Talk:Macroevolution
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[edit] Concerning DIREKTOR's and Novangelis' vandalism of my edits on Macro-evolution
Why are you guys trolling? Direktor: How is it an invented term to say "macro-evolutionary biologists" WHEN THAT IS WHAT IS BEING REFERRED TO ON THE MACROEVOLUTION PAGE? Can you get any more absurd? Was "biologists" in references to CREATIONIST BIOLOGISTS? OF COURSE NOT, and yet in keeping with a weasel, you would have it so that people think "biologists" are only those who support MACRO-EVOLUTION. Second, what does it matter even if it were an "invented term", is that a sin? Is that forbidden in Wikipedia? Third, IT'S A PHRASE pointing out to what type of biologists are being referred to, and there is no law in Wikipedia and it is no sin, to clarify. Fourth, I already stated why I was removing, as I said in the notes, certain references which were not relevant. Fifth: what does the fact that the mainstream (and it was also left out the "scientific community" mentioned was the MAINSTREAM one (again with the weasel-wording and bigotry) have to do with CRITICISMS of macro-evolution? NOTHING, it's distracting propaganda used to distract any reader from focusing on the criticisms and to instead focus on THE ALLEGED CONSENSUS, and as administrators in Wikipedia love to point out only when it is convenient: "the truth is not determined by consensus". Can you answer my points? NO you can't Mr. LOLz, all you can do is repeat and divert those who input the truth to the talk page, to delay endlessly any progress, with the pretense of "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" and "truth isn't determined by consensus". The first immature remark you left in your first reversion of my edit shows what kind of mind you have, your level of maturity, and your true concern for facts: none. All you can do is make insults, mere claims based on your feelings, while disregarding any reasons anyone gives you if they don't agree with your feelings.Oriclan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:54, 18 April 2010 (UTC).
- Your edits to macroevolution were promoting a viewpoint held by such a small minority among biologists as to fall under WP:FRINGE guidelines. Our articles have to conform with WP:WEIGHT policy when it comes to showing such minority views. You were also using AiG as a source – verification is required from a reliable third party source, not from creationists promoting their own views. Please discuss your proposals for changes on this talk page, and refrain from edit warring which is not the way to get anything in articles. . . dave souza, talk 21:44, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
[edit] Wikipedias sanctioned trolls: stop vandalizing and spreading your anti-Christian and anti-theism propaganda
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Why are you hiding this edit?: ==Criticisms of macroevolution== {{Main article|Objections to evolution}} The term "macroevolution" frequently arises within the context of the evolution/creation debate, usually used by creationists alleging a significant difference between the evolutionary changes observed in field and laboratory studies and the larger scale macroevolutionary changes that scientists believe to have taken thousands or millions of years to occur. They may accept that evolutionary change is possible within animal kinds, which change is referred to as "microevolution", but deny that one animal kind can evolve into another, which change is called "macroevolution".[1] The terms macroevolution and microevolution as used in mainstream science relate to the same processes operating at different scales, but creationist claims misuse the terms in a vaguely defined way which does not accurately reflect scientific usage, acknowledging well observed evolution as "microevolution" and denying that "macroevolution" takes place.[2][3] The Darwinists Nicholas Matzke and Paul R. Gross have accused creationists of using "strategically elastic" definitions of micro- and macroevolution when discussing the topic.[1] The actual definition of macroevolution accepted by scientists is "any change at the species level or above" (phyla, group, etc.) and microevolution is "any change below the level of species." Matzke and Gross state that many creationist critics define macroevolution as something that cannot be attained, as these critics describe any observed evolutionary change as "just microevolution".[1] Arguments often arise between creationists and so called evolutionists over evolutionists' failure to recognize the word "kind" in Genesis as not being equivalent to the word "species",[4][5] [6] hence arguments from evolutionists against the Bible, like, "How could Noah have fit hundreds of thousands of species in the Ark?"[7][2][8][9]:
What an absurd excuse you made Dave Souza: "Oh this is fringe beliefs", uh Dave: What do you think the criticism section is about according to bigoted trolls like yourself? The alleged fringe vs the "mainstream". Duh Dave. Apparently you evolutionists have major logic problems eh? What's your next excuse trolls: "Oh this is about macro evolution" "oh this is about scientists" "oh this is about criticisms" "oh bananas are yellow". Truly: YOU SAY ANYTHING AS A PRETENSE FOR REMOVING FACTS, SOURCED OR NOT. And include unsourced claims all the time. But oooooh, when someone obviously not an evolution worshiper like yourself dares fix your ranting propaganda, you freak out and say whatever as a reason to revert the change back to the stagnating ranting stupidity. And Dave and the other trolls, as for "fringe", why do you keep lying? You were already shown this here, and suppressed it: 40 percent of scientists in 1997 believed that "Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation" - http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm But fine then, keep "harming" Wikipedia, keep up your obvious (to those who aren't ignorant and mentally ill themselves) bias. Heap up your sins and increase your punishment. Keep up the immature narcissistic "LOL"s. Show everyone your lack of concern for logic and facts and that all you care about is pushing your personal agendas. Keep showing that you are bullies and cyberstalkers under the guise of teachers and helpers. And it says a lot that the very talk page points out that this article is under heavy dispute, and yet you hide that notice from the main article. Nah: No propaganda and bias there, no deception there. Not. |
[edit] Webster's New College Dictionary
What's up with removing a validly sourced reference? Last I checked Webster's New World College Dictionary is generally accepted as a good reference dictionary.--Gniniv (talk) 00:53, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
- Presumably, Gniniv is referencing this edit followed by this revert. — Scientizzle 01:17, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
WHAT?!!! Since when does a dictionary disagree with science?--Gniniv (talk) 01:33, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I think you guys need to look at WP:VERIFY if not WP:V--Gniniv (talk) 01:34, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately not...In the interest of not starting a edit war, can you explain the reasoning behind the removal of a validly referenced source from a recognized dictionary??--Gniniv (talk) 02:38, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I will gladly accept a different definition, if you can find one that differs from the one I gave while still coming from a acceptable source.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gniniv (talk • contribs) 02:40, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Another thing, since when does the "formal" definition of science differ from what they put in a dictionary for "science" (that is what I get from your reasoning...)--Gniniv (talk) 02:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
How about we come to the compromise of including my reference without the atrocious formatting??--Gniniv (talk) 02:47, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Check the articles (Macroevolution and Microevolution) to see what you think....--Gniniv (talk) 02:51, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
- As others have pointed out, Webster's is redundant and not helpful; the specialist refs are fine. A dictionary is a tertiary source and inappropriate in explaining a specialist subject when it differs in any way from expert specialist material. If it doesn't differ, there's no need for it. . . dave souza, talk 08:51, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) This article is about macroevolution, not about the word "macroevolution". See use–mention distinction and WP:DICDEF. While Webster's is a reliable source for information about the word "macroevolution", it's not a reliable source for information about macroevolution. Gabbe (talk) 08:55, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Tell me if I am wrong, but I think the Dictionary definition I gave told what Macroevolution is, and not what the root word derived from..--Gniniv (talk) 02:59, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
- Are you responding to the comments made above? Have you looked at the links mentioned? If not, please do so. If you have, please explain what you want to do and why it is compliant with the guidelines. Johnuniq (talk) 03:25, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I have looked at the sources you gave and I agree that we could use a better reference than a dictionary, but I don't think a discussion website (Talk Origins) really qualifies as a valid reference for the definitions either...--Gniniv (talk) 00:30, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
- To save other people from wondering whether they should respond, I will mention that you are conducting this conversation here and at Talk:Microevolution where I have already pointed out that you can visit WP:RSN and put "talkorigins" in the search archives box at the top to see some of the many previous discussions that have established the reliability of the source. Johnuniq (talk) 01:20, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed that the reference has been improved and I appreciate it--Gniniv (talk) 04:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
[edit] Adding clarification of Micro vs. Macro
The original article failed to establish the correlation between micro and macroevolution. The part I originally took out can stay, it is correct on its own, but I think it is important to lay out in the introduction the close relationship between the two. In the microevolution:Misuse(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microevolution#Misuse) page it explains that the two are qualitatively identical, and for consistency's sake the same should be reflected here. Furthermore on that micro page the American Association for the Advancement of Science claims that attempting to differentiate from the two has no scientific merit whatsoever.(http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/evolution/) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.253.3.150 (talk) 18:09, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
- The AAAS link doesn't have static content, and appears to have changed since you read it. Perhaps they didn't mean what you thought they did. Narayanese (talk) 04:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
- Ah yes I see this now. However that one lack of a source does nothing to invalidate the claim.
- Anyways I give up now. I don't know why you are so determined to have two articles that contradict each other but it is stuff like this that make people not believe/understand evolution. You are promoting the ambiguity of evolution for reasons that are beyond me. This does nothing to elucidate the subject (as I understand wikipedia attempts to do) but does a bit to cloud it and confuse people about the facts.
- I am going to attempt to clean up this unclear language in the article...--Gniniv (talk) 07:56, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
[edit] Misuse request
Please add the following from a previous place in this discussion to the "MISUSE" section of the article,
- The terms macroevolution and microevolution as used in mainstream science relate to the same processes operating at different scales, but creationist claims misuse the terms in a vaguely defined way which does not accurately reflect scientific usage, acknowledging well observed evolution as "microevolution" and denying that "macroevolution" takes place.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Zibian (talk • contribs) 07:03, 15 November 2010
[edit] Species problem
About a month back in passing I added a reference here to the species problem a while back, don't visit this WP page often but notice it was reverted pretty quickly as 'irrelevant'; sorry to be a mite argumentative here, but how on earth is it irrelevant to the article? The very first introductory passage cites the species distinction as a reference for differentiation between the two, since the entire article goes on to discuss the debate over these distinctions anyway, I think that observing for the general reader quite how little agreement there is on something as fundamental as the underlying definition of 'species' is far from irrelevant - in fact, it's quite important that the mention and link to the relevant WP page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem) is included somewhere fairly prominently in this article.
I'm not the sort of person to get into angry and undignified edit wars, so I'm not going to repeat the original edit - however I do feel removing that edit (from 11:48, 28 October 2011) wasn't helpful as the reference was adding something to the article. If anyone other WP editors reading this talk page are in agreement then perhaps a case will be made for including reference to the species problem somewhere in this article.
Kind regards,
M.S. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.78.177.176 (talk) 17:18, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
- This change added "(Note that this definition is subject to the species problem, complicating the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution)" to the first paragraph of the lead. One problem is that the lead is supposed to be a summary of topics covered in the article, so it is not the place for additional notes. Another is that it is essentially an unsourced comment—regardless of its merits, that sort of text is routinely removed to avoid articles becoming packed with the opinions of a wide variety of editors. I agree that, when details are examined, the concept of a species is hard to pin down, but the article is pretty clear that the macro/micro distinction does not exist. I'm not sure this is the right article to mention the species problem, but the first step towards that would be to find a suitable book that devotes a significant section to the topic of macroevolution and also mentions the species problem. Johnuniq (talk) 23:49, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
Fair dos. I think you hit the real problem on the head: "the article is pretty clear that the distinction doesn't exist"; however the opening para seems to directly contradict this by actually then defining a distinction. You have to begin with a definition of what you're trying to challenge in order to provide a specific, meaningful refutation. I think one way or another this lead really needs a re-write; the overall impression one gets is of an article that really doesn't have a coherent idea of what it's trying to say. If the purpose of that definition in the intro is to set up a 'straw man' definition to then knock down, that could be done much more clearly (although I do also wonder if it strays close to being OR...)
It doesn't help that the microevol and macroevol pages are somewhat cross-contradictory as well as self-contradictory. I don't have a quick-fix suggestion for this; it might be that it would be better to allow the 'micro' and 'macro' pages to presuppose their respective definitions and discuss the implications thereof within those remits, and then quite distinctly to offer a point of reference for a critique of this distinction, giving an analysis of possible proposed distinctions and then assessing them in terms of their utility, veracity, critical acceptance in terms of usage in peer-reviewed research, etc. Clearly, some analysis is essential as the distinction is used (rightly or wrongly) in a substantial volume of peer-reviewed literature, as any cursory analysis of citation databases reveals.
It's a pity WP's coverage of this matter is so wanting; it does rather undermine one's confidence in other articles on related subjects. But I haven't got the time or expertise to support improving this content.
Kind regards, M.S.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.78.177.176 (talk) 18:13, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
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