Message 31 of 42 (530466) 10-13-2009 4:18 PM

Reply to: Message 27 by Peg 10-13-2009 4:55 AM

Which by your definition would mean that there are over a million kinds.

Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Message 32 of 42 (530492) 10-13-2009 6:38 PM

Reply to: Message 30 by Modulous 10-13-2009 12:50 PM

It's probably more helpful to think of Dawkins's "hairpin" analogy from The Greatest Show on Earth. (And if I had my copy here with me at work I'd be able to quote it exactly.)

Imagine starting with a single living organism. For the sake of this example let's make it a goldfish. Now go back a generation to its parent, which looks pretty close, but not exactly like its progeny. (Probably easier for the goldfish to tell the difference that it is for us.) Go back another generation, and again the parent is similar but not exactly the same as the progeny. Keep going back generation after generation, seeing minor changes in the DNA as we go, and eventually we end up with something that doesn't look at all like the modern goldfish we started with. Let's take it all the way back to the first chordate. Now here's the hairpin turn. Go forward one generation from this organism, but to a different descendant. (For the sake of the argument, we can start here with one of our chordate's close relatives, a cousin or someone else of the same generation.) The descendant is again going to look similar and have similar DNA, but will not be an exact copy. Moving forward generation after generation, traveling down a different line of descent, a different evolutionary pathway, we can find ourselves ending up with a descendant way far away on the genetic map from the goldfish we started with, say an anthropoid named Charlie or Peg.

As long as you grant that living beings can change in any degree, however small, from one generation to the next, and as long as you grant that changes are inheritable, then common descent can indeed demonstrate a kinship between any two organisms, from ostrich to orchid. You just have to go back far enough.

Message 33 of 42 (531283) 10-16-2009 7:38 PM

Reply to: Message 26 by greyseal 10-12-2009 10:37 AM

Hybridization: Note this is an additive criteria
If an organism can hybridize with another organism -they are the same kind.
If that other organism can hybridize with yet another organism -they are all the same kind.
If that organism can...etc.
Note that if an organism can not hybridize with another organism this does not mean they are not from the same kind, this is because this ability may have been lost through mutations etc.

Both Mr jack's and greyseal's comments seem to show a common misconception that creationists don't believe that organisms change or that these changes can look quite big phenotypically. The point remains that genomes are degenerating (genetic entropy) and no new information arises.

Out of interest I came across this article http://creation.com/molecular-limits-natural-variation yesterday as it was the featured article on the CMI website. It shows how large amounts of phenotypical variations can occur while maintaining the creation model. Kirschner and Gerhart’s facilitated variation theory is the main topic, which while being touted by evolutionists as strong evidence against ID it is actually the complete opposite. Note that the original authors believe that new "core processes" can arise naturally yet haven't been able to show how. Anyway, here is the abstract:

So in conclusion I think slevesques post showed that we are able to define a kind, however, have we carried out all the necessary research on every single organism to fully classify everything according to these criteria? No, not yet, but we are working on it, and what is wrong with that?

Message 34 of 42 (531300) 10-16-2009 10:11 PM

Reply to: Message 33 by Arphy 10-16-2009 7:38 PM

This discussion applies to sexually reproducing animals.

Since every one of your hybrids is just another decedent in a long line of ancestors and decedents, wouldn't your definition tend to put all of the tree of sexually reproducing life into being the same kind? The "sexually reproducing animal kind".

I guess a second kind would be the "sexually reproducing plant kind".

Not a biologist,

Moose

Edited by Minnemooseus, : Add a word.

Message 36 of 42 (531320) 10-17-2009 12:47 AM

Reply to: Message 33 by Arphy 10-16-2009 7:38 PM

First off, I want to congratulate you on your recent POTM nomination. You and slevesque have mustered the courage many creationists lack, and defined the term "kind". Pats on the back for both of you.

Now some comments on your post.

Your additive criteria seem to be the standard definition of "kind". If two animals can reproduce, they are a "kind". I have no problem with this definition as far as sexually reproducing species go.

However, to conclusively show that a species does not belong to a kind you need to use your subtractive criteria. This is your definition's weak spot. As far as I can tell from slevesque's excerpt, gaps in the fossil record are all that is necessary to exclude a species from a kind.

The problem is that new fossils are found continuously, and gaps are gradually filling up. If scientists were to dig up enough links between land-living animals and whales that even creationists would have to concede their relation to each other, then pakicetus would join the whale kind.
If you base a definition on gaps in current knowledge, your kinds will be continuously redefined as new findings come in.

But how do you quantify these differences? If, say, you defined gorillas and chimps as being one kind (not saying you do), what steps would you take to show that humans are significantly more different from that kind than gorillas are from chimps? (I think, on a molecular level, chimps and humans are closer than chimps and gorillas genetically).

