The Creation Model explains the facts quite nicely

We're talking a different whole model here, one that is at least as consistent with the facts as evolutionism. At least.

In the creation model I always have in the back of my mind (some of which I certainly got from creationist sources but some is my own or at least my own way of organizing the material), species are defined at the genetic level by a particular genetic endowment that was built in at creation.

DEFINING THE ORIGINAL SPECIES, ALSO KNOWN AS THE KIND:
In the debate the evolutionists insist that creationists give a definition of a Kind or of microevolution versus macroevolution, which is of course difficult. I've given my dynamic definition of it many times and a test for it as well -- there should be measurably reduced genetic diversity after a series of population reductions as in a ring species, showing the outer limits of the Kind beyond which further evolution is impossible. But I note that Percy/Admin at EvC was apparently trying to reduce the haranguing on the subject in one thread recently by trying to give a brief definition. I think he meant to say that a change from a gray squirrel (population) to a red squirrel (population) is MICROevolution but in fact he said MACROevolution which destroyed his intent, and if so I'd have to agree with that. In general I think if you're inclined to call it by the same name as its predecessor, a "squirrel" in this case, you're talking about MICROevolution. I'm sure there are exceptions but this is most likely the rule. When you're talking about a change from a reptile to a bird or a worm to a human or an ape to a human you're talking MACROevolution.

The original genomic endowment of each species has a great deal of variability built into it that defines the limits of change available to the species, that is, there were many alleles that change the effect of particular genes, originally many more than continue today, and there were many more genes, even many for a particular trait as well, many more than today (They are all now junk DNA, but I get ahead of myself).

This is sufficient for great variability of the species as populations split off from each other down the generations.

VARIATION OR "EVOLUTION" REDUCES GENETIC DIVERSITY
Over time the variability is inevitably reduced by these splittings and isolations for any given population, but the original genetic complement was so rich that the variability remains high for many generations and it's very rare that a particular line of variation gets to the point of allelic depletion for many gene loci, such as happened with the cheetah, but it would happen occasionally with severe bottlenecks -- though originally it would have taken many bottlenecks to reduce the variability to the extent of the cheetah -- and would happen over many generations with many less drastic population splittings as well.

SOME EXAMPLES OF VARIABLES THAT WERE BUILT IN:
Among the original built-in variables for most creatures could be size differences from as big as an elephant to as small as a mouse, as big as a sabertoothed tiger but as small as a housecat, as big as a dinosaur, as small as a lizard. All within the same species. Size and shape of features and limbs would also have a fair degree of variability. Color and patterns of skin or fur or scales also. Length of fur. The excess skin of the Shar Pei is most likely also a built-in variable, one that would probably take many generations of population isolation (nature does it randomly but domestic breeding does it intentionally) to emerge according to this creationist model.

SPECIATION
So: Many variations develop from the original created Species over generations, forming new populations with their own peculiar characteristics, often to the point of "speciation" or cessation of interbreeding with former populations. Speciation in this model is simply what happens when a particular line of variation -- either by random population splitting in nature or intentional splitting by domestic breeding -- has produced a population whose genetic diversity is sufficiently reduced, or whose gene pool has become sufficiently inbred, to prevent breeding of its members with those of the population from which it originally split off. Of course breeding may cease between the two before a genetic reason for it exists, simply because of preference of members of a population for members of the same population. The effect is the same: the separate characteristics of the separated populations are preserved and so are their separate gene pools.

You NEVER get a new "species" in the sense of the original Species or Kind by any of these processes of variation, only variations on the theme of the original Species itself, but they are quite wonderfully many and diverse. So while what is called "speciation" by evolutionists clearly does happen, it's nothing more than a variation that no longer interbreeds with the rest of its Kind, so that its own pecular characteristics are preserved.

As such variations inbreed and become established in their own niches they refine their own gene pool and that further cuts them off from other members of the species.

MUTATIONS
In this model, mutations are mistakes or accidents brought about by the Fall. They have no positive function in the organism, only a negative or destructive one. They may produce no identifiable change at all, but only because the original DNA is not easily damaged. But the fact that they change anything at all in the originally perfect genetic design makes them a disease process.

