Define "Kind"

I'm sure that's so but I like my intuitive system for the moment. The genetic similarities are really meaningless to me when the differences are so obvious. When some little worm or insect has more genes than a human being, all is not quite as easily interpreted here as is being claimed.

Its not about the number of genes, its the methods for encoding protiens. There are countless ways to encode for any given protien, but for some reason organsims fit into a nested hierarchy of ways in which these things are encoded which matches with cladistics/taxonomy.Insects and worms have gone through more evolution than humans (at a guess - their lifespan and reproductive cycle is massively quicker than humans so there have probably been a hell of a lot more generations of insects and worms), so them having more of something is irrelevant.

But how do you know these genetic similarities mean what you think they mean? Do you know which genes are had in common? I would doubt it, there are too many of them for that to be known yet.There is absolutely no evidence for descent even if there are great similarities, as design can account for it all just as well.This just confirms my suspiciousness of the kind of genetic analysis that is being done. There just must be something very wrong with how it is being interpreted. What is being shown to be in common simply cannot be the most salient features that define the creature, but the analogous stuff, the design factor stuff, stuff mammals all have in common, say, not the definitive stuff.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 02:28 PM

Thanks for the catch Ned and I apologize for misspeaking.The bird species I was referring to was the red-eyed vireos and white-eyed vireos. Two closely related species whose genetic difference of about (2.9%) is roughly twice as high as that between chimps and humans (about 1.6%).I shouldn't have went of just memory but I hope it still shows how closely we are related to chimps.

My suspicion, my alternative explanation, would be