Comment by ubertaco
To play the devil's advocate here, as someone who grew up homeschooled and in a culture of "micro-scale evolution exists, but macro-scale evolution has not been demonstrated":
>Antibiotic resistance
...is a micro-scale adaptation, like an organism's immune response. Recognizing it does not require belief in a prehistoric common ancestor for all organisms; it just requires observing changes that happen on a much smaller and more rapid scale.
>Existence of vestigial structures in organism. Why do humans get goosebumps when we don't have enough hair to insulate us? Because it's an evolutionary leftover from our hairy ancestors when the reflex would actually cause hair to trap more air for better insulation.
This is non-falsifiable conjecture about a pre-historic past based on observation of present structures. It is equivalent to "we obviously know that dinosaurs did not have feathers, because their skeletons do not have feathers, and feathers would have made them more visible to predators, so they wouldn't have had feathers."
>Understanding evolution is crucial for crop management. The development of pesticide resistance in insects follows the same principles as antibiotic resistance.
...which, again, is a micro-scale adaptation, like an organism's immune response. You can notice pesticide resistance occurring in pests and rotate your pesticides without having to sign on to the unverifiable claim that this happens because all life derives from a single organism.
>Medical research often relies on animal models because of shared evolutionary history. Our biological similarities with other mammals exist because of common ancestry. Without this framework, it becomes harder to understand why medicines tested on mice or primates might work in humans, or why certain diseases affect multiple species similarly.
This is more non-falsifiable distant-past conjecture based on observation of current structures. Is it necessary to believe a particular set of conjectures about the origins of mammals' biological similarities in order to recognize the fact in front of you that the mammals are biologically similar, and thus some mechanisms of action may apply across species, provided those similarities are retained?
>Human susceptibility to back and knee pain is a consequence of how recent bipedalism is in our evolution. Same for why humans are so prone to chocking, our larynx evolved to enable speech at the cost of making it easier for food to enter it.
...which, again, is non-falsifiable distant-past conjecture that has no bearing on recognizing the existence of the verifiable current-day reality in front of you: humans have back and knee pain. Is it necessary to accept a particular set of unprovable conjectures about the distant-past origins of this particular skeletal structure in order to make decisions about how best to treat a symptom that exists today resulting from the skeletal structure that you see immediately in front of you?
Xir father used to argue the same thing.
But the micro vs. macro distinction is only one of time and scale and that's the whole point: species aren't "real," even fish aren't "real" in any ontological sense, but the countless organisms that we categorize as such existed, exist, and will continue to exist regardless of how we conceive of them.
The ask of evolution and science in general is to accept the incredibly narrow capacity of human cognition as a starting point for an even deeper understanding rather than an end goal to rationalize towards.