What "kind" are penguins?

Haven't we said often enough that there is no way to know what the original Kinds encompassed? All we have is a few vague Biblical references. We know anything that "speciated" since the Fall is not synonymous with Kind, but rather a member of a Kind, whether we can say what that Kind is or not, and that's about it.We'd be very happy if we could use the term Species instead of Kind, but it's currently being used for this other purpose.But go ahead and dither about penguins anyway. They're interesting creatures.

It's hard even to make a guess in most cases. I think of cats and dogs first of all, but some claim that not everything I would class as a dog is in fact a dog. Well, I don't know. Maybe far enough back it descended from the same ancestor all dogs did. Or maybe not. A kind is certainly the original ancestor of whatever group we're talking about, but what its characterists were is far from easy to guess. I've nevertheless made some guesses in relation to dogs and cats on other threads, mostly behavioral, and all I got for my effort was ridicule altnough I still think those characteristics are pretty definitive. I have no idea. I might be tempted to class all birds together myself, or clean and unclean birds anyway, but there may have been more original kinds than that. No. Think dogs and cats at least. As long as you realize all you can get from me is my own personal speculations, which mean absolutely nothing in the end, the answer is yes to slugs and snails, no to snails and hermit crabs. It's easier to attempt a definition than to give concrete examples in most cases. Again dogs and cats. I think ALL cats are one kind -- but I could be wrong, maybe there are two or three cat kinds; I would think all dogs are a kind, probably the wolf being the closest to the original kind. Same situation as with cats beyond that. By how much it resembled some group or other. If it resembles none very much, I'd think of it as a possible reprsentative of a kind that went extinct; or there might be living representatives of its kind that simply evolved in a direction that makes the connection very hard to recognize.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's true, and considering the impact of the Fall plus constant (micro)evolution it's very possible we don't have a single representative of an original Kind of anything, but only members, sometimes of widely divergent characteristics from each other. Yes, that's what I had in mind. Good definitions.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You seem to have answered your own questions in your later post. I would guess there were only variations or members of a kind even by the time of the flood myself, given the changes to be expected from the fall, and the usual processes of (micro)evolution, but there's no way to know. Probably the original generation were all dead by then, and those would be the only originals after all. As a matter of fact, offspring are never identical to the parent so of course all are merely members of the original kind, the original merely having the genetic capacity to produce all the different varieties, and some loss of that capacity to be expected I would think in the individuals of that kind with every subsequent generation. All this isn't exactly clear in my mind yet so I'm sure it's not all that clear in print either.As a YEC who takes the fossil record as a picture of pre-flood flora and fauna, just from that I'd have to say there had been a lot of evolving going on by the time of the flood just to look at what is represented there. Many varieties of many different Kinds. That would be so, but they are probably different kinds anyway because one is clean and the other unclean. I don't know if there is a standard YEC view.I think I just figured out that there can't be any original kinds anyway because evolution is automatic. The only way there would be original kinds is if some originals had survived all the way from Eden to the ark. No chance of that. Even Methuselah was dead so certainly the animal kingdom didn't make it.My view is that there is a lot of genetic capacity to evolve in many members of a kind as well as the original ancestor, certainly whatever members were on the ark, but I'm not sure about the genetics involved. Actually great genetic capacity in the original kinds IS the standard YEC view, but I may elaborate it in my own way, not sure. However it works, Noah's sons and their wives had all it took to propagate the entire human population since then, and all of us now living descend from them. So something similar I assume pertains to the animals on the ark as well. There must have been a decreased capacity compared to the original kinds of course, unless as you say some were included on the ark, which I think couldn't have occurred.

Polyploidy or mutation that is not random but chemically predictable in some way I don't grasp yet.

I figure there were many varieties of a kind before the flood already. Didn't I say that? isn't that what the geological column shows, interpreted from a YEC point of view as laid down in the flood -- many varieties of a kind? The different "kind of kind" after the flood wouldn't just be one variety or kind of a kind but the usual evolving varieties.I don't believe in "hyper" evolution. I think it is generally overlooked in the evolution paradigm how much change occurs from generation to generation in the normal run of things for many kinds. Except that, yes, when you get down to highly specialized types, of which we have many in our time, that is, species hardwired in particular niches and so on, you do lose so much genetic potential that change slows down a lot. There may have been some of those on the ark too. I have no idea. How could anyone know?

There is no way to know at this point what the original kinds were.If I have to guess what a penguin is, I have no trouble saying it's a bird. Its peculiarities don't to my mind keep it from being a bird. How many kinds of birds were/are there? Who knows?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Penguins have feathers and beaks and claw feet and make a sound more like a bird than anything else. Bats have nothing in common with birds by my assessment. I think my assessment is quite rational and your question silly, but I also said nobody has a way of knowing.The problem is that the Bible uses the term "kind" in more than one sense. This is why we can't define the original kinds.

Why do you all keep on insisting on having information that simply is not available? If we can't know we simply can't know. If there is no answer yet that's just a fact, that's life. Surely there is room in science for the unanswered question. Perhaps genome studies will eventually answer it.WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?

THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW FOR SURE WHAT THE ORIGINAL KINDS WERE!!! All we know is that God created original kinds that had no ancestors. The word is used in a rather casual way in scripture and in different contexts and is not very useful for scientific purposes, but it's ALL we know. Everything else is a guess, hopefully an intelligent or educated guess but just a guess. Surely science doesn't demand answers to questions it simply doesn't have. What kind of nonsense is this? Well, I for one have no hope of its being taken seriously. The prejudice is deep and hostile. I am not a supporter of Creationism in the schools. Forcing something on the majority is a bad thing to try to do, and Christians need to be free to teach without the pressure of public opinion too.I want to see Bible-inerrantist Christians leave the public schools.Why do you call it a "system?" Mostly creationism is a fairly recent attempt to try to answer evolutionist claims based on science that debunk the flood and the special creation of human beings and animals. What is to be taught is the various interpretations of the facts, and that includes the evolutionist interpretation. I would think you could make a LITTLE effort to put yourself in the place of a creationist on this. But I suppose we're all such loonies you can't make the effort. Too bad. I hope what I've said above is somewhat clarifying.

If what you have ARE in fact unanswerable questions then that is science too. Perhaps they will be eventually answerable. No science can possibly know such things in advance. You are making ridiculously unrealistic demands. We know there were original kinds. That's all the facts we have at the moment. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What the Bible says is fact. That's basic YEC. We don't have to rely on our own scientific reconstructions to know that much, as evos rely completely on such reconstructions for their entire theory.Good thing we're here in TC&I instead of science, where hopefully this sort of statement is not up for debate. If it is, then it's just more of the same old same old and we'll never get anywhere.

Well YECs have no problem determining what the Bible means in Genesis. Perhaps the only way we are going to be able to deal with this incessant debate about basic things is to give a list of assumptions for a particular thread that are to be unquestioned for that thread. The YEC assumptions about Genesis should be that for this thread, it seems to me, and the debate about them should be taken elsewhere. However I didn't start the thread so somebody else can call the assumptions. I'm not into debating them here however. I'm trying to answer the questions from the YEC point of view.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As I recall, this thread addresses the YEC view of Kinds, so the YEC assumptions, being the basis of this view, should be unquestioned for the duration of this thread IMHO -- you know, for the sake of order and clarity -- as I also just said in Message 40. You are welcome to start your own thread to argue the merits of Odin's revelation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

On a thread addressed to YEC thinking it would simply break down into chaos to bring in other interpretations of the Bible. Really, it would be off topic. It's another subject. And endlessly questioning each other's assumptions makes it impossible for any discussion to progress beyond the basics. It's like having to reinvent the wheel every time we try to develop our ideas. There are plenty of places where the assumptions are argued to death as it is. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.