The Creationist Challenge - Can You Identify Kinds?

I originally posted this as Message 382 in the Why are there no human apes alive today? thread as a response the following definition of "kinds," as presented by Mazzy:

quote:

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A kind is the initial creation of God and it's decending progeny.

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That seems to be fairly representative of the creationist position. I thus presented Mazzy with the following quiz, to see how one can use this definition to differentiate one kind from another. So far Mazzy hasn't replied, so I throw the question open to any and all creationists.Can you tell me which of the following are different kinds and which are the same?1. A dog and a wolf. 2. A macaw and a cockatoo. 3. Vibrio cholerae and E. coli 4. A termite and a cockroach 5. A tiger and a cheetah Just to be clear, the question isn't just which pair belong to the same kind and which don't. I also want to know the standard or method being used to make that determination.Go!ABE: No help (yet) from anyone who actually knows the taxonomy.Edited by ZenMonkey, : Corrected for using "is" when I meant "isn't."Edited by ZenMonkey, : No reason given.

I don't know about that. I think that the current version of the Linnean taxonomy system is possibly arbitrary in an absolute sense. There's debate all the time about whether two populations have speciated, or whether a cluster of genuses currently in one family would be better described as belonging to two different families. (Please, someone with a better understanding of biology should step in if I'm saying something particularly stupid.) But, I think that the system is still highly useful in illustrating relationships among populations. There's no doubt in my mind that the grouping of populations of organisms into a nested hierarchy is accurate as far as the big picture goes, and a strong demonstration of the truth of common ancestry. Probably cladistics does an even better job of showing relationships over time, but I don't know enough to say.One question occurred to me as I was putting this little quiz together. Can we say that the degree of difference between members of subgroups in one larger group is the same as the degree of difference among the members of subgroups in a larger group at the same level? An example will probably make my question clearer.Start with the class Mammalia. Pick two orders within that class, say rodents and primates. Do all the families within one order (e.g. the mouse family and the mole rat family in the rodent order) show the same degree of difference as all the families within the other order (e.g. the great ape family and and the lesser ape, i.e. gibbon family in the primate order)? Would that imply an absolute classification system?I hope that this makes some amount of sense.

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Your beliefs do not effect reality and evidently reality does not effect your beliefs.
-Theodoric

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Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven Colbert

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I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill