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Only Creationists call it "micro-evolution." Science does not recognize the distinction, and needs no name for it. Any heritable adaptation is evolution, by the definitions of science.



For a bacteria, that is as significant as you "just changing" your limbs and sensory organs. A creationist bacteria would probably argue that there is no difference between you and an elephant.




Perhaps you should try providing cites instead.



I have yet to run across the term "micro-evolution" anywhere in the scientific literature. It is a term invented by Creationists to try to put a magic barrier between the observed speciation of bacteria, plants, fruit flies, etc., and the development that would lead from a common origin to the variety of life we see today.

And after three direct requests by me to you on this thread alone, you've been unable to point at any place where this barrier must exist, or any litmus test for whether a specific adaptation is "micro" or "macro." If you can't even define it, how can it possibly be science?




To be frank, it is bullshit invented by religious proselytizers to try to explain why new species of bacteria are observed evolving all the time, but somehow cows and pigs and human beings require intervention by some un-named force (pssst! It's God.) Either they feel religion and science are analogous, and therefor Darwin is at least a saint and possibly the Child of God of this competing religion, or they pragmatically realize that by creating the appearance of a debate between Evolution and Creation they produce a foothold by which they can use secular public schools and the captive audience therein as a recruiting ground for their churches.





It helps people live who would otherwise have died. It helps us predict the forms and spreads of diseases, and develop tools to fight them. It helps us understand how to grow stronger, more productive crops. It helps us to care for domestic and zoo animals. It gives us insights into micro-biology, biochemistry, and morphology that are of direct consequence in health care.

And it DOES allow us to breed new strains of microbe for a growing variety of practical functions; a surprising variety of which are already in industrial use.

It is very difficult dis-entangling evolutionary theory from the science it rests on. One result of the usual Creationist attack is to downplay, disparage, or even discredit the fossil record that demonstrates the working-out of evolution through history. Unfortunately, the oil industry, for just one example, is knowledgeable, fully supportive of, and makes practical use of that same fossil record.

You are free to disagree with the meaning of the fossil record; but that merely piles more baggage onto the flimsy alternative. The more one looks at the supporting materials -- comparative morphology, comparative genetics, paleontology, etc., the more one finds that although it is always possible there are other explanations, evolutionary theory does the best job of fitting all the disparate data points.