Define "Kind"

So would I, Schraf, so would creationists in general. All anyone has at the moment is the hypothesis that such a classification exists, but how to define and identify it for sure is not yet known. I've argued my own notion that there are built-in limits to the processes that lead to speciation, having to do with overall reduced genetic potentials with each selection event, and that this will define the natural limits of a Kind. The answer usually is that mutation overcomes this effect, and some have supposedly "proved" this. To my mind it's still quite open.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 09:01 AM

Of course I wouldn't agree. For the purposes of the debate engaged in at EvC it is essential. Otherwise you stack the deck against us creationists and the debate is over before it's started. It's quite legitimate to work from a hypothesis.

Well, but that is the hypothesis, it is all within a Kind. Can't be done as yet. And I'm not sure why it matters as the current wisdom based on the ToE is that there are NO natural limits to evolution anyway. It's not as if anybody's fussing about where the boundaries of the Kind should be located -- there simply are none. We aren't at the point where this makes any kind of argument. The arguments so far are attempts to establish the boundaries, not insist on any particular boundaries.

Well, it is , but we don't say it if we're smart.

Yes, well, that's the point at issue. I would expect that the Kinds are as general as those you list. And I don't see how macroevolution applies there, since if there are built-in limits, those ARE the limits that define the boundary between micro and macroevolution.

Everything I've ever said is worthless to you, Paul, but it doesn't seem to stop me

We won't have any new or different examples, it will be a matter of recognition of a different pattern in what the facts have always been.

I may be at odds with some of them, I don't know. This wouldn't be fun for me if I had to consult the prevailing thinking on the subject all the time -- that's for when I'm really stumped and really need to know what they make of something.I really do think there is an enormous genetic variability that was originally built into each Kind. I have no problem with everything from the housecat to the saber-toothed tiger's having "evolved" from an initial Cat that contained all those genetic possibilities, all the wild cats, and all the domesticated breeds to every extreme.Probably no problem with lemurs and gorillas, or with the whole range of serpents (although it is possible they belong to different Kinds of course). Dogs won't become bears though, but bears include raccoons, and dogs include wolves and coyotes. Cows and whales, no, that one seems to breach an intuitive boundary. These are all merely my subjective intuitive groupings of course. That is the usual view of it. It's going to take the establishment of clear limits before we know where microevolution stops, and that will be the boundary of a Kind.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 11:06 AM

Believe me, we WANT to be able to define the Kinds. It is extremely frustrating not to be able to do that. It may "look " to you like there's a "payoff" in keeping it undefined but that's just typical denigration of the motives of the opponent.I have no doubt but that the boundaries of the Kind will some day be truly scientifically objectively determined.If I overlooked the grouping of humans with monkeys, please allow me to correct that. Humans are definitely one and only one Kind unto themselves.

So you said. What is it you want me to say? Logically it may make a sort of formal sense, but practically it's a bust, of no use to the discussion.

Huh?I thought I said all my groupings were my own subjective intuitions.

I once raised a raccoon from infancy that had been abandoned by its mother and its bearness was so striking I called her "Little Bear." The fat lumbering body, the general shape of the face, the "hands" that wash its food, its way of standing on its hind legs at times. A little bear.

Scientific use? Not really, no. It's something that needs thinking about, how to establish it, and that involves scientific questions, but in order to use it scientifically, there's nothing defined enough to use. Creationists just have to bow out of those discussions. That's my own idea of how it will work out, but I suppose it could instead be defined genetically, through the study of the genome. Our source is the Bible, and the Bible has absolute authority. We know there were discrete Kinds because it says so. But it doesn't define them. That's for science to do. Edited by Faith, : discreet to discrete

Depends on what the hypothesis is, and whether the person who has it is a scientist or not who is equipped to test it. I have a hypothesis but I'm not a scientist. There are creationists who probably are working on it as in this case I know it's not my own idea. I've argued it here many times, don't really want to get deeply into it again. It's that the mechanisms of evolution that are described in population genetics tend generally to the reduction of genetic potential. When natural selection or bottleneck or any other event splits one population from another, either by geographic isolation or by the death of one part of the population, the new population(s) exhibit smaller genetic diversity than the parent population. If this trend continues with more population splits then ultimately you can get to a very much reduced genetic potential even in something that is clearly a new highly adapted "species." Thus the very process of speciation is bought at the cost of a loss of genetic diversity. The only thing that counters this overall trend is mutation, and it has to be frequent enough and beneficial enough to counter a LOT of reduction. I don't know if experiments are the way to tackle this or thinking through known facts about these processes by somebody who has lots of experience with them, which I don't.I understand that an increase in genetic diversity is in fact supposedly observed, but I haven't been able to grasp the arguments involved, and I doubt that it answers this other observation. There are processes that do increase diversity, but only temporarily, while overall the trend is to decrease.The other way I think Kinds might eventually be established is through study of the genome, and I don't know if anybody is working in that direction.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 12:24 PM

Of course not, and intuitively I don't see all that much similarity either, the way I do between bears and raccoons.