It is interesting to draw some comparisons between cosmology (the study of the universe as a whole) and biology. Both fields are dominated by very dubious speculations, with the very wobbly speculations constantly marketed as "science" rather than being honestly described as the speculations they are. The two principal "sold as science" speculations of the modern biologist are (1) the speculation that the origin of species can be explained mainly by the mere accumulation of random mutations; (2) the speculation that human mental processes such as thinking, self-hood, consciousness, learning and memory retrieval can be explained by brain activity. The main speculations of cosmologists nowadays are (1) the theory that most of the universe's matter is some invisible type of matter called dark matter; (2) the theory that most of the universe's mass-energy is some invisible type of energy called dark energy; (3) the theory that the universe underwent an instant of exponential expansion during a fraction of its first second, close to the time of the Big Bang. The third of these theories should really be called the theory of PEE, since it a theory of Primordial Exponential Expansion. But instead the theory goes under names such as "inflation" or "cosmic inflation."
There are no observations establishing any of these theories. But biologists are always trying to persuade us that this or that weak reason justifies a belief in the origin of species by random mutations, and they are always trying to persuade us that this or that weak reason justifies a belief in brains storing memories or brains being the source of human minds. Similarly, cosmologists are always trying to persuade us that this or that weak reason is a reason for believing in dark matter, dark energy or cosmic inflation, things that have never been observed. Cosmologists observe the universe expanding with ordinary linear expansion, not the explosively fast exponential expansion imagined by proponents of the theory of primordial cosmic inflation.
But at least our cosmologists do not use a verbal trick very frequently used by biologists, the trick of trying to speak as if evidence for one type thing is evidence for something vastly different. The biologist uses this trick when he discusses mere evidence for microevolution, and tries to insinuate that such evidence supports claims about macroevolution, something which humans have never observed.
Microevolution can be defined as mere small changes in genomes, typically changes producing some minor or superficial effect that results in no big biological innovation. Macroevolution is the claim that natural changes gradually transform some species into some very different species with visible new structural innovations or dramatic new anatomical features or vastly different mental powers. Claims that evolution produced better lactose digestion or a darkening of some moths are claims of microevolution. Claims that ape-like creatures evolved into humans or that dinosaurs evolved into birds are examples of claims of macroevolution.
Tiny random changes that may produce microevolution do nothing to establish the occurrence of macroevolution (evolution producing major morphological novelties). In his paper Macroevolution: The Morphological Problem the natural history professor Keith Stewart Thomson stated this: "The origins of major morphological novelties remain unsolved...No one has satisfactorily demonstrated a mechanism at the population genetic level by which innumerable very small phenotypic changes could accumulate rapidly to produce large changes: a process for the origin of the magnificently improbable from the ineffably trivial.” Seeming to insinuate that microevolution does not establish macroevolution, Phillip Ball stated this in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:
"It is not obvious a priori that small mutational steps should permit adaptation rather than simply inevitable loss of function. Nor is it clear why such a mechanism should permit genuine evolutionary innovation rather than being confined to a sort of timid tinkering with existing functionality."
In the book Evolution and Ecology: The Pace of Life by Cambridge University biology professor K. D. Bennett, this mainstream authority comments on speciation (the origin of species). He says on page 175, "Natural selection has been shown to have occurred (for example, among populations of Darwin's finches), but there is no evidence that it accumulates over longer periods of time to produce speciation in the Darwinian sense." That's another way of saying that evidence for microevolution does not prove macroevolution.
Clearly there is a world of difference between microevolution and macroevolution. But biologists have constantly been guilty of the trick of conflating microevolution with macroevolution. The trick is done by simply not using the words "microevolution" or "macroevolution," and by using the single word "evolution."
Let us consider mutations in a virus or bacteria which may make them more resistant to vaccines or antibodies or antibiotics. Such changes usually involve only very minor and unimpressive changes in the virus or bacteria. Vaccines or antibodies or antibiotics may be fine-tuned to work with some exact structure of a virus or bacteria. A tiny change in that virus or bacteria may cause such vaccines or antibodies or antibiotics to stop working so well, just as changing one character in your login password may break some functionality. So such changes are clearly an example of microevolution.
But we often hear have reasoning like this:
"We should not doubt evolution, because it is fact. Right now the world is witnessing evolution, as the COVID-19 virus evolves. Since evolution is fact, you are a science denier if you doubt that men evolved from apes. "
This statement performs the sleazy trick of conflating microevolution and macroevolution. Such microscopic microevolution (involving no visible structural change at all) is very much "small change" that does nothing to prove claims such as ape-like ancestors evolving into men or dinosaurs evolving into birds. Similarly, if somebody shows you some small change in his pocket (a few quarters and dimes), that does nothing to prove he is a billionaire.
In the case of the virus causing COVID-19 (which is SARS-CoV-2), each person who gets the virus has between a billion and a 100 billion virus particles (called virions) during peak infection. The total number of COVID-19 infections has been about 170 million worldwide. This means that there have existed more than 170,000,000,000,000,000 SARS-CoV-2 virions, any one of which could have mutated. Conversely, it is believed that before recorded history the total number of humans who lived was no more than a few billion, with the average prehistorical population of humans or pre-humans being only a few million. So given that there has been a number of SARS-CoV-2 virions more than a million times greater (and probably more than a billion times greater) than the number of humans living before history, it is hardly fair to be presenting microevolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as something establishing the credibility of macroevolution claims about humans evolving from an ape-like or chimp-like ancestor. The smaller the population, the smaller the chance of some very lucky series of random mutations.
The same sleazy trick of conflating microevolution and macroevolution is used when biologists argue like this:
"We should not doubt evolution, because it is fact. For example, we know that humans can breathe better at high altitudes and digest lactose better than they could 5000 years ago. Since evolution is fact, you are a science denier if you doubt that men evolved from apes."
Again, such minor microevolution does nothing to prove claims of macroevolution, something that would be a billion times harder to achieve.
A recent scientific paper has estimated the amount of evolution that is occurring in the human genome. The estimate is that only the faintest trace of adaptive evolution is occurring. The paper states, "We estimate that, on average across traits, about 1% of human genome sequence are mutational targets with a mean selection coefficient of ~0.001." The selection coefficient of about .001 is a rate of increase in a trait that would take something like 500 generations to spread from a single individual in the population to the entire population. According to the paper, only about 1% of the human genome is undergoing such an evolution, which is occurring at a glacially slow pace. In the 2018 book Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, the author makes this revealing confession on page 9: “The sad truth is that it is possible to count on the fingers of two hands the examples like FOXP2 of mutations that increased in frequency in human ancestors under the pressure of natural selection and whose functions we partly understand.” Judging from this statement, there are merely 10 or fewer cases where we know of some mutation that increased in the human population because of natural selection.
Similarly, the scientific paper “The Genomic Rate of Adaptive Evolution” tells us “there is little evidence of widespread adaptive evolution in our own species." In the study here, an initial analysis found 154 positively selected genes in the human genome -- genes that seemed to show signs of being promoted by natural selection (less than 1% of our genes). But then the authors applied something called "the Bonferroni correction" to get a more accurate number, and were left with only 2 genes in the human genome showing signs of positive selection (promotion by natural selection). That's only 1 gene in 10,000.
The amount of evolution now occurring in the human species can honestly be described as being pretty much negligible. It is never justified to speak of so paltry a microevolution reality as something establishing macroevolution claims that gigantic morphological transistions occurred such as dinosaurs evolving into birds or ape-like creatures evolving into humans.
What would it be like if cosmologists used trickery similar to that of biologists using the trick of conflating microevolution and macroevolution? Then we would see arguments for dark matter like this:
"Dark matter is a very well-observed reality. The undeniable fact that dark matter exists is shown by the fact that geologists have found many dark rocks, and the fact that there are many people with dark skin in Africa. Since we clearly have seen many examples of dark matter such as tar, coal, ebony and dark-skinned Africans, we should not doubt cosmologists when they talk about the reality of dark matter."
Here we have a sophistical example of conflation. Committing a very obvious fallacy, the writer is conflating one type of thing (visible atomic dark matter such as coal) with a very different type of thing (the invisible non-atomic dark matter that cosmologists speculatively postulate). We have plenty of observational evidence for the first of these things, and no observational evidence for the second of these things.
We can also imagine cosmologists using conflation sophistry in regard to dark energy. Their fallacious reasoning might go like this:
"Imagine you are living in a large New York City apartment building during the winter. In your dark apartment at night, heat comes up through your radiator, but you don't see such energy. So it's an invisible dark energy. Since we know that such dark energy exists, we should not doubt cosmologists when they talk about dark energy. Don't be a science denier by doubting that dark energy exists."
Again we have a sophistical example of conflation. The writer is fallaciously conflating one type of thing (normal heat energy which can be measured by using a thermometer) with a very different type of thing (the utterly mysterious dark energy that cosmologists speculatively postulate, something that cannot be measured by any known instrument). We have plenty of observational evidence for the first of these things, and no observational evidence for the second of these things.
We can also imagine cosmologists using conflation sophistry in regard to their theory of cosmic inflation, the theory that the universe underwent exponential expansion during a fraction of its first second. Their reasoning might go like this:
"How can you doubt the theory of primordial cosmic inflation? Each of us has observed inflation with our own eyes! Remember when you blew up a balloon when you were a child? That was inflation. And ask your parents about how rapidly prices rose during Jimmy Carter's presidency. That also was inflation. So do not be a science denier by doubting claims of primordial cosmic inflation. We know that inflation occurs."
Here the writer shamelessly conflates three things that have nothing to do with each other: (1) the expansion of a small balloon; (2) rises in consumer prices; (3) the speculative claim that in its first second the universe underwent a brief instant of exponential expansion unlike anything ever observed by humans. The first two things do nothing whatsoever to support claims about the third of these things.
We do not hear cosmologists giving arguments like the ones I have stated above. Although they make many misstatements and very often try to pass off groundless speculations as science, our cosmologists at least have enough scruples not to use such obviously fallacious sophistry as I imagined above. But many biologists act as if they had no such scruples. Again and again they use the most blatantly fallacious conflation sophistry, by trying to pass off mere evidence of microevolution as if it proved something very different and a billion times harder to achieve, the never-observed phenomenon of macroevolution.
We often read some authority trying to speak as if microevolution proves not just that macroevolution occurs, but also that all species have a common ancestor (which is the claim that all the main biology wonders arose by macroevolution). This is like someone showing a few coins in his pocket to try to prove his strange claim that he is a billionaire, and that every one he knows is a billionaire.
Speaking of cosmology, recently cosmologists claimed to have detected an "arc of galaxies" spanning one fifteenth the radius of the observable universe. If this observational claim holds up, it means a bedrock assumption of modern cosmology and the cosmic inflation theory (that the universe is homogeneous at large scales) is false, that the theory of primordial exponential expansion cannot be true, and that modern cosmologists are explanatory bunglers mired in great error. We read this:
"Lopez ran three statistical tests to figure out the odds that galaxies would line up in a giant arc by chance. All three suggest that the structure is real, with one test surpassing physicists’ gold standard that the odds of it being a statistical fluke are less than 0.00003 percent."
Postscript: A recent paper gives us fresh examples of the shameless sophistry of Darwinist apologists. The paper incorrectly states that "many empirical studies have shown that there is a clear link between microevolutionary processes and resulting macroevolutionary patterns," and cites as a "classic example" the case of "Sewall Wright's work on artificial selection in guinea pigs," saying, "Wright was able to breed laboratory populations with four toes." Guinea pigs are normally born with three toes on their back feet, but are sometimes naturally born with four toes on their back feet (the fourth toe involving no improvement in function). This is called polydactyly. Through artificial selection using inbreeding, you can create a breed that will always have four toes. An animal hospital refers to such polydactyly as a "genetic defect, which may indicate other genetic health defects." Another site says polydactyly "may require surgical repair for his [the guinea pig's] safety and comfort." Such four-toed guinea pigs are not actually an example of either macroevolution or the appearance of beneficial new features, and do not involve the appearance of any new complex useful innovation. Humans have never observed either macroevolution or any "macroevolutionary patterns."
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