Bible and "kind"

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THE POINT GRADE WISE was, that the apodians CAN NOT BE SO placed ON EITHER SIDE OF THE SALAMANDERS as trastitionals in this threads sense if the total DNA of birds and fish be not subject to question relative to mammals and all of this results without looking at the amount of DNA in other "kinds" (such as spiders).

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For some reason, this reminded me of turtles and their place in the reptile taxa. Turtles diverged from the rest of the reptiles long before even the dinosaurs (IIRC). This is a story that you probably know better than me, given your interests in herps. So perhaps the place of salamanders within the question of birds, reps, and mammals is somewhat like the turtles place within the reptillian taxa?

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SO my point was (with Loudmouth in attendance and contributing...) that there is NOT A "break-down" only a fusion we confuse between branching and aggregation.

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I don't think I totally agree with this. My example of the turtle's place in the reptile taxa is more about how we view extant species versus those we see in the fossil record. For all intents and purposes, turtles are as distant evolutionary as mammals are from lizards. Turtles may even be more distant, if memory serves. The same could be said about the salamander, being very distant from the first tetrapods. It was a poor comparison, as I look back on it. Perhaps I should clarify.The scenario that started this side-show was that extant salamanders are an example of a transition between aquatic apodians (fish) and land breathing animals. In a way, they represent what we would look for in a transitional species (I prefer the mudskipper, better example). With that caveat, it is an accurate statement. The other issue is that what we (evolutionists) describe as "transitional" is most often a sister species not in a direct lineage to another taxa (Archie for example). However, sister species can tell us a lot, since drastic changes in morphology are not expected over "short" time spans, so the sister species as "transitional" still tells us a lot about the species in the direct lineage.Just as an overall critique, the clades constructed by evolutionists are an attempt to tie in common ancestory. Construction of biblical "kinds" is an attempt to do the opposite, try and find a discontinuum at a precise position. Evolutionists are trying to find the trunk while baraminologists ("kind" constructors) are trying to separate the branch from the tree. Some see a few leaves sticking above the water, some see a tree covered by water.

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I have not, nor will I ever, claim that the concept of "kinds" has anything to do with invalidating evolution. I agree that doing so would be a worthless strawman.

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The Kind argument is just that, an attempt to invalidate evolution. Evolution states that there is one common ancestor for all life on earth, while those supporting kinds are stating that evolution is wrong and that there were multiple common ancestors who were created in recent times. What we evo's want to know is the objective theories that have been constructed to tell us what those multiple common ancestors were. This theory must also be able to explain transitional forms found in the geologic column that seem to be between the newly constructed kinds.