Extent of Mutational Capability

Please explicitly define "kind". An operational definition, please.No creationist has ever done so.Ever.

I have a feeling Greg has done his Christian duty and wont be back.I think it is time to close this thread as he has abandoned the thread. If CCR wants to discuss more he should open a thread.

Woah!Please do not close this thread.Far from having 'done my Christian duty', I have been reading every post with some keenness.Perhaps my response is belated, thus apologies: nonetheless, thank you very much one and all for your input - it has given me a great deal to think about. A little heated at times, yes, but no, I am intrigued.I would be interested to see where the logical course of the thread is going - although, by now I certainly have my answer, at least from a Darwinist perspective. I am a little surprised there are not more creationist or ID-ers on the site - I was hoping for a more 'iron sharpens iron' experience, where posts could be tested from both sides.In short, apart from rebuttals to existing posts, at this stage I would like to hear the ID/Creationist view on the extent and 'elasticity' of genetic mutations. If not, however, then perhaps this thread can suffer the 'coup de grace'; and I will duly go on to my next question in a new thread.Thanks once again, one and all,
Greg

The way this works is you respond to people that responded to you. If you do not want to defend your OP then the thread should be closed. We are not here to do research for you.
Defend or close.

He was asking questions, there's nothing there that needs defending.

Gene duplication has certainly been observed (see for example, Brown, Todd and Rosenweig, Multiple Duplications of Yeast Hexose Transport Genes in Response to Selection in a Glucose-Limited Environment); I do not know what you mean by gene "merging" or "conversion".

True; but vacuous unless you can point to any instance in which this would have been necessary to produce such evolution as is actually evidenced. Define "kind", please?

Oh, you mean fusion of chromosomes. That also has been observed.Ask a Geneticist | The Tech InteractivePerhaps in future you should not go about saying that things haven't been observed just because you haven't heard of it. At least do a little research first, instead of presuming that your own personal ignorance constitutes a form of knowledge. No, as a matter of fact, because scientists do not know what you mean by "kinds". Do you?

I've had several responses so please excuse me for not replying individually.First I'd like to ask what is a species?
Although some people may wish for a black-and-white criterion for defining species, this is unrealistic. [ Encyclopedia of Life ]
The biological species concept is popular but many use the phylogenetic concept and it is often difficult to precisely define boundaries between species. There are many cases where animals classified as separate species can produce viable and fertile offspring, e.g. lion-tiger, although their offspring is more often infertile. There are also cases of cross genera offspring such as the wholpin. Only partly as a joke, one definition is that a species is "whatever a competent taxonomist says is a species."I think this shows that current taxonomic classifications are only an approximation to biological reality.Similarly there is no universally accepted definition of kind. The definition I favour is "those animals/plants that could interbreed immediately following creation". There has been much speciation and differentiation since then and it is often difficult to precisely define boundaries between kinds. For example there is good evidence from hybridization within the cats that all from tabby to tiger are one kind. However further research could show differently; that the big cats are separate from the other cats. It is the nature of scientific research that sometimes (often) we have to adjust what we think to be true.

So, Gregory, you've come here to learn rather than debate. At least this suggests you are open minded. I hope my responses have been of interest to you.btw ID is not synonymous with Creationism. Many Intelligent Design proponents are evolutionists. Many creationists have reservations about some ID.

Intelligent design was cooked up a couple of decades ago when creation "science" was outlawed by a US Supreme Court decision.One of the best lines of evidence is as follows:

The term "cdesign proponentsists" came into being following the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial in Pennsylvania over the legitimacy of teaching intelligent design as science.

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A crucial piece of the defense (pro-intelligent design) was a book called Of Pandas and People which was marketed as a science textbook for middle and high school children. During the trial, previous copies of the book were subpoenaed for review. It was demonstrated that, whenever previous versions of the book had the terms "creationist" or "creationism" or some similar form, it had been replaced in almost all cases with the terms "design proponents" and "intelligent design" in later editions.

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cdesign proponentsists - RationalWiki

So, I don't believe for a moment that intelligent design folks are evolutionists--they are the exact opposite, which is religious apologists.And it is well that creationists have reservations about intelligent design, as it was just "designed" to try and fool people in general and school boards in particular that it was science when in fact it was the exact opposite.

Operationally, a "kind" is a group of animals that a creationist will admit are related to one another and which is not a proper subset of a larger such group.(Obviously the meaning of "kind" therefore depends on which creationist one is talking to and what his opinions are on that particular day.)Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I note a significant difference. "Species" represent an attempt to describe biological reality, which has trouble because that reality is not easily described - but still the concept is based on observation. "Kinds" on the other hand are based on assumption. The concept of species, then, has a place in science but the concept of kinds needs to earn it.If that is not enough, we should expect "kinds" to be quite clearly defined, if they exist, whereas if evolution is true we should not expect species to be clearly defined.

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btw ID is not synonymous with Creationism. Many Intelligent Design proponents are evolutionists. Many creationists have reservations about some ID.

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I think that it should be noted that it is generally only Young Earth Creationists that have a problem with ID and that is only because the ID movement refuses to take a position on the age of the Earth. This is because the ID movement is dominated by Old Earth Creationists who want to build a coalition to oppose evolution.I also rather doubt that "many evolutionists" are ID proponents, for much the same reason.

You'll find that no-one here has such a view. However, we also realise the taxonomy accurately defines the vast majority of life on this planet of ours. Species were defined long before our ability to sequence DNA which allows us to find relationships between organisms at a molecular level. DNA has shown that the taxonomic trees built over a few hundred years are surprisingly accurate. The plasticity of some organisms at the species level is an outcome of evolution itself and is entirely to be expected - the more closely related organisms are the more obvious it is that they may be able to cross-breed. Which is totally useless as a definition for the obvious reason that you can't identify any such point in time, any such creation or any such organisms.Our existing taxonomy has developed out of millions of direct observation and measurement. 'Kind' has no such foundation - its derivation is a children's story in a book written by a primitive culture.