Search Results: trait theory

I'm looking for people who know the creation history to give their opinions. I believe in evolution as an origin theory but I want to be able to communicate with my creationist grandmother about it in terms that make sense to her. It's hard to understand one side if you grew up only being taught the other. I'm not educated on creationism so I'm asking you guys!

First, the simple definition of evolution I refer to (not as the origin of life on earth, just the theory of existing life changing as we speak): a species adapting by gradually shifting toward favorable traits.
Ex: viruses and bacteria eventually mutating to become disease resistant because one will mutate to have immunity to a treatment and subsequently have an easy time reproducing itself and becoming the dominant trait in the species (same species, but the species has become ever so slightly different by adapting to new challenges).

So I've been told that the creationist history argues against evolution as an origin of life, but (1) how is microevolution like the example above viewed? Is it considered acceptable because it takes place after God created the earth and kind of let it do its thing and become what it is today? Is that still viewed as evolution to the church or does the church have different terms for this? Does the church deny the existence of such events? If so, how are these shifts explained?

Follow up (2): Is it possible that evolution as commonly described in terms of a phylogenetic tree (branching species differentiating themselves from a common ancestor) occurred after creation, or is there something that disproves that? My question is why couldn't both happen? After all, we only have short, somewhat vague descriptions of what the original earth looked like and if that's true and 6,000 years have passed, then a lot obviously a lot could have changed. Is it unreasonable to think that evolution occurred after everything was created so both worked together? Thanks!