On Kinds... again.

"Kind" - the great escape word of the Creationist. You could, they say, fit every animal on the Ark because you only need each kind."14: And the vulture, and the kite after his kind;
15: Every raven after his kind;
16: And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,
17: And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl,
18: And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle,
19: And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.
20: All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.
21: Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;
22: Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.
23: But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you."Leviticus 11: 14-23Doesn't this rather imply that whatever a biblical Kind may or may not be, it isn't a broad category? Locust and bald locusts are different kinds, little owls and great owls are different kinds, and so forth.

Don't have legs above their feet, though.

Bat's wings connect to their 'hands' and 'feet', so they don't have distinguishable 'legs' above their feet. Their front 'feet' of course being a single claw.Hmm, I guess bats don't really fall into an easily classified area of hands, feet, arms, legs and wings.

Er, yes. I'm aware of that but I couldn't find a picture to illustrate my point as well as yours does.[This message has been edited by Mr Jack, 10-31-2003]

If you want to invoke extra-biblical miracles, feel free. But you have already departed from the biblical story, and from any pretence of science.The meaning of the word 'kind' is important because many within the Creation 'Science' movement use it to both avoid accepting that small-scale (adaptive) evolutionary change is evidence for large scale evolution change and fudge the simple fact the Ark descibed in Genesis is far, far too small to hold all the animals it is supposed to.I think it is clear from the passage I quoted that Kind is not the super-generalised thing that Creationists need to bolster these arguments.

(Note: all these comments are based on the KJV or NIV, I don't know how these differ (if at all) from the Torah versions.)No miracles are mentioned in the story. The story simply says he built a boat of a precise size and then he took the animals onto it in specified numbers; no mention is made of supernatural intervention. Firstly, why give precise boat measurements if God's just going to go all TARDIS on it? Secondly (IIRC) everywhere else in the bible that God makes a supernatural intervention it is mentioned as such.Finally while you are clearly smart enough to realise a natural interpretation is absurd, there are others (as have been mentioned) who are attempting to claim otherwise.

TARDIS is a reference to the masterful science fiction series Doctor Who, commonly understood to mean 'larger on the inside than the outside' in my country, but apparently not elsewhere. Sorry. The actual acronym stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, if you care.IIRC, is a common internet abbreviation for If I Recall Correctly. I can recall nowhere in the old or new testament where a miracle occurs without God's intervention being mentioned. It has been a while though so I could be wrong. You are right, of course, that the whole story is clearly absurd without miracles; that's why I think it's absurd - Full Stop.

Could you give chapter and verse references for your examples, so I'm not left searching through the old testament for them?