Creationists Cannot Define "Kind".

I disagree - there's a much worse conclusion to be drawn. Creationist figureheads are on a specific political and religious agenda driven by biblical literalism to institute religious control over society. To this end they strike against the major obstacle to biblical literalism; scientific historicity as regards to the origin of life, and enlist unwitting christians as pawns to further this agenda.There's really no other explanation for the continued, knowing falsehoods spread by these figures. Phillip Johnson even calls it the "Wedge" movement.I realize I sound kind of paranoid, I'm not - I don't really think they represent a danger because their position is just too logically untenable. But if I were a christian I should be very resentful of how I was being used.Perhaps a thread could be started to further speculate on creationist's ulterior motives.------------------
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Okay, Budikka, I CAN define Kind. The Bible says, in Genesis chapter 1, that each animal will bring forth after their Kind. Get that?--they will BRING FORTH after their kind. so it's quite simple: if two different animal species can "BRING FORTH" new offspring (like a coyote and a wolf could) then they are the same basic kind. A cat and a coyote are not the same kind, and we can tell that because you cannot cross-breed a cat with a coyote. so, according to the Bible, "Kind" is specifically defined in terms of whether or not they can bring forth offspring together.

So how many kinds are there in Quetzal's post (page 1)? One, two, or three kinds?Also, should we try and do a highly unethical cross-breeding experiment to prove that humans and chimps are of a different kind like all creationists say?

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The Bible says, in Genesis chapter 1, that each animal will bring forth after their Kind.

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I actually agree with you. I am sure this is the meaning intended.Now, you do realize why creationist's don't adopt this definition? You understand the relationship between the 'kinds' debate and the ark, yes?------------------
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if two different animal species can "BRING FORTH" new offspring

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Odd, I've been told by creationists that there was a "cat" kind on the ark and all cats, my house cat and tigers came from that. Would you check the major creationist sites to see which they agree with?Are you saying that a tiger and my house cat could produce offspring? Does this have to be like one of the definitions of species that is, that they don't normally breed or not?

I guess this thread was only sleeping, but booboocruise made a booboo.If you cannot read and understand the opening thread, please do not attempt a response. You will only embarrass yourself and dig a deeper hole for creationism than it is already in (and note that this thread is an attempt to draw some science out of the creationist camp. The bankruptcy of their position is already glaringly obvious, as the lack of creationist response to this thread has demonstrated).There are two questions, both intimately related, yet you sought to address only one, and you apparently could not even understand that.Let me reiterate question 1 for you:
"1. What is the definition of "kind" as used in the Biblical creation and flood stories? What is the scientific support for your answer? Give detailed examples of these "kinds"."As in all of my posts on the topic of evolution/creation, I was looking for some science from the creationist camp, and yet again, I failed to find any.Your response offered no scientific definition, but a Bible reference. You offered zero scientific support for your position. You offered no examples. The transparency of your pretence that these "kinds" eternally reproduce only after their kind is demonstrated by the fact that you could not offer any scientific mechanism which prevents one of these biblical "kinds" from varying so much that it becomes another "kind".Your response flies in the face of other creationist attempts to answer the "kind" question by vaguely waving their hands towards such nebulous entities as "The Dog Kind" and "The Cat Kind", etc. How do you reconcile your position with theirs?If these kinds you claim were purposefully created by an intelligence and designed to remain separate, where is the evidence of this?What you have done is simply to define species, as though species remain and have remained, unchanged, but this is demonstrably not so. Speciation has been observed, and is evident in the fossil record and in DNA, so clearly your definition of kind fails.And if your definition had not failed, then the ark story is a lie, because all of the species that have obviously lived on Earth could never have fit on the ark, let alone be cared for. If you wish to trim your definition to some level higher than species, then where is your scientific basis for this?Humans and mice have about the same size DNA package and the same number of genes. We have 300 genes that mice do not have and they have 300 that we do not have. In other words, from some common ancestor living some 60 million years ago, the mice have developed their 300 specialised genes and we have developed ours. That's 300 genes in 60 million years.A gene, so creationists tell me, has 100,000 base pairs on average, meaning those 300 genes are roughly 30,000,000 base pairs. Assuming a worst case scenario (necessitating us changing every base pair on each of those 300 genes), that means we had to switch out a minuscule one base pair every two years over the last 60 million years.Given the breeding rate of small mammals, this is nothing. It is insignificant. Where is your creationist evidence that this is impossible? That these intervening "kinds" could never have done this, turning our common ancestor with mice into us on one branch and mice on another? Where is your argument that they could not have adjusted their "kind" in such small increments that each set of parents and immediate offspring were of the same "kind", but succeeding generations departed ever further from it?Once again the creationist falls short of the glory of God.Budikka

BudikkaI think you are knowledgeable enough to shred the assertions posted by the creationists here. But I don't think it strengthens your presentation when you get a bit harsh and insulting. It feels a bit "off" even to me and I'm on your side.

BUD-how small are the pieces?S. Wolfram has thought certainly Against S. Gould's core natural selection support that mutations may be added BY RULE one base pair at a time.Frege Had criticized Cantor for being unable to say LOGICALLY how it "can be" that one can by abstraction or by application in science take OFF the last number back to the ones agreed on (the finite ones) but note that Gould is only argueing the evidence in light of a LOGICAL proposal that the evidence can decide one way or the other so that in the logic of any challenge to Fisher in general or in specific the one about species (these two different shaped rodents above etc) DURATION longer than individual competition (any selection in the pictures of the kinds one could have guessed were represented) BY CYCLE (I have my own exemplar interms of a Bufo from S. Cali.) I need to know HOW SMALL are we too to go?What if indeed it is possible to CREATE a KIND by ORTHOSELECTION of fixed point mutations that only show up today as netural in statistical testing? That this selected mammal created the SHAPE distinctive of it chin perhaps in correlated sex bias change to dual use of nose in sexual relations AND food finding??IF you got this far it only is required for me to show how the molecular embryology of such is possible to CREATE a Kind and then I would need $ to falsify to the proposal. I have started to work this kind of thing out for the DESIGN of toads so I am not sure I could timely provide the same for this guys"" but the problem is not that of getting to the price of research but permitting alternative resarch to begin with. You ask if we can SEE if creationist have anything to offer.Clearly the offering is in the proposal when not the result. I am becomeing increasingly confident in this position as the kind of "species selection" that the philosopher Richard Boyd proposed to me seems prima facie false and Gould's use of the same seems to (possibly) be reduced to Wilson's proposal of group selection which I heard HIM give in a form at Cornell in the 80s that seemed apriori correct but then again my analytic can certainly be off topobioloigcally here.Hope this helps the writers.

I may have been just as suprised as you when I "uncovered" Muller's notions of figures BETWEEN genotypes and phenotypes that he NAMED-- hypomorph, ammorph and antimorph=neomorph. It is my feeling that Gould felt free WITHOUT addressing the question that Wolfram raises as to mutations coming by simply programing (aka since no "interative" (think self-reproductive) 'program' biologically was so far found) to use the word neomorph for the positive use of contraint in biology and exclusively without the screen of negativity AND he accomplishes this by DIVIDING creationists into legit and illlegit classes calling on programmed cell death etc as a potential epiphomena. If Dawkins for instance is upset with this kind of Gould thinking then I would be in some agreeement with him but I do not think that genic selectionism is a good as Wright's critique of both Dakwinsish stuff and Gould specifically nevertheless I do not claim to know how or if Dobshanky's assertion of mutations proportional to time is the philosophy that Gould sediments.Now reading a SET as hoxology allows one to use Wolfram's "program" to BE the answer to Frege's criticism of Cantor's "counting back" then by abstraction but in this case in topobiological reality whether with or without Neural Darwinisms but some truth would have to accrue to Wolfram's materiality for this to be atomistically the case.no one knows.

Oh, everything is so much clearer now.

Harsh and insulting?Is it now harsh and insulting to take a contrary position to a creationist in a thread requesting some straight answers and getting none?I posted a simple pair of questions asking for a supported answer. All I got in response to the first question was essentially a Bible quote which did nothing to address the creationist problem. The second question was not even attempted.I pointed this out to the poster and supported my argument. What was harsh and insulting about that?Do you not think it insulting that creationists honestly believe they can purvey their lies as truth and their non-science nonsense to children in our schools?I do. All I am asking them to do is put their science where their mouth is and quite clearly, despite their virulence vociferousness, they are obviously not up to it. So much for creation.Budikka

The tone is understandable when your opponent is so evasive and dodges the questions. But it leaves a bad impression of arrogance on your side.It isn't one one thing but here are asides in your posts on this thread that add up to a bad feeling.

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1) The whole purpose of this thread is to debate, so if you are not up to it, do not waste my time with flatulent bravado. If you cannot answer either of the questions and cannot refute the material you claim to have read, you have no place addressing me.
2)Anything that takes cheap shots and fails to deal with the topic is a sign either of cowardice or of evasion. Be *my* guest. You claim to be a brother in Christ, yet here you are, failing to turn the other cheek and attacking some one who has done nothing to you. Some brother in Christ you are.
3)Talk about unsophisticated. Here you are trying to do a snow job and all you have is a flurry that's easily blown away.
4)The bankruptcy of their position is already glaringly obvious, as the lack of creationist response to this thread has demonstrated).

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That might be almost all of them. It seems to me that they may well all be true. And I understand how annoying these people are. But it just feels bad. I think it also drives some of the more sensitive ones of them away and that's no fun. Lurkers will get a bad impression of you as well. The committed creationists probably don't have the courage (and in many cases the intellect) to really ever grapple with these topics. Others may have some chance of learning something but not if you piss them off.Remember they have their entire world view, life (eternal even) and everything all tied up in this. It is understandable that they should be more emotional. You don't have to let it be that important.But in the meantime thanks for the good work and rebuttals.

Bud,when you say"virulence" are you aware of the attempts to put as you put it, "truth" into the equations and questions of biochange depend on some such in truth interpretation of this word as to the relative importance of recessives and dominats that in one evolutionists instance amounted to a rather seemingly aprirori claim about the HOST (not the biological term)vigor DECREASES with increase in virulence no matter the mode or rate of gene flow? Others such as my friend Simon Levin thought this could be answered by looking at clams etc but insisted on the inverted UR use of the delta symbol to encompass any next mutant that numerical approximations may increase the better than an approximation to the same decrement in the sense of the mode of change and yet there would still be not assertion as to the KIND in the sense of Kripke involved realistically that the day to day alpha taxonomist MUST deal with but it seems that you are concerned with how THIS is taught to children but I do not see you trying to create the environment event that such can NOT be taught in. This culture exists as well and we have seen it many times appear in incomprehension on both sides as if such were clear cut on this site.Breaking bread is not as easy when it comes to working out the same WITHIN the creationist "territory" as you assert that this thread landed on but I do not find that you come up to your own admonission so I stipulate instead that you have got a "straight" answer if you only need ask yourself whether YOU yourself think that THINKING of the 3-D form of a creature FROM a 1-D series of base pairs is enough to get an answer from a creationist absolutely or an evolutionist acutally?So there can be no more crying over spilled milk. I hope me eating meat is not a problem for your ticket to the chance we people all may be peacefully corerct. best. Brad. There is an MSN site on created kinds that I have contributed more material on this topic which is advertised on this board - so feel free to search for it.

Your adolescent drivel is as meaningless aas it is useless. Please take it into another thread. It has nothing whatsoever to do with this thread, which is directed at **creationist inability to define "kind"*.I'm so sorry if you couldn't grasp that. Do let me know if I can make it any simpler for you.Budikka