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

According to the Hebrew word and Greek word translated whale they are a sea monster kind.

The Hebrew word dag is what is translated as "fish" in Genesis 9:22, Numbers 11:22, First Kings 4:33, Second Chronicles 33:14, Nehemiah 3:3, 12:39, and 13:16, Job 12:8 and 41:7, Psalm 8:8, Ecclesiastes 9:12, Ezekiel 38:20, Hosea 4:3, Habakkuk 1:14, Zephaniah 1:3 and 10, and of course Jonah 1:17ff. Do all these uses really mean "sea monster"?

Here's an example

Hosea 9:3 writes: Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.

and another

Ezekiel 3:20 writes: So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that [are] upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.

and another

Ecclesiastes 9:12 writes: For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so [are] the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.

and this one in particular is nice.

Job 41:1-7 writes: Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord [which] thou lettest down? Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft [words] unto thee? Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? Wilt thou play with him as [with] a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants? Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?

This is talking about an actual sea monster, and expressing the idea that he can't be taken with tools suitable only for mere fish (dag).

And here's Jonah of course

Jonah 1:17 writes: Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

and here's Jesus:

Matthew 12:40 writes: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

The Greek word ketos "cetacean" is commonly translated whale. As for example in the "Septuagint" version of Job 7:12 and Ezekiel 32:2, representing the Hebrew tanniyn. Is a tanniyn not a kind of dag? Is the Fish Gate in Jerusalem actually a Sea Monster gate?

. . .

And there I was, defending you. I thought you were trying to be honest. Shame on me.

Long story short, you have absolutely no clue, nor do you care to learn, what a kind is. Good job on sticking to your ignorance.

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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 Sagan

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

This is disappointing, ICANT.

Your entire response can be boiled down to simply:

Modern taxonomic classification is incompatible with Bible "kinds" because it assumes all life forms evolved from a single cell life form "kind".

This statement is wholly false. Modern taxonomy does not prove evolution - at least, not by itself. It lends supporting evidence if you include genetics and the fossil record (among other things), but alone the classification of life forms by their similar morphological characteristics says absolutely nothing more than "look, all these critters have a backbone, and all these other critters are unicellular."

Taxonomy does not presume evolution. Taxonomy predates the Theory of Evolution by many years. Carl Linneaus, the father of modern taxonomy, died before Darwin was even born. And before him, the ancient Greek Aristotle was classifying organisms (well, everything actually, not just life) according to their common features. Obviously the classification of living things by their physical characteristics could not possibly be intended to prove a theory that didn't yet exist.

If evolution is disproved completely tomorrow, the classification of living organisms by their morphological characteristics would still be valid.

If the Bible is literally true and all living things were Created, not evolved, individually by God, the classification of thsoe living things by their morphological characteristics would still be valid.

Whether 2 kinds of animals have backbones or not has nothing to do with whether they have a "soul," whether they were created by God, or whether all live sprung from a single common ancestor. Regardless of whether any of those things is true or false, you can directly observe whether the organisms possess backbones.

You have a backbone. This, by definition, makes you a vertebrate. Cats, dogs, lizards, snakes, birds, whales, and fish are also all vertebrates, because they have backbones. This is undeniably self-evident, ICANT, because right now at this very moment you can look at any dog, any cat, any human being, any bird, and see that they do, in fact, have backbones and so are in fact by definition vertebrates.

That you disagree that you fit into the vertebrate classification means only that you are so determined to disagree with me that you will deny self-evident indisputable fact, and that is disappointing.

We create cars, each after their kind. A Durango is not a Civic is not a Taurus. But we can say that they all have four wheels, and they all have internal combustion engines, and they alll have passenger compartments.

Why can't we agree that it's possible to do the same with living things, ICANT? Whether life was magically Created by a deity, or evolved from common ancestors, isn;t it possible to classify them all by their common characteristics? Regardless of whether God simply re-used design features He thought worked well, or if features evolved through descent with modification, those similar features still objectively and self-evidently exist, don't they? Dogs and cats still have fur? You and I both have backbones, as do snakes and lizards and birds?

Taxonomy is in no way incompatible with the Biblical usage of the word "kind." Both the Bible and taxonomy agree that all dogs are of the "dog" kind. Taxonomy jsut uses different words to say the same thing, and goes into more specific detail.

So I'm going to ask again, ICANT. Let's imagine that you discover an animal, and you need to determine whether it belongs to an existing kind, or if it's a kind nobody's ever seen before. How would you make such a determination? Wouldn't you compare the creature's physical characteristics with those of other animals, and see if it belongs to an existing kind? Perhaps you just discovered a new "hybrid" version of a bear, and so it would be of the "bear" kind. Wouldn't you make that determination by looking at its morphological features determining that they are similar enough to other bears that this must be a bear as well?

I honestly can't think of any other way to do it. I don;t know of any other way to determine what "kind" a given animal is other than to observe its physical characteristics and compare them to those of other animals, and see where it best fits.

And that's all that taxonomy does. It groups animals according to their common characteristics so that you can determine what kind a given organism is. That's all. And those common characteristics self-evidently exist regardless of a soul, or the existence of a deity. If you have a soul and a dog doesn't, are you not both still warm-blooded with two lungs, a heart, a brain, and a backbone?

I really cannot understand why you insist that taxonomy is unacceptable, ICANT.

ICANT - I'm really really confused. I've been reading both sides of this debate and I'm trying to understand your distaste in taxonomic classification.

How about we create a new word, "backboners", which is simply a way for us to describe a creature that God created that he decided to install a backbone in.

You, me, fish, birds... we are all backboners.

Do you object to this classification?

How about 'twoeyes' - creatures that have two eyes. You, me, fish, birds - all twoeyes.

I'm not saying that these words mean anything other then a descriptive to let others know something about a creature.

So I say that I've just discovered a new critter that I've decided to name a "Bobblehead" and this creature is a member of the backboner group. You would immediately know that this animal has a backbone.

Do you object to this?

Edited by Codegate, : No reason given.

ICANT writes: ZenMonkey writes: How is a dog giving birth to a non-dog not an example of one kind giving birth to another kind, exactly what you say can never happen? Where did I say a dog could not produce a hybrid? I did say and do so again: A female dog and a male dog will produce dog pups and nothing else. A female wolf and a male wolf will produce wolf pups and nothing else. Can a male dog and a female dog produce something other than dog pups? Yes/No would do fine. Can a female wolf and a male wolf produce something other than wolf pups? Yes/No would do fine.

Well then, what exactly is a hybrid? That's all I'm asking. Let me rephrase the question again, though I thought that it was clear enough.

Way back in Message 246 you said:

quote:

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If you breed wolves and dogs you get half wolf and half dog. Then you can call it whatever you want. But it is not a dog and neither is it a wolf.

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Then in Message 275, when presented with this thyclacine

you replied to hooah:

quote:

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In Message 271 you reference an extinct carnivorous marsupial and ask me if it is a Dog? Wolf? Kangaroo? Tiger?

It is none of those but was a carnivorous marsupial hybrid.

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Do you mean that the thyclacine is not of a separate kind, but is instead a hybrid? If it so, why? Why isn't it just of the thyclocine kind? If it's a hybrid, just like the offspring of a wolf and a dog is a hybrid, then what two separate kinds were its parents, or at least its ancestors? Do you believe that this is the result of breeding a dog and a kangaroo and a tiger, or some combination thereof?

Or permit me to focus on what I believe are two simple questions:

What is your definition of a kind that makes a dog and a wolf two separate kinds?

What is your definition of a hybrid that makes both the thyclacine and the wolf/dog offspring both hybrids?

Now on to your questions, which pretty much come out to the same thing.

Can a female wolf and a male wolf produce something other than wolf pups? The short answer is no. But the short answer is very misleading.

Two animals that we would both call wolves will indeed produce something that also looks like a wolf, but that will be different in some degree from its parents. That wolf - if it's lucky - will produce offspring that resemble it but will in turn also be slightly different. Each generation will be similar to but not exactly like its parents. The difference between any two generations will not be very great. But the difference between generations further and further removed from each other will grow larger and larger. At some point, some descendent of that original wolf pair will look so different that you'd look at it and say, "Yep, that's a dog all right." But there was no single generation for which you could say that the parents were wolves and the offspring were dogs.

By way of analogy, let's talk about language. Way back in 100 CE there were some folks called Romans who lived in Italy and who spoke Latin. Their fellow Romans who lived in Spain spoke Latin, as did the Romans who lived in France (using the modern names for convenience).

Come around 500 CE and they're still speaking Latin, but now it's not quite the same Latin as everyone was speaking in 100, nor is the Latin of Spain the same as the Latin of France. You have distinct dialects.

Skip ahead again to 1000 CE, and you wouldn't say that any of the common folk are speaking Latin at all. What were once dialects still resemble Latin a lot, but they're different enough that you have to call them French and Spanish and Italian.

There are quite a few important things that this analogy helps illustrate, but the one I want to focus on for the moment is this: at no point did two parents who spoke Latin produce a child who spoke French. But the cumulative changes over time did ultimately change one language into another.

Likewise, cumulative changes over time in a breeding population can be and often are significant enough that what was once one species has now become a different one.

That's all. I hope that this helps.

Edited by ZenMonkey, : Spelling.

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon

Why do we need taxonomy? Its only purpose is to prove evolution.

So what was Linnaeus purpose when he proposed his taxonomic scheme in 1735?
He managed to put species into taxonomic groups based on morphology long before the ToE was conceived. For example humans were put into the order Anthropomorpha which included primates and sloths, and this was part of the class Mammalia.

I realise you probably think classifying species is unimportant, since the diversity you've experienced seems to be what you've seen out your back window, but scientists have discovered millions of different organisms and need some way to categorise them so we know what we are referring to.

Why do we need taxonomy?

Can you think of any other way to classify millions of species?

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002

Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Rahvin writes: This is disappointing, ICANT. Your entire response can be boiled down to simply: Modern taxonomic classification is incompatible with Bible "kinds" because it assumes all life forms evolved from a single cell life form "kind". This statement is wholly false. Modern taxonomy does not prove evolution - at least, not by itself. It lends supporting evidence if you include genetics and the fossil record (among other things), but alone the classification of life forms by their similar morphological characteristics says absolutely nothing more than "look, all these critters have a backbone, and all these other critters are unicellular." ... If evolution is disproved completely tomorrow, the classification of living organisms by their morphological characteristics would still be valid. If the Bible is literally true and all living things were Created, not evolved, individually by God, the classification of thsoe living things by their morphological characteristics would still be valid. ... That you disagree that you fit into the vertebrate classification means only that you are so determined to disagree with me that you will deny self-evident indisputable fact, and that is disappointing.

THIS.

I could quote the whole of the post, and to be honest I should because the whole post is made of awesome and win. It is of RAZD quality in it's simplicity and signal-to-noise ratio.

I CAN'T understand why ICANT has such a problem with a system designed by creationists, FOR creationists to explain creation just a little bit better.

Surely ICANT has to agree we know more than Adam? Surely ICANT can agree that modern day man can know more about a larger world that Adam can. Surely ICANT can agree that creationists were just trying to do what mankind has always done (for whatever reason) ever since we've stood on two legs to look up into the stars - get better.

It doesn't matter if we're made of dirt or whether we evolved, the taxonomic classification system is creationist in origin and designed only to further knowledge in god's creation.

What is it about new knowledge which is so damned frightening to creationists like ICANT? Even when theistic creationists come up with it?

or any other two creationists who disagree on so fundamental and yet so simple a thing.

Now, unless I'm very much mistaken:

* peg believes that wolves and dogs are the same kind

* icant believes that wolves and dogs are different kinds

* both claim to know The Truth

* both claim to be right

* both claim that "Kinds" is a perfectly adequate and in fact superior classification system than the creationist's taxonomy

* neither agree on the status of two very basic animals

peg and icant - why are you each right and the other wrong, and more importantly can you demonstrate which of you two a non-theist should side with?

In Message 271 you quote a sciencemag article that states domestic dogs existed 12,000 years ago. It did not state but I assume the wolf existed also. That being the case if the earth was covered with water some 6000 years ago and God did a restoration project and called all the creatures we have today from their kind what is your queston? What is your problem with the different kinds that exist today? In Message 275 you reference an extinct carnivorous marsupial and ask me if it is a Dog? Wolf? Kangaroo? Tiger? It is none of those but was a carnivorous marsupial hybrid. God Bless,

You are a dishonest fuck.

I am from the south and I know the "polite" smile you dishonest fucks put on to keep up your ruse.

Not only am I from the south but my extended family is from Goodland, Kansas and boy, howdy, do we know how to really fuck someone over with a smile and a nod.

You, sir, are a first class piece of bullshit. It comes over in your posts, which I have been watching (and even *shudder* responding to) for years now.

I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt because you reminded me of my Grandfather, but you are a liar. Pure and simple.

That said, please define hybrid in a Biblical context and one that advances this conversation.

Please also show how the animal in question was on the Ark and how it got to where it was (now extinct, unfortunately).

ABE:

Please also explain the difference between the Thylacine wolf and the Oppossum.

Both are Carnivores. Both are Marsupials. Both could possibly be explained as hybrids.

Which kind are they each in?

Edited by Jaderis, : No reason given.

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London

"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea

Hi ICANT

ICANT writes: According to the Hebrew word and Greek word translated whale they are a sea monster kind. God Bless,

I have been reading through most of this thread and couldn't resist just reaffirming your position on a little question I have

So a goldfish, and a blue whale according to you are one kind but wolf and a dog isn't?

How did these animals become so diverse so quick?

What about invertebrates that live in the ocean like squid or shrimp, or even Jellyfish, are they also the same kind?

Hi Chippo,

Welcome to EvC.

Chippo writes: I have been reading through most of this thread

I am glad you said most as you missed Message 331 as everyone else has where I said:

ICANT writes: Domestic Dog is a creature that has been said in this thread is a wolf that has been domesticated by mankind. If that is the case there is no such thing as dog. They are only domesticated wolves. That rules out my dog kind and makes them only a wolf kind.

Chippo writes: So a goldfish, and a blue whale according to you are one kind but wolf and a dog isn't?

Well I did not say the goldfish and the blue whale were the same kind. The goldfish as his name implies is a gold colored, "fish kind".

The whale would be a sea serpent kind.

Chippo writes: What about invertebrates that live in the ocean like squid or shrimp, or even Jellyfish, are they also the same kind?

No

God less,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

The whale would be a sea serpent kind.

So what else is in the sea-serpent kind?

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002

Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Well I did not say the goldfish and the blue whale were the same kind. The goldfish as his name implies is a gold colored, "fish kind". The whale would be a sea serpent kind.

To expand on bluescat's question -

If I were to give you a big list of oceanic species, how would you determine which ones were of which kind>

ICANT, I see you acknowledge this...NEW post. Maybe you should tackle some of the other questions posed to you. Whaddya say? Give us heathens something to work with here.

All we are asking for is HOW do we determine the difference between kinds?

Is this:

the same "kind" as this?:

How about this:

is it the same "kind" as this?:

Is this:

the same kind as this?:

I'll let you chew on those for a bit.

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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 Sagan

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan