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Author Topic:   How many Kinds are there?
Equinox
Member (Idle past 5142 days)
Posts: 329
From: Michigan
Joined: 08-18-2006


Message 1 of 20 (423815)
09-24-2007 12:49 PM


Possible thread “How many Kinds are there?:
Since all those creationists tell us about all the real scientific research done by creation “scientists” studying and classifying the “kinds” (the study that they’ve termed “barminology” Created kind - Wikipedia), then what is their result so far as to how many “kinds” there are? I’m sure they it may be unclear in one or two cases, so how about an estimate then? Have they figured out within an order of magnitude even, how many kinds there are? Are they really trying or is it just a word game?
Could someone, creationist or otherwise, please just look up the number and let us know?
I’ve come across some interesting information about this, which I’ll share after we get a handle on the number according to today’s “creation scientists”.
Equinox
******************************************
This seems to be similar to, but a little different from, this thread:
http://EvC Forum: Problems of a different "Kind" -->EvC Forum: Problems of a different "Kind" Hence, I’d think “is it science” as the forum. Or, if preferred, I can post it to RAZD’s thread - seems like it’s a bit off topic though.
This seems like a pretty straightforward thread topic, so I’d think there has been a thread about this, but I didn’t see one by searching. If there is, I can just get that one going again.
-Equinox

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by Equinox, posted 09-25-2007 2:18 PM Equinox has not replied
 Message 4 by Taz, posted 09-25-2007 6:07 PM Equinox has not replied
 Message 5 by Brad McFall, posted 09-25-2007 6:54 PM Equinox has not replied

  
Equinox
Member (Idle past 5142 days)
Posts: 329
From: Michigan
Joined: 08-18-2006


Message 2 of 20 (424084)
09-25-2007 2:18 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Equinox
09-24-2007 12:49 PM


Hey, did the mods miss this new thread proposal?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Equinox, posted 09-24-2007 12:49 PM Equinox has not replied

  
Equinox
Member (Idle past 5142 days)
Posts: 329
From: Michigan
Joined: 08-18-2006


Message 7 of 20 (424216)
09-26-2007 9:26 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by Doddy
09-26-2007 3:46 AM


Dead Sea Scrolls Say how many Kinds!!
Doddy wrote:
according to the Woodmorappe's book Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, there are 8000 kinds of animals that breathe air through their nostrils. Creationists at AiG seem to think this an overestimate: (How did the animals fit on Noah’s Ark?.
Recently though, Todd Wood of AiG gave the estimate of 2000 in his piece Two of Every Kind
According to Lenny Flank's article here, creationist Wayne Frair at the Arkansas trial gave the estimate of 10,000 kinds in total plus or minus a few thousand
Thanks Doddy, that’s what I was asking for. They are in a “kind” of bind, since on one hand, they need to make the number large, since a small number means that a lot of evolution had to happen to give the many millions of species today, while on the other hand, they have to fit all these “kinds” (and their food, care, waste disposal, logistics, etc.) onto a supposed ark (plus food after the flood, and their dispersal). To their credit, some are at least trying to give a real answer, with numbers that can be evaluated, changed if needed, and such, as opposed to the other creationists who give fluffy, pointless “answers” that go on for paragraph after paragraph without really saying anything.
Here is the amazing information I promised. There is an ancient, biblical document written by Jews sometime between around the 2nd century BCE to 70 CE that says how many kinds there are. I found this in my translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, from 4Q216 Col. 4-7 (pg. 321 in Wise & Abegg “The Dead Sea Scrolls”), which has:
In all there were 22 kinds. He finished all his works on the 6th day, everything that was in the heavens, on the earth, in the seas, in the depths, in the light, and in the darkness, in every place.
Wow, 22 kinds! Now we know. Might this not be the word of God? After all, this was written before any of the books of the New Testament, perhaps around the same time as books such as Maccabbees. I don’t see any reason to know that this isn’t on par with other additions to the some bibles that have been made using texts found in the DSS.
Interestingly, the MSS 4Q216 breaks down the kinds by day, saying which were created on which day (thus listing the kinds!). Note that this is the created kinds, thus the number of kinds may have gone up between the creation and the flood, which means that new kinds evolved from the starting kinds, or that some other deity was making kinds on the side. Also - even this text is ambiguous over what a “kind” is, since it descrbes “major kinds”, implying that there are subdivisions of kinds below that (?).
As far as the numbers you gave, it’s interesting to see how high those numbers are, now that creationists have available the results of solid evolutionary science to show that they must use higher numbers than just a few dozen “kinds”.
Enjoy-
Equinox

