note: A complete Introduction to Evolutionary Biology and Index to Common Evolution Rebuttals is at Talk Origins.

As we here at Think Gene are Serious Internet Professionals (SIPs), it is my obligation rebuke this video in defense of Big Science. However, the fact is, although we are badass geniuses who run a website about biology, we too would trust the chubby-yet-dependable protagonist over the lean-and-nasty heckler for bio notes because we never attended class. This, plus the obvious effort it takes to do fancy CGI animation, does make the argument for “evilution” quite compelling. Sure, the fat guy probably owns box seat tickets to the Friend-Zone, but at least he chats up bubbly Christian girls at the Teen Bible Study. Biology science journals come pre-packaged with subscriptions to beat off to freaky hentai porn alone in your basement. Do you know how embarrassing it is when those annoying subscription cards fall out at the bookstore checkout? “Hey, I’m just a biology student! I’m not a godless anarchist sodomite loner, I swear!” [1]

We do not have a fancy CGI animation team (just gedit), but we will try to be amusing. [2]

Macroevolution and Microevolution are Just Academic Departments

This movie’s core argument is that “macroevolution” is fundamentally different than “microevolution.” No, macro and micro evolution are the same phenomenon: evolution. The difference is how science about evolution is organized: macroevolution studies the mechanism of evolution over geological time scales, microevolution studies evolution over observable time scales. There are two types of evolution not because they study different natural phenomenon, but because of the pragmatic way academic departments operate. For example, theories for finding and dating fossils over millennia have little relation to the theories for studying bacteria cultures over weeks —even though both are “evolution.”

So macroevolution and microevolution aren’t two theories about the natural world, they’re just two groups of scientists who rarely consider each other’s scientific papers relevant to their work.

Yep. That’s the boring truth. Sorry.

It is reasonable to believe microevolution yet disagree with theories in macroevolution. Many scientists do. However, a world view that exclusively believes microevolution and not macroevolution would be challenged to explain why the general mechanisms of evolution must only work for human-observable time scales and no longer. One such explanation is that the Earth is 6,000 years old. This theory meets the challenge… but is the Earth only 6,000 years old? [3]

Species are Like Races: We Kinda Make Them Up

The video claims that while members of a species do evolve, new species cannot evolve from existing species.

However, The dirty little secret in biology is that we just make up what gets to be a species and what does not. And while some criteria for speciation exist like “can two members create viable offspring?”, there are exceptions. For example, wolves dogs can have viable offspring, yet we consider them different species. Breeds of dogs may have significantly different genotypes and phenotypes, yet we consider them the same species.

The way we define species is similar to how we define race: “you know it when you see it” and “if it wasn’t decided in antiquity, it doesn’t count.” If tomorrow I claim to be a new race, you can’t refute me, but you don’t believe me, either. Yet, we know it happens, because different races exist now than they did in the past. Another example is continents: which big floating rocks are defined as continents, why, and how do we reclassify as land changes?

What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t believe in speciation, you’re a racist and have sex with rocks. I hope that clears up any confusion.

Making “New Information” Is Nonsense

The video states that macroevolution “must take extra genetic information” and microevolution (adaptation) only “only works for information that’s already there… it can’t make anything new.”

A quick refutation of this common confusion is that I can have an insertion mutation (extra letters in my DNA) and pass that mutation to my children. Many other refutations exist, but that’s obviously “making new information” at the micro level.

“Conciliatory” Means “Critical of Both Sides,” Right?

Fundamentally, a child taught in today’s schools has just as much justification to believe a scientific theory as any religious theory —both are believed because somebody was paid to read it to you out of a book and call you bad if you didn’t participate. Maybe that’s not true for Stanford [4], but I had to go to lame middle-class state schools and to church every Sunday. So while I have a huge chip on my shoulder, I do empathize. People are just people, and smart people are mostly just better at rationalizing whatever they prefer to believe. It’s our fault as educated people that both videos like this and lifesaving medicine are made in the same country. I blame those bio journal basement porn subscriptions.

Footnotes

[1] Except Josh, who is. That’s actually his pickup line.

[2] We felt it would be irresponsible to file an NIH grant for CGI when clearly those funds are needed to swat sandniggerdly jihadis inconveniently living on what could be $4/gal gas that I’d have to buy.

[3] No.

[4] Though elite universities exist first to raise rich people’s children right, not necessarily to produce intellectual value, and certainly not as a reward for high school performace.