Species/Kinds (for Peg...and others)

But Peg, domesticated dogs would then be traced back to flud times to 2 wolves and that most definitely is not the case.

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Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people
-Carl SaganFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

Your bit of fiddling needs revising I'm afraid. You need to divide by 1000² not 1000. You end up with 21m². Multiply that by 2 for 42m² and that converts to 1/80^th of an acre.

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You are now a million miles away from where you were in space-time when you started reading this sentence.

The Bible is not even remotely useful as a guide to taxonomy, full stop. It incorrectly identifies bats as birds, for example. Everything came from something else, Peg. It all depends on how far back you go. If you take your line of thought to the extreme, "Noah" could have brought just a pair of the earliest mammals (like Eozostrondon, which lived around 210 million years ago). Or he could go back further, and grab some Pelycosaurs (the first synapsids, which eventually gave rise to mammals). If he grabbed a pair of the first Tetrapods, he could in one fell swoop have the "kind" that eventually diversified into reptiles, amphibians, and mammals in just one mating pair.The question of "how many "kinds" did Noah take on the ark" is foolish from the beginning. The term "kind" applies equally well at the level of species, family, genus, and even kingdom, and is arbitrarily shifted (as you just did with wolves and dogs) to make the case for sufficient space on a large boat.But please, Peg, please understand that the classification of "kinds" is something that science does very very well. We do it based on morphology, the physical characteristics that are easily observable in an organism. Vertebrates, for example, are any animal whose spinal cord is surrounded by a backbone. This includes birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, each of which are defined by their own individual features that make them distinct from other subgroups of vertebrates, but each subgroup (and each of the subgroups that arise from them, and so on) is still and will always be vertebrates.Understand also that the Theory of Evolution predicts not just change over time, but that any given population will continue to diversify until subgroups can be identified as distinct from other subgroups in the larger population; and that each of these subgroups will eventually also diversify and contain distinct sub-populations of their own. Much like how humans have artificially diversified wolves into the many breeds of domesticated dogs we see today.New "kinds"a re being "created" all the time as existing populations diversify into distinct sub-populations through the slow change of features over time by mutations guided by natural (or human, as with domesticated species) selection.

Ok great, so because science defines all creatures with a spinal cord surrounded by a backbone as a vertebre, it has to mean that all vertebres are related and decended from each other.Why should that be the case? If God decided to create fish, they would all need to be able to breath underwater, but it doesnt imply that they must all be related for that reason. Same with land animals, just because they all breath air and walk on land does not have to mean they are all related.the Special Theory of Evolution states that while limited
change within groups can be observed, such change always remains within phylogenetic boundaries. It was coined by Dr Kerkut in this way We know and understand that change occurs...anyone who liks dogs can see how new breeds can be developed. But the real question is do the changes that occur cross phylogenetic boundaries?I dont think that just because a whole range of species have a spinal cord surrounded by a backbone proves that these all developed from long unbroken chain.

Hi Peg, If you studied basic biology with a couple of chapters on embryology and anatomy (nothing much higher than ordinary high school biology) you would know why scientists maintain that vertebrates are related at phylum level.I can't believe you are so ignorant to rant and rave at experts in these fields when you are so incredibly scientifically illiterate....it's arrogance bordering on gross stupidity. Would you go and tell a brain surgeon how to perform a hydrocephalus operation? Would you tell a rocket propulsion specialist his thrust-lift formula was wrong?The life-science specialists are just as scientific and professional....you besmirch the work of many on this site....and I'm not just aiming this at you but at all those who are too lazy to do the necessary reading to critique the science under question here. If you are going to try and argue science points you MUST do the required reading (peer-reviewed literature, not retarded creationist piffle). In short you must UNDERSTAND what it is you are arguing about first before you are in a position to put up a SCIENTIFIC counter argument. If you cannot then you waste everyone's time. You can only argue with an "I believe" argument in the faith threads. A science thread must only have science arguments - so you must do the research first. And that is going to take you some time......By the way....don't just try and cherry pick items from scientific papers - that's called quote mining and is most unscientific. You need to thoroughly understand each scientific process that is being described. You need to understand what data set is being used, what are the control variables where control conditions can be used, what are the predictions. What does a scenario predict will NOT happen....this is even more important that predicting what will happen - this is how science is falsifiable. A theory that cannot predict something wont' happen (like ID for example) is utterly useless.

Part of it has to do with the fact that as we get below a certain point in the geological column we see less and less vertebrates and they are more and more similar. We also see transitionals not only between species and genus, but between phyla and even broader levels. At specific points we see only the transitionals, and not further more specialized groups.For example, the shark is not a true vertebrate. He is a chordate, that is, he has a central nervous system running dorsally; but he has no bones! He is only cartilage inside. He does however, have an exoskeleton. The material basis of his teeth, once worn down, stretches outward as he grows to become his skin. In short, he and his ray cousins are the closest living fish relatives to lobsters, crabs, insects and spiders. And they are found in the column well below true fish.The same is true the deeper we go. Less and less difference among the ancestors of living creatures, more and more transitionals, eventually only protozoans and bacteria and archaea, then no protozoans, then no bacteria. The theory of evolution and common ancestry explain this arrangement to the satisfaction of every unbiased researcher, in perfect accordance with the observed laws of stratification, faunal succession, radiometric dating, varves, tree-rings, every witness agrees.The Deluge theory explains nothing and has been falsified from every angle available to science, including simple literacy. It only rained on Ur for forty days and forty nights, Peg. The water was only 15 cubits deep.

Oop, my bad but not for the reason you said. I accidentally put an "s" in the superscript for 21km² instead of a "2". I done fixed the htiml now. The math still stands, as far as I can tell.After all, 1/80th of an acre comes out to 544.5 ft², or a square about 23 ft on a side. Kinda small for 350,000 beetles.

I checked the math too.I came up with 291.666 square feet.I used 0.6 inches x 0.2 inches x 350,000 beetles / 144 (to convert square inches to square feet).That comes out as a small fraction of an acre. I am no math wizard, but that's what it seems to me.Edit to add: I told you I was no math wizard; I forgot to multiply by two for male & female beetles. The results still seem to be a small fraction of an acre.Edited by Coyote, : A basic dummy mistake

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

23²×12²×25.4²÷350,000≈140. You were granting 120 mm²per pair.60mm²=60(mm)²=60×(.001²)m²=60×(.000001)m².3.5×10⁵×60×10^-6m²=21m²21m²×3.28²(ft/m)²=226ft²2×226ft²=452 ft² for the pair.43,560ft²per acre÷452ft²≈1/96^th acre. I'd given them too much room.Edited by lyx2no, : 1/80^th was wrong.

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You are now a million miles away from where you were in space-time when you started reading this sentence.

How do you get 18 acres into three stories of 450 feet by 75 feet each? That's only 2.3 acres if you include the area taken up by the structure of the ark itself.Yeah, yeah, I know; another thread.In your definition of kind do you include the kind of liberties you take in interpreting the Bible?

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You are now a million miles away from where you were in space-time when you started reading this sentence.

And I can't believe that I used to tutor basic math.lyx2no and Coyote are totally right and I am totally wrong, and I should have realized that I was way off. We only come out to a small fraction of an acre for all of the known species of beetles laid out tail to antenna. That's still a bit of real estate if you start giving them a little room to move around in, not the huge swath I was coming up with.I was going to try again with the 110 species of gerbils, but perhaps I should leave well enough alone.

ICANT wrote: very silly statement ! And ignoring the link I gave previously which state genetic proves the German Shepherd is MORE WOLF THAN DOGBut i have a more interesting observation : how did a pair of Three Toed Sloths get from south america to the middle east then back again ?Research Data :Rio -> Cairo is 9882.81 km in a straight line.The max age of a sloth is 30-40 years : "Sloths live 10 to 12 years in the wild and up to 31 years in captivity.". Giving the benefit of the doubt assume the super-sloths lived 40 years.Top ground speed of a Sloth = 5ft/min = 90 m / hr
Sloths sleep 15 hrs/dayMax travel = 90 m * 9 hrs= 0.81 km/day.So, 12201 days to get to Noah, or 33.4 years, assuming the sloths don't need extra time to forage for food.Sloths live in trees, and on the ground walk by dragging themselves by their hands. I doubt sloths travelling constant every day by dragging themselves along by their fingers would have lived the full lifespan.After the flood, the sloths would definitely have been too old to breed, or make the journey back to South America, so this was a multi-generational effort it seems (and decades in the planning).Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.

I have an airfoil that I have designed according to the Bible description and in it sloths can make the trip in 18 days or less.1 Kings 6:24 With outstretched wings five cubits wide; the distance from the edge of one wing to the edge of the other was ten cubits.Edited by lyx2no, : Add Bible verse.

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You are now a million miles away from where you were in space-time when you started reading this sentence.

Hi, Peg. That’s a great question.And, the answer is, No. And nobody says that evolutionary change does or even can ‘cross phylogenetic boundaries’.You might think of evolution as a theory about where phylogenetic boundaries come from. In the evolutionary model, nothing ever crosses a phylogenetic boundary, because the boundaries don’t develop until after speciation has occurred.There is plenty of evidence that unrelated things can become similar to one another (e.g. sugar gliders and flying squirrels; anteaters and pangolins). This is about as close as ToE gets to crossing phylogenetic boundaries.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

So will you now be consistent and always stick to using the above group definitions, rather than using words such as "birds" which are meaningless if you really believe that a robin is no more related to an ostrich or a penquin than it is to a fly or a bat?