I'm happy to add my own welcoming reply, BobTHJ. Your posts so far have been quite refreshing. I'd like to get down to some topical details, but first, I'll indulge in a few snarky knee-jerk reactions that, alas, tend to be all too common in a forum like this one.
BobTHJ writes:
As BlueJay pointed out earlier how life is classified into kinds is far from an exact science -
Indeed. Many who are familiar with the study of "baraminology" have concluded that its distance from "an exact science" is so great that it turns out not to be any kind of science at all. A major factor in this conclusion is the admission made by all baraminologists that they start from a "foundational truth" based on a particular interpretation of scripture, and their goal is to figure out how to get physical evidence to be consistent with that "truth". This simply is not science.
and there is some disagreement on the issue (just as there is in the classification of life under a darwinian model).
It would be worthwhile to look at some particular cases of disagreement among baraminologists about how things group into "baramins", and compare these with contemporary cases of disagreement among evolutionary biologists and taxonomists about how things group into clades and lines of descent. On identifying a few representative disagreements within each field, it would also be instructive to see how disputes are debated, and how (or whether) they get resolved.
But here I have to admit that, like you, I'm not a credentialed scientist (nor a baraminologist), and it would be a stretch for me to try pursuing this in detail -- too much information to find, and too many other things I have to do instead. But you have already provided a useful reference, for which I am sincerely grateful. (More on that below.)
But that doesn't make the definition of "kind" any less valid, it only means the implementation hasn't been fully fleshed out yet.
I think it's fair to draw analogies here, like: discovering general relativity didn't make Newtonian physics any less valid; or: discovering that planetary orbits were elliptical didn't make the Copernican theory of perfectly circular orbits any less valid; or: discovering that the Earth's circumference around the poles is not really a circle didn't make the concept of a spherical Earth any less valid. In each case the latter (supplanted) notion simply "hasn't been fully fleshed out" -- actually, it is less accurate, which means more error-prone -- when compared to the notion that supplanted it.
Now the question becomes: where will our time and effort be better spent? Going back to flesh out those supplanted notions, or coming to grips with, understanding, and building on the notions that replaced them? Bear in mind that in trying to make those older notions more accurate, it's a safe bet that you'll be retracing the steps that led to our current notions on these matters (which still have some margin of error, but this has been measurably reduced).
So it is with baraminology (based on scripture) vs. cladistics (based on physical evidence). The vast majority of people who have pursued advanced degrees in biology, archaeology, zoology and geology over the last 150 years or so have made this transition, if they ever gave any credence to the scriptural account in the first place.
But now to the interesting part (finally):
Humans are of course a different animal entirely (no pun intended). The YEC model only works if humans are a distinct kind from other life. Though
recent research by creation scientists seems to support this.
The second sentence there takes us to the crux of the matter. I think you have misstated it, but I can see how you arrived at this misstatement. I would paraphrase:
The only purpose for having a YEC model is to have humans be a distinct kind from other life.
The essential and driving motive for YEC is the need to consider humans to be the result of a special, divine creation. It's the astonishing hubris, common to all religions but emphasized in Judaism and amplified in Christianity and Islam, that some supernatural entity created the entire universe just to be the home for mankind, and that God's particular and special interest in us is the whole reason for everything else in existence.
If you disagree with that, I'll be interested in your counter-argument. Now as for the cited reference, to a paper by Todd C. Wood: it begins by briefly reviewing a range of incompatible divisions of the fossil record, according to "baramin-oriented" creationists, into "human" vs. "non-human", and then employs a variety of statistical techniques to collections of data extracted from various descriptions of hominid and ape-like fossils, coming up with yet another distinct division of the fossils into the obligatory pair of immutable groups (with one fossil category in particular being perniciously ambiguous -- some would say "intermediate" -- as to its affiliation).
You might want to look at
a review of Wood's paper by a biologist (at the Panda's Thumb web site). The main point is: if you abandon the dogmatic notion of having to divide these fossils into just two distinct groups, and instead allow a taxonomy that reflects a series of gradual transitions, it becomes a lot easier to make sense of the physical evidence.
It's a lot like giving up the idea of perfect circles in astronomy.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (broke up an over-long paragraph, and added emphasis)
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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