Whenever I read a description of a trait as produced by a mutation I simply doubt it, recognizing it as a notion that is required by the competing model of evolution but in reality most likely simply the result of an unusual combination of the pre-existing built-in allelic possibilities that go back to the creation, brought about by many generations of population splittings and consequent reduced genetic diversity which just happened to bring this particular combination to expression.

So, I habitually reinterpret descriptions of traits that ascribe them to mutation, as in this description of the wrinkled skin of the Shar Pei dog for instance:

Scientists from the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, announced in January 2010 that they had analysed the genetic code of 10 different pedigree dog breeds. In the Shar-pei they discovered four small differences located in the gene HAS2 which is responsible for making hyaluronic acid synthase 2. That enzyme makes hyaluronic acid, which is one of the key components of the skin. There have been rare cases in which a mutation of the same gene has caused severe wrinkling in humans as well.[3]

While this MIGHT be a mutation -- a mistake in the replication of the gene -- especially where it produces a clear deformity, it is most likely, according to the creation model, to be simply a case of a rare allele having come to expression in the breed after many generations of isolation and inbreeding.

Is it possible to tell a pre-existing normal nonmutated allele from a supposed mutation as expected by evolution? I don't think so. Mutation is simply assumed, because the theory of evolution requires it.

MACROEVOLUTION
What I'm describing is often called "microevolution" but it's the only kind of evolution that is possible, variation within the species based on the genetic endowment built in at the Creation. No other genetic input is required. For "macroevolution" to occur, however, meaning changes that transcend the Species or Kind, would require genetic input from somewhere, and this is what "mutations" are assumed by evolutionists to provide, but if they are mistakes that confer no benefit on the organism obviously this should be recognized as a dashed hope.

EVOLUTIONIST JUST-SO TALES
Also incidentally found in that same Wikipedia discussion of the Shar-Pei is the typical evolutionist tale that "explains" the survival of a particular feature, in this case the heavily wrinkled skin:

If a Shar Pei is being attacked the wrinkles keep the Shar Pei from being injured badly.[citation needed]

The sort of "explanation" that is meant to account for the persistence of the feature.

Sometimes such factors may indeed apply, but according to my creation model it's more likely that the trait simply emerged in the process of allele shufflings in population isolations over generations and wasn't a detriment so it stuck around. It may confer benefits of course, but these don't have to be the reason for its existence. The creation model produces creative variations kind-of-just-for-the-love-of-them, as it were, just for the "love" of beauty and diversity, they don't need specific reasons that enabled them to survive. So, for instance, rather than Darwin's finches having evolved their characteristic beak styles in order to fit into a niche where the particular beak was suited to the particular food, the creation model would say the finches that just happened to develop with a particular beak style gravitated to that kind of food just because the beak WAS suited to it, and over subsequent generations THEN the beak could have become established and refined for that purpose within that population.

So the idea that the wrinkled skin protects the Shar Pei from injury MAY be true enough (who knows) but it isn't necessary as an explanation for the existence of the trait. This is just the usual imaginative speculation that makes up, oh, 90% of the whole theory of evolution. It even says "citation needed." Well, maybe someone will come up with a citation to a study that seems to prove it, but evolutionists never really require such proof, the ad-hoc speculation explanation alone usually suffices.

Why aren't there any pre-human hominids (or other varieties of hominids) still running around? Oh probably because we killed them all off or ran them off the territory that sustained them and so on and so forth. They publish whole peer-reviewed papers speculating about the reasons and they'll call it science and they'll beat up creationists who continue to demur. They haven't a clue but such "likely stories" seem to be enough to keep them happy. Of course the REAL reason is that there never WERE any pre-human hominids.

How come there is a bone in the whale skeleton fossil where a hip joint would have been located? Oh that's proof that the whale evolved from a land animal. Huge huge leap but because it fits the ToE they enshrine it as ***S*c*i*e*n*t*i*f*i*c*** F*a*c*t***.

But continuing with my Creation Model:

JUNK DNA
Junk DNA is most likely the record of genetic death over the generations due to the Fall, much of it brought about by mutations that simply killed the function of gene after gene. Probably the majority of it is a record of the Great Death brought about by the Flood. If there is some function left in some of them that is all it is, a bit of crippled life that remains, that wsan't completely killed. Those creationists who want to find function in the DNA are not thinking clearly. They feel they have to prove the original perfection of the Creation and forget that the Fall has made enormous changes in the original perfection through destructive processes -- disease, death, deformity -- that had no part in the original.

NATURAL SELECTION
What about Natural Selection? In this creation model NS is one possible way variations develop, but only one of many. Simple migration will succeed at creating a new variation by isolating a new population just as well as NS will, by creating new gene frequencies, just as adapted to its situation as anything NS produces, and without the death that NS often requires. Natural Selection applies mostly to situations where there is an actual survival threat that prevents the creature from passing on its genes, such as when an aggressive predator wipes out much of the population. Some sort of defensive mechanism in a few of the prey population's members may save some of them and therefore be passed on and become characteristic of the new population. A change in the environment, say the food supply, may kill off many members of a particular population but those that have some form of adaptation to the new food situation will pass on their genes. Etc. etc. It no doubt happens, but probably is fairly rare among all the ways new populations develop from genetic variations, perhaps far more often than not simply leading to extinction rather than an adapted variation. Forced adaptation to specific situations can't be as much of a driving force for change as evolution claims. As far as new variations go, genetic drift does the same thing within a population. Bottleneck is simply a drastic version of either migration or natural selection, creating a severely reduced population with severely reduced genetic diversity in a single event. Etc. etc.

FOSSIL RECORD
What is the Fossil Record according to the Creation Model? Obviously it's overwhelmingly to be explained as the remains of the creatures that died in the Flood of Noah. Obviously.

Why is there the seeming gradation of primitive to advanced morphology in the Fossil Record? There really isn't, there is simply a sorting of creatures according to some physical principle, probably many physical principles, that occurred in the Flood. The apparent gradation is an illusion. Differences between different fossil representatives of one species to be found in different layers or different parts of the world simply demonstrate the same principle of variation I'm describing above, not evolution from one type to another. There are lots of different varieties of Trilobites in the Fossil Record for instance, each variety flocking with its own kind, which evolutionists interpret as evolution over time, presumably from less to more advanced types, but all they are really is separate populations of the many possible variations that were built into the original genome of the Trilobite species.

STRATA / GEOLOGIC COLUMN / GEO TIMETABLE
What about the existence of the strata themselves, known as the Geologic Column? Well, that is really a no-brainer. Nothing BUT a worldwide Flood could have brought about those strata. The interpretation of huge time periods attaching to separated sediments is just plain ludicrous. And don't tell me that is a wrong reading of the geo timetable. Just go look at the model of the Grand Canyon where the "time periods" are associated with the different sediments.

And so on and so forth.

The point of this post is to demonstrate that there IS a Creation Model that IS consistent with the actual facts, can account for just about everything the Evolution model attempts to account for and in my opinion way better.

There is much more that could be added here but I'll have to get back to it later or do it in another post.

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From Post at EvC:

No one seems interested that the best microbiology has been able to accomplish is 1+1=2.

Ok, 1 +1 =2. Then we're at 2, and 2 + 1 = 3, then we're at 3, and 3 + 1 = 4. Now we're at 4, and 4 + 1 = 5. 5 + 1 = 6. 6 + 1 = 7. 7 + 1 = 8. 8 + 1 = 9. 9 + 1 = 10.

Lots of little changes add up to a big change. What you need to do, to allow micro but deny macro, is come up with some mechanism that stops little changes from accumulating.

Easy. I told them there and I'm arguing here over and over again: THE PROCESSES THAT PRODUCE VARIATIONS / CHANGES IN THE PHENOTYPE / SPECIATION / "EVOLUTION" ULTIMATELY LEAD TO REDUCED GENETIC VARIABILITY OR DIVERSITY, WHICH EVENTUALLY PUTS AN END TO THE POSSIBILITY OF MORE CHANGES. This end point defines the outer limit of a Species or Kind. That's your "mechanism." It should be testable, both in the wild and in a laboratory.