Macro vs Micro Evolution is pretty simple to explain, but you have to understand a few things and the theory presents itself.
What does all life have in common?
Cells and DNA.
What do all machines have in common?
Hardware and Software.
How do we use hardware and software to solve problems?
We are presented with a problem and either develop the hardware or rewrite the software.
The only aspect of this that changes is the problem.
Would dinosaurs like the Brontosaurs be able to exist today? Possibly, but not likely. Oxygen content in the atmosphere is far lower than it was when they existed. The same can be said for megafauna due to lower CO2 than when they existed.
Reptiles gain heat by conduction, convection and radiation. The earth was a far warmer place when they roamed the earth, with more abundant food sources freely available.
Mammals, conversely, are warm-blooded. A warmer planet would force them to be smaller in size due to the energy required to cool the core increasing proportional to it's size. When the planet cooled, these creatures were allowed to grow larger while reptiles shrunk.
What connects them are fungi. Fungi exist in almost any climate. Some are cold-tolerant (psychrotolerant) and are capable of growth near or below 0°C, while others are heat-tolerant (thermotolerant) and grow above 40°C.
Not much separates fungi and humans.
Events happen that rapidly change the environment in many ways. A notable one is sudden pole shift due to the galactic sheet involving many catastrophes like solar micronova, and such. Asteroid impact could be another. There are many.
Plants and animals evolve in the same manner than slime mold explores. Things are tried through randomized guesswork inherent in the software. Solutions are presented (species) that function appropriately, and become the norm. Outliers either die or fail to thrive unless they can better solve the problem of living efficiently.
When slime mold explores, it is random. Once it finds food, it begins to retract the random pathways and create efficient pathways to the food. If the food is taken away the pathway retracts. Slime molds are "single cellular organisms" due to a single cell wall with many nuclei inside.
A species is like a "single cellular organism" with many cell walls. The only thing that separates slime mold species is the programming. This is the same as to what separates all species.
Plants and Animals (and fungi) are different platforms (hardware). Like AMD vs Intel. However, chlorophyll and hemoglobin are not too dissimilar. Efficiencies can arise that are not mutually exclusive.
So, which came first: the Fungi or the Plant? The Fungi.
So, what created Fungi? Only theory from this point forward.
If you look at all life as basically the same in the above terms, where do you draw the line? Personally, I don't.
The earth created Fungi, because the Universe created the Galaxy and the Solar System. The Universe is connected and is a single cellular organism on the whole. The universe is not much different from a slime mold solving a different problem. A giant petri dish.
Life on earth is just an efficient solution to a problem that would naturally be solved. That begs the question: What is the problem that required life to exist on Earth?
Well, I think it's not the proper question. If the Universe is a living organism then life has always existed. The Universe IS life.
That's probably not a sufficient answer for most readers. Fortunately, I'll offer more.
Why does a black hole exist? Mathematics is the instruction manual for the universe. Math tells us it should exist, and we observe that it does. It is the most efficient solution to the problem in a Universe that operates on logic. There is no other solution to explain what happens when a series of conditions are present as such that a black hole is formed and continues to exist.
When those conditions change, the black hole reacts accordingly.
Not explaining every species on earth to have ever existed, each solves a problem. Humans had a complex problem. The earth is dying. It is going the way of Mars with an ever weakening magnetic field. Our challenge is to prolong the life of the planet by producing CO2 by extracting it from the earth at a higher rate than any other system or life form on the planet.
That was the beginning of our minor mission as a part of the whole, large and small.
Our continued mission is paid with precious energy the Universe organism spares to our existence to treat the Universe one day as a garden. To efficiently manage as an extension of the Universe itself the conditions on earth, and then beyond. That is the ultimate mission of all life, because that's what life is.
We are not the only ones. We will not be forever. We have competition.
When we graph a perfect mathematical problem, we draw a graph. Even our graph is an imperfect representation of the math. If we were to zoom in we would find a very jagged line, and at some point the line breaks down entirely. It's not precise enough.
When we graph nature, we see a similar pattern of imperfection. Rarely, if ever, does anything touch the calculus.
So, what is imperfection? We all have our ideas. In math, as a general rule (especially higher math) we estimate.
It requires less energy and processing power.
So, while the math doesn't allow any wiggle room the reality of the math does.
However, there are still answers that are clearly wrong.
That is greater than imperfection, and that is the species that dies out. Beyond that is where our concept of evil resides. Solutions far outside the graph that are clearly antagonistic to the math, rather than attempting an estimate.
Healthy competition is still considered "good" competition.
Humans face both good and evil competition.
Now you know what "evil" is, but what do you think the goal of "evil" is?
The planet's climate changes based on many factors, based on position of the sun and relative position in the galaxy/universe as well as the situation on the ground/core.
The software of the climate is not changing, it is simply running the same system based on a different state. The data input changes.
This gets into epigenetics, and how similar DNA is among all life on earth.
DNA is not software, it is the codebase. The expression of DNA is the software.
You can delete, edit and damage the physical DNA, but the code base is an expression of mathematics in system itself. That system may change, and thus DNA would no longer function (cease to be a solution). If the earth were irradiated, for instance.
Macro vs Micro Evolution is pretty simple to explain, but you have to understand a few things and the theory presents itself.
What does all life have in common? Cells and DNA.
What do all machines have in common? Hardware and Software.
How do we use hardware and software to solve problems?
We are presented with a problem and either develop the hardware or rewrite the software.
The only aspect of this that changes is the problem.
Would dinosaurs like the Brontosaurs be able to exist today? Possibly, but not likely. Oxygen content in the atmosphere is far lower than it was when they existed. The same can be said for megafauna due to lower CO2 than when they existed.
Reptiles gain heat by conduction, convection and radiation. The earth was a far warmer place when they roamed the earth, with more abundant food sources freely available.
Mammals, conversely, are warm-blooded. A warmer planet would force them to be smaller in size due to the energy required to cool the core increasing proportional to it's size. When the planet cooled, these creatures were allowed to grow larger while reptiles shrunk.
What connects them are fungi. Fungi exist in almost any climate. Some are cold-tolerant (psychrotolerant) and are capable of growth near or below 0°C, while others are heat-tolerant (thermotolerant) and grow above 40°C.
Not much separates fungi and humans.
Events happen that rapidly change the environment in many ways. A notable one is sudden pole shift due to the galactic sheet involving many catastrophes like solar micronova, and such. Asteroid impact could be another. There are many.
Plants and animals evolve in the same manner than slime mold explores. Things are tried through randomized guesswork inherent in the software. Solutions are presented (species) that function appropriately, and become the norm. Outliers either die or fail to thrive unless they can better solve the problem of living efficiently.
When slime mold explores, it is random. Once it finds food, it begins to retract the random pathways and create efficient pathways to the food. If the food is taken away the pathway retracts. Slime molds are "single cellular organisms" due to a single cell wall with many nuclei inside.
A species is like a "single cellular organism" with many cell walls. The only thing that separates slime mold species is the programming. This is the same as to what separates all species.
Plants and Animals (and fungi) are different platforms (hardware). Like AMD vs Intel. However, chlorophyll and hemoglobin are not too dissimilar. Efficiencies can arise that are not mutually exclusive.
So, which came first: the Fungi or the Plant? The Fungi.
So, what created Fungi? Only theory from this point forward.
If you look at all life as basically the same in the above terms, where do you draw the line? Personally, I don't.
The earth created Fungi, because the Universe created the Galaxy and the Solar System. The Universe is connected and is a single cellular organism on the whole. The universe is not much different from a slime mold solving a different problem. A giant petri dish.
Life on earth is just an efficient solution to a problem that would naturally be solved. That begs the question: What is the problem that required life to exist on Earth?
Well, I think it's not the proper question. If the Universe is a living organism then life has always existed. The Universe IS life.
That's probably not a sufficient answer for most readers. Fortunately, I'll offer more.
Why does a black hole exist? Mathematics is the instruction manual for the universe. Math tells us it should exist, and we observe that it does. It is the most efficient solution to the problem in a Universe that operates on logic. There is no other solution to explain what happens when a series of conditions are present as such that a black hole is formed and continues to exist.
When those conditions change, the black hole reacts accordingly.
Not explaining every species on earth to have ever existed, each solves a problem. Humans had a complex problem. The earth is dying. It is going the way of Mars with an ever weakening magnetic field. Our challenge is to prolong the life of the planet by producing CO2 by extracting it from the earth at a higher rate than any other system or life form on the planet.
That was the beginning of our minor mission as a part of the whole, large and small.
Our continued mission is paid with precious energy the Universe organism spares to our existence to treat the Universe one day as a garden. To efficiently manage as an extension of the Universe itself the conditions on earth, and then beyond. That is the ultimate mission of all life, because that's what life is.
We are not the only ones. We will not be forever. We have competition.
On competition:
What is competition? It's in the calculus.
When we graph a perfect mathematical problem, we draw a graph. Even our graph is an imperfect representation of the math. If we were to zoom in we would find a very jagged line, and at some point the line breaks down entirely. It's not precise enough.
When we graph nature, we see a similar pattern of imperfection. Rarely, if ever, does anything touch the calculus.
So, what is imperfection? We all have our ideas. In math, as a general rule (especially higher math) we estimate.
It requires less energy and processing power.
So, while the math doesn't allow any wiggle room the reality of the math does.
However, there are still answers that are clearly wrong.
That is greater than imperfection, and that is the species that dies out. Beyond that is where our concept of evil resides. Solutions far outside the graph that are clearly antagonistic to the math, rather than attempting an estimate.
Healthy competition is still considered "good" competition.
Humans face both good and evil competition.
Now you know what "evil" is, but what do you think the goal of "evil" is?
On rewriting the software:
The planet's climate changes based on many factors, based on position of the sun and relative position in the galaxy/universe as well as the situation on the ground/core.
The software of the climate is not changing, it is simply running the same system based on a different state. The data input changes.
This gets into epigenetics, and how similar DNA is among all life on earth.
DNA is not software, it is the codebase. The expression of DNA is the software.
You can delete, edit and damage the physical DNA, but the code base is an expression of mathematics in system itself. That system may change, and thus DNA would no longer function (cease to be a solution). If the earth were irradiated, for instance.