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Doddy, posted 09-26-2007 3:46 AM Doddy has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by Brad McFall, posted 09-26-2007 6:55 PM Equinox has replied

  
Equinox
Member (Idle past 5142 days)
Posts: 329
From: Michigan
Joined: 08-18-2006


Message 9 of 20 (424569)
09-27-2007 1:29 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Brad McFall
09-26-2007 6:55 PM


Re: Dead Sea Scrolls Say how many Kinds!!
OK, here is the breakdown given in the Dead Sea Scrolls - if you read Gen 1:1-31, you’ll see that it matches the Genesis account very closely.
Day # # Kinds made that day List of the Kinds made on given day
1 7? Several kinds of Heavenly spirits that make rain, snow, etc. ?
2 1? The Firmament?
3 4 1. Plants that make seeds, 2. sprouting plants, 3. fruiting plants, 4. forests
4 3 1. Sun, 2. Moon, and 3. Stars
5 3 1. Sea monsters, 2. Fish and swarming ocean life?, 3. Birds
6 4 1. Humans, 2. Land animals?, 3. Things that creep on the land?, 4. Cattle
Total 22 DSS are clear that the total is 22
There are several places where the text is unclear or simply missing. I’ve indicated this with question marks.
Brad wrote:
It seems you already knew what you were asking for.
No, I didn’t know beforehand how many “kinds” creationists had supposed. The reason I asked is because an examination of the kinds can provide evidence as to whether this is of divine origin or of human origin. If it is of human origin, one would expect that the groups to fit a bronze age worldview, with only very general similarities being used, without knowledge of the detailed scientific findings since the Enlightenment. Categories could be expected to overlap because of this lack of knowledge. By this, one would expect the kinds to be very biased toward what a bronze age warrior can see.
On the other hand, if this is divinely inspired, one could expect that the classification will be far in advance of what a bronze age warrior would otherwise guess. For instance, it might be pointed out that There is more than one kind of worm (entire phyla), while all vertebrates are a single kind (phylum level).
I hope everyone knows better than to use the “people back then could only understand dumbed down science” approach. People back then had the same brains we do, and were just as smart. They were ignorant, but that’s easy to fix with knowledge. Hindus for instance had already postulated a universe billions of years old, and the intricacies of language show that ancient Jewish people weren’t stupid. Because of this, simply telling them the correct answer would have worked well.
The upshot is that the list found in the DSS, just like the Genesis account itself which it closely matches, shows all the hallmarks of a bronze age human account, and is filled with scientific errors. For instance, nearly all phyla are hardly mentioned - such as sponges, nematodes, all prokaryotes and archaea, etc. All animal phyla but one (chordates) are lumped into “things that swarm in the water” and “land creepers”. Plants are very crudely classified apparently by reproductive method (except “forests”), with many plants falling into most of the categories simultaneously (many make forests, make fruit, have seeds, and sprouts). Where would all the mosses, ferns and the whole fungi kingdom go? Vertebrates, on the other hand, which bronze age warriors would be most familiar with, are spread over a half-dozen kinds (5.5 of the 7 animal kinds are vertebrates). Lastly, mythical creatures are included, such as sea monsters (or do they mean whales?) and weather spirits - as well as including non-living things, and not knowing that the sun is an ordinary star (just closer).
All this shows that this creation account (Gen+DSS) has a human origin, and that attributing it to God is simple blasphemy.
Edited by Equinox, : inserted spaced between numbers (table didn't come out)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Brad McFall, posted 09-26-2007 6:55 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by Brad McFall, posted 09-27-2007 7:54 PM Equinox has replied

  
Equinox
Member (Idle past 5142 days)
Posts: 329
From: Michigan
Joined: 08-18-2006


Message 11 of 20 (424786)
09-28-2007 3:36 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Brad McFall
09-27-2007 7:54 PM


Re: divine or human origin?
(Sigh).
Those (the bucket experiment, Kant, etc.) are all interesting, but irrelevant ideas. Anyone who truly thinks God is all knowing and all powerful wouldn’t hem and haw about what a perfect God could say. I teach, and it’s easy to see which papers are by people who have learned and those that are ignorant. It’s even easier that that in this case, since the two options are so massively different - a perfect understanding of cosmic history vs a bronze age understanding.
I’m sure you can tell the difference between them as well, right? Which would you say Genesis and the DSS are?
The inclusion of nonliving things and mythical things I found interesting too, as I noted - and it too fits the bronze age, primitive mentality.
Have a good weekend-
Equinox

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Brad McFall, posted 09-27-2007 7:54 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by Brad McFall, posted 09-28-2007 7:35 PM Equinox has replied

  
Equinox
Member (Idle past 5142 days)
Posts: 329
From: Michigan
Joined: 08-18-2006


Message 13 of 20 (425918)
10-04-2007 2:37 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Brad McFall
09-28-2007 7:35 PM


Re: human origin
Brad wrote:
Are you trying to get an idea on the number of kinds that are causally connected to living things or dead patterns??
. . ..If your standard (reading into your posts to me so far) which seems to be that if God passed the info on, then one should be able to figure out where baraminologists went wrong, by looking into the differences in the case they wrote anything of an enumerable magnitude is, is correct, then it would matter (not form) how a number is to be coordinated to the kinds denoted in Genesis and/or the DSS.
I started to explain what this would entail.
No Brad, I started out by asking how many “kinds” creationists thought there were. A simple question. It’s restricted to creationists because science has long recognized that the whole “kind” idea of baraminology is just a word game with no bearing on reality, so I’m not asking what Gould or Darwin or any other real scientist thinks. If I had asked how many species (or genera or phyla or whatever) there were, then real information from real scientists would have been relevant. Doddy answered my question about creationist kinds in about 85 words in post #6.
You, on the other hand, have spent hundreds of words and some irrelevant image files saying pretty much nothing. You’ve dropped names of important people passing near you, along with Darwin and Gould, as if they had any relevance on the topic. Your tangents have wafted out on every breeze possible, and you haven’t even listed a number of kinds yet. You’ve mentioned Gould and Darwin as if they knew or cared what the creationist’s would say about the number of kinds.
You know, when you started posting on this thread I was hopeful that we could have an interesting discussion, because I’ve long thought (and still think) that you are an intelligent person. However, as with past posts, you bring up wordy and convoluted arguments that leave me wondering if you read the OP, and if you understand what biology is about.
I have to admit (and this is addressed to all readers), that I’m still amazed at the sheer amount of damage that creationism can do to a mind. Brad here is an amazing example of that. He’s no idiot - he’s intelligent enough to relate various topics to each other, and is well read, and has a decent memory, yet he can’t seem to understand the most basic science concepts like “what constitutes evidence?”, or “how does science work?” or “how do we know what we know?”.
He’s in a completely different league than many of the minds we’ve seen here that have been warped and broken by creationism - you know the people who aren’t the sharpest pencil in the drawer, who sound like a 6 year old even though they may be 16, 18, 23, 39, 56, or however many years old. They post here often, are confused, and often leave quickly. Seeing how completely destroyed their rational brains have become is sad enough, but in many ways it’s even more sad in cases like Brad, where I wonder at who he could have been, and what he could have accomplished for the good of all our world if his strong mind had not been crippled by fallacious reasoning and muddled logic.
I should stop. Have a great day everyone-
-Equinox

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Brad McFall, posted 09-28-2007 7:35 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by Brad McFall, posted 10-05-2007 9:35 PM Equinox has not replied

  
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