Is it Christian Doctrine to say that macroevolution is not the same as microevolution?

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There is a relatively large and active community engaged in reconciling the current claims of mainstream biological science with what is known as "Young Earth Creationism." Young Earth Creationists believe that God's creation of the earth took seven literal twenty-four-hour days, and that it took place roughly 6,000 years ago.

It is common among that community to endorse the reality of microevolution, which is biological evolution that creates relatively minor changes over brief spans of time, while rejecting macroevolution, which is evolution capable of creating new species, and which requires spans of time longer than 6,000 years. This, of course, requires distinguishing between micro- and macroevolution as two separate things, one true, one false.

For many atheist biologists, their chief point of contact with the Christian community is with YEC scientists, so they understandably take YEC claims as central to Christian doctrine. However, there are many Christians who are not Young Earth Creationists.

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Doctrine does not make claims about the definitions that biologists (or others) use.

If someone wanted to assert that the earth is billions of years old, then someone's doctrine may contradict that assertion, but it is not a doctrinal assertion to argue about what is meant by macro- or microevolution.

If someone has an issue with macroevolution (e.g. because its logical implications contradict their doctrine), it is more likely that they claim that there isn't much in the way of proof that macroevolution has actually happened and that it is very, very improbable. Microevolution has been observed, whereas macroevolution is a theory imposed upon historical science.

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Micro and macroevolution are non-ideal terms because they indicate that the issue is the size of changes, whereas the real issue is the type of changes.

Adaptation (and natural selection) are undeniable, but they consist of changes that shuffle and modify genetic information that is already in existence.

By contrast 'macroevolution' involves adding new functionality to a genome. Biblical Creationists assert that natural processes cannot do that as increasing information requires an intelligence, namely God. It's more philosophical than doctrinal, but yes, these Christians do say they are very different.

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