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Today's Creation Moment

A Tinker Toy Fossil Embarrasses Scientists
Proverbs 12:20

Microevolution: Surely There MUST Be a Better Word!



That's why we think that creationists should stop using these two terms and come up with something better. In the search for better terminology, we asked members of our Facebook group to share their thoughts. Here's a sampling of the feedback we received:

"I use 'adaptation' and 'general common descent evolution'."

"What they call microevolution is simply God's Adaptive Provision (I call it GAP) God gave His creatures certain abilities to adapt to a given environment, and this ability was 'built in' and did not come out of 'mutations' that somehow added new information or function. Microevolution is a faulty term, since evolution isn't part of the process. Macroevolution is even more of a silly term, since it involves no known process at all."

"I'd rather drop most terms and use the terms that the Bible uses, which is 'min' for 'kind,' and 'bara' for 'created'. Therefore, I'd use 'baramin' or 'created kind' when we're talking about this."

"I suggest these two terms: (1) 'Microbes-to-man evolution' to replace 'macroevolution' and (2) 'Fruit flies-to-fruit flies evolution' to replace 'microevolution'. The second term really emphasizes, I think, that the creature you start with is the creature you end with."

Though there are some good ideas here, we're not sure we've hit on the right terminology yet. Got any suggestions of your own?


Creative Adaptability; Happy Homologosity [!]; Biogramming; Biobalancing; I'll be back later with more [No, that is not a suggestion for a name, however appropriate!] ;

DNA is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions specifying the biological development of all cellular life.
Life is capable of correcting & adapting
DNA's rungs are made up of Guanine, Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine. = God ACT

Evolution is Birth Defect = BE DEAD

Yes, I have a comment. Macro is referring really to the Big Bang and everything that happens thereafter. It's a "Something from Nothing" (Without explaining where the Nothing was that Exploded outwardly.)

I tell this joke to the kids in my Sunday School Classes:

Picture this scene, it's a thousand years in the future and Man has achieved his dreams of eradicating disease and science has advanced the most marvelous new things. At a Huge Conference Table sits the world's leading scientists in front of a flood of cameras. "Science has the answers to every problem and we can do anything!" claims the lead scientist. Then, holding up a glass jar of dirt, he claims,"Why we can even create life from this, just like God!. In fact, we challenge God, look what we can do!"

Then a voice thunders from Heaven, "Oh really? Then get your own dirt!"

The problem with Something from Nothing is that, like my joke, at some original point, you still have God!

The Bible warns about a Something for Nothing attitude, which is why Christians avoid the Lottery and get rich schemes, if they are thinking Biblically and wisely. This kind of thinking, whether to avoid effort or work to have money or get rich, or to explain "Why there is air and things that breathe" it is self defeating. It's akin to believing that Superman is real, not a comic book fantasy.

Therefore I would call it Super-lution - not MacroEvolution.

Micro, of course is small, tiny. Clearly the name Pin Head -Volution comes to mind for the other.

Lou Sauer

I use the term "variation." Here's a link to a short debate in which I show how DeVries proved that variation (what some people call micro-evolution) is sharply limited and is not capable of being the driving force behind evolution: <a href="" title=""></a>

For the micro: there's lots of evidence from Shapiro and McClintock, where cells actively engage in swapping genes to survive stressful environments. The point? Organisms are PROGRAMMED to adapt, adjust, morph, in a plastic way, to survive. But there are limits: in reproduction, sterility and weak strains result from hybridation across too wide a gap. (There's also hybrid vigor though which is sought out for mixing gene pools within a species.) So programmed survival changes vs. leaps and bounds imagination, or off limits jumps. You get the idea.

I like some of the suggestions included above - particularly the use of GAP. However, I would like to see
Creationists use terminology that would avoid the term evolution but would still be recognizable to evolutionists, i.e. more mainstream terminology. Even adaptation carries the idea of evolution and change within it. The focus should be to point up the latent information that environmental factors "call forth" in particular situations without using the evolutionists' nomenclature. The nomenclature should reflect ideas such as the robustness that God's provision in the gene pool confers as well as its "embedded" quality.

This seems to me to be a position with which to begin. Maybe an acronym which combines many of these ideas. The right combination of these qualities would, if present in a memorable form, allow the acronym to be identifiable as Creationist in essence without connecting it to God explicitly.

I've come up with a few potential acronyms: Programmed Response Of Ordered Features (PROOF),or Purposed Reactions Of Ordered Features(PROOF), or Programmed Reactions Of Ordered Features (PROOF), or Purposed Response Of Ordered Features(PROOF).

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” (2 Thessalonians 2:11) It really doesn't matter, yes its a fun exercise between believers in our down time, but whatever we come up with will not change the argument or the minds of the deceived. They know there is a Creator. The strong delusion is that they have convinced themselves that they don't.

For adaptation, "level-ution"

For forming new species, "never-lution"

"Never-lution" is exactly right!

Variety Derivations

Thinking further about this quest. I don't believe there is a single word that can replace 'microevolution.' An acronym may be the better quest.

Modification by Intra Kind Information Reduction -- MIKIR, or
Adaptation by Intra Kind Information Reduction -- AIKIR

I would call it "inherent adaptability".


adaptability: –adjective - capable of being adapted. Able to adjust oneself readily to different conditions: an adaptable person.

It is there but is only triggered when necessary, in order to comply to a new

"programmed survival" and "inherent adaptability" are my two favorites. Evolution emphasizes randomness and accidental success. The opposite of what Gods people know to be true.

Micro-Adaption: For survival and diversity.
Absolutely everything is designed to exist in a gradient.
5% closer to the sun we burn, 20% farther from the Sun we freeze (Earth & moon receding from the sun therefore receding needs higher percentage)
-too much or too little of anything things die
-Adaptation is also designed in the DNA as part of diversity for genetic health and artistry
-The Genetic Diversity mechanisms are designed into Meiosis: 1.) Crossing-Over where parental chromosomes (mom w/ pop) swap parts, 2.) Random shuffling of fathers chromosomes mixed among mothers chromosomes, so that a gamete gets more of fathers original chromosomes and less of mothers original chromosome and vise versa.

What about "diversity"? That term would certainly be in keeping with the teachings of the Bible. It would be a term that is immediately recognized and understood by those who hear it. It is not a term that would be confused for an evolutionary principle, and it has many diversifications that would allow it to be divergently applied across a diverse array of the sciences.

(1 Corinthians 12:4-6 KJV)

I would say "variation".
God bless,

I would modify slightly to "Variation within the species" (or for the "Biblically literate" - "kind.")

This limits it to exactly what God created: changes that are broad, but limited by His design.

I use "speciation," "natural selection," or "mutations" for the adaptive change that is observable (wrongfully called microevolution) depending on the context; and I use "microbes-to-man," "particle-to-professor," etc. evolution for macroevolution.

Evolution does not occur. That's a change from one kind to another. So call it the THEORY of evolution.

As far as microevolution is concerned, it's merely changes within a kind ... already called variation within a species. So it's VARIATION, not evolution.

Propagation produces offspring after a like kind, not a different kind. We never see humans, for example, pass on any DNA to their offspring that isn't human. (Although, I admit, some parents might wonder about that when their kids become teenagers.)

I'd eliminate the misleading term "microevolution" and call it variation within a species. Just because one person has blonde hair and another has brown doesn't mean one has "evolved" into a different creature ... dumb blonde jokes aside.

I like to say I believe in Darwin's "Special Principle" which refers to minute changes within a species. I do not believe in his "general principle" which extrapolates the observation to macromolecules-to-man changes.

I suggest we use the terms "inter-mynal". Pronounced "mean al" and referring to inside of a "kind"
This would be as opposed to "extra-mynal". Referring to outside of a "kind".

Mynal is a transliteration of the Hebrew word for "kind" used in the book of Genesis.

How about just simply say "evolution," which is vertical, and "variation," which is horizontal? By the way, in response to one of the comments, evolution can never qualify as a scientific theory because it could never meet the tests that a theory must sustain. At best, evolution is a philosophical idea or concept and has nothing to do with true science.

How about "mini-mod," as in a small modification within a creature.

Homogeneous Adaption or maybe Homaption

Lets face it - the word evolution is the standard to anyone with a public school education. When a Christian contrasts Micro Evolution and Macro evolution, in the mind of the football-watching, TV-obsessed, pleasure-seeking culture. the issue of origins matters very little. When a new word is invented and used in debate, it gets filed away as Christian conspiracy dribble. Instead, change the definition of Evolution and the context of the cultural argument.

My suggestion for renaming microevolution is

Species-Specific Adaptation

There is no real similarity between microev (within species) and macroev (across species). A concept, applied locally, cannot always be applied globally, without fault.

I've been considering my original submission for the acronym (PROOF),and here's what I've come up with as an alternative: Programmed Response Of Ordered Faculties(PROOF), Purposed Reactions Of Ordered Faculties (PROOF), Programmed Reactions Of Ordered Faculties (PROOF), Purposed Response Of Ordered Faculties (PROOF). I feel this acronym has the desired effect of describing our purposed ability to survive and adjust to various different stressors without suggesting any validation to evolution.

How about Sovereign Dynamic Adaptation. This would indicate the inherent or built in genetic coding ability for the organism to adapt to the various environments for optimum survival in an ever changing (decaying) world which, of course, was brought on by the fall.

You call it GAP, awesome, gap filling intelligent designers sure take the jump, the stupendous leap, to say this "god" who designed all this beautiful world of physics, conciousness, gravity, all the stars and galaxies, does all these absolutely huge events, yet is so ... petty, he gives a rats bleep about your sex life.

Theres a huge gigantic trillion trillion light year gap jump, when you label the source or reason for everything in any ridiculously petty sexism and hall monitor, keeping track of who is naughty or noce :)

FASCINATING 1:21--Why meditate? What is Yoga? What does Consciousness mean? Are all these Conspiracy Theory's true or am I in control of my own destiny? Where is the Human race going? What is God and what is a soul? Age old questions which have been around since the birth of mankind are finding new vitality as a revolution is taking place in science. Since quantum physics arrived, old dogmatic views are falling away and a new and fascinating picture of reality is emerging, a view of infinite possibilities engaging mankind to remake the world inside and outside him as humanity moves into a new epoch of understanding the mystery of creation :)

DAWKINS 1:2--Darwinian Natural Selection, is so stunningly elegant because it solves the problem of explaining complexity, in terms of nothing but pure simplicity. It proves a gradual step by step increment. The elegance of Darwinism is corrosive to religion, precisely because it is so elegant, so powerful, so economically powerful. An aspiring beauty, that is all the more magical because its real and because we understand how it works :)

Macro= Goo-to-you-through-the-zoo evolutionism
Micro= Adaptation and Variation

Honestly though, it doesn't matter what we call it, evolutionists are likely to insist that we use their terminology and when I don't, the discussion always takes a downhill turn.