The key to genetic relationships lies with molecular evidence, not so much morphology. Your method should reflect this.

-Meldinoor

Message 38 of 42 (531332) 10-17-2009 4:27 AM

Reply to: Message 37 by Arphy 10-17-2009 2:32 AM

Fair enough. That is true for any scientific model.

Good point, Arphy. However, I'm not sure why the author of that article chose to place a lack of fossil evidence under negative criteria. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, and just because we don't have the fossil links doesn't mean they don't exist. I get the feeling it was thrown in just to fluff up the list of criteria.

Hahaha... If they filled the gaps between different kinds they would no longer be different kinds Any fossil links must per your definition be within a kind. So your distinction makes no sense. Respectfully.

I still have a problem with this. We are essentially discussing genetic or evolutionary (you would probably say micro-evolution) relationships when we're talking about kinds. While morphology may be useful for grouping types of animal, it is horrible when it comes down to figuring out how animals are related.

Take dogs for instance. They differ enormously in their outward morphology, yet their DNA is still very uniform. If we were to define dogs merely by what they look like, ignoring all other factors, we might be tempted to put them in different groups, possibly even in your case, different kinds.

But dogs can interbreed. This shows us that morphology plays very little role in determining whether two animals can hybridize. It's all in the DNA. The more differences, the less likely two individuals will be able to produce viable offspring.

But isn't it the genetic similarities that matter? Who cares how dissimilar two species look? There are many proven cases of closely related animals (like dogs) that look wildly different. There are also cases where animals that look similar have proven to be distantly related genetically (like marsupial squirrel gliders, and placental flying squirrels). If you group these marsupials and placentals into the same kind, and do not put chimps and humans together, you've got some serious problems with your definition of kinds.

-Meldinoor

Edited by Meldinoor, : Trying to remember to give my posts good titles

Message 39 of 42 (531334) 10-17-2009 4:42 AM

Reply to: Message 33 by Arphy 10-16-2009 7:38 PM

I've read the papers by your finest Bariminologists, as alluded to by Slevesque. They're a joke. And they most certainly do not represent anything that could be described as degeneration.

They're saying that C4 plants can be descended from C3 plants inside of the same kind. Are you seriously suggesting that having a completely new biochemical pathway, differently localised with specialised anatomically features which provides considerably more efficient CO₂ fixation and lower water loss, represents a degeneration, seriously?

Come on.

They're also saying that Hyracotherium, Miohippus, Equus and Plesippus are the same kind, along with all the rest of these. Note the differences in toe number, the differences in size, the differences in dentition, the emergence of a specialised knee joint with remarkable energy efficiency properties, the difference in diet. You think that this remarkable array of changes represents only degeneration? Seriously?

Come on.

No, my point is that what they are proposing is beyond stupid: it's a fantasy. And it shows the incredible weakness of the Creationist position. Originally Creationists held the simplistic fantasy that all the animals could fit on the Ark. But this was shown up as complete absurdity by the sheer breadth of living species and the myth of fixed species blown away by the proponderance of direct evidence for speciation, and the multitudes of transitional fossils. So the idea of a kind was conjured up - along with the pretence that inventing entirely new specialised terms and then acting like that was what the Bible was talking about all along is still "taking it literally". But the kind is stubbornly missing from reality which is why your finest Bariminologists are driven into adopting such absurd positions while continuing to spout nonsense like the huge array of variation they believe has sprung forth with breathtaking speed only represent "degeneration".

Message 40 of 42 (531457) 10-18-2009 4:13 AM

Reply to: Message 38 by Meldinoor 10-17-2009 4:27 AM

Morphology and genetics: Firstly we don't generally have DNA for fossil species so we don't really have too much choice other than morphology. And i agree that theoretically genetic evidence would be better, however the point was that the way DNA/DNA comparisons are done at present gives a bias towards similarity. As DNA/DNA comparison methods develop I would hope that creationists would put more emphasise on this method.

Also with your example of dogs. When you see a picture of a breed of dog that you haven't seen before, do you immediatly recognise it as a dog?

Yes, morphological comparisons can be fallible, but even in evolutionary science they are relied on. I would hope that people doing comparisons of morphology would be knowledgeable at identifying the differences between variations of a structure and a completly new structure.

Message 41 of 42 (531469) 10-18-2009 6:23 AM

Reply to: Message 40 by Arphy 10-18-2009 4:13 AM

Few corpses fossilise. Gaps in the fossil record are therefore not unexpected. Even if there were no fossils at all, the weight of evidence for evolution being a fact is so overwhelming, it wouldn't matter. Fossils are just the icing on the cake.

Message 42 of 42 (531470) 10-18-2009 6:28 AM

Reply to: Message 33 by Arphy 10-16-2009 7:38 PM

No they are not, and yes it does.

see post 48, here:

http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=page&t=1384...