Q: What is Special Evolution, What is general Evolution, how do they differ?
"Special evolution" and "general evolution" are opposite processes. Specialization corresponds to configuring a computer program - turning off undesired features or loading optional modules. Generalization corresponds to writing code to implement new features.
*This may sound wacky, but it almost seems that the term Special evolution (a term used by Darwin) has fallen out of favor by use among evolutionists. I could find little on it on the web. It appears that the very distinction between special and general evolution add undesirable clarity to the debate, and is hence avoided.
Gould: (After talking about what he sees as incontrovertible arguments for observable evolution): “Creationists have tightened their act. They now argue that God only created “basic kinds,” and allowed for limited evolutionary meandering within them. Thus toy poodles and great Danes come from the dog kind and moths can change color, but nature cannot convert a dot to a cat or a monkey to a man.”
Gould is right: everyone agrees that micro evolution occurs, including creationist. Even creation-scientists concur, not because they “have tightened” their act,” but because their doctrine has always been that God created basic kinds, or types which subsequently diversified. The most famous example of creationist’s microevolution involves the descendants of Adam and Eve, who have diversified from a common ancestral pair to create all the diverse races of the human species. The point in dispute in not whether microevolution happens, but whether it tells us anything important about the processes responsible for creating birds, insects, and trees in the first place. (DoT Philip E. Johnson, p 68)
Note: While “everyone” including all the young earth creationists (that I have read) embrace the reality of Micro-evolution, not all are willing to use the term.
Scientists who embrace the account of biblical creation have no problem with speciation, natural selection and change within a created kind, all observed (like the example above) to take place over time in nature. Yet, the sort of change which is observed in all examples to date of such ‘speciation’ entails a mere sorting or loss of genetic information, and is thus very different from the sort of change which is needed for molecules-to-man upwards evolution which implies an enormous gain of genetic information.
So changes observed here are really just variations (i.e. different species/breeds) within a kind, where new species/breeds can form fairly rapidly from other species/breeds (only within the limits of the information already in the gene pool of those kinds), but not a transition between kinds. Definitely not the sort of change required to, step by step, turn microbes into microbiologists. It is therefore quite misleading in this particular context to speak of “evolutionary” changes, as Van den Heever did.
http://creation.com/church-leader-against-evolution
Q: Why do some creationists avoid the term “Micro Evolution?”
a) because the believe that mere diversification (caused by genetic recombination and loss of information – and not by a gain in information, does not quality as evolution.
b) they do not want to validate the larger concept by using a word of ambiguous connotation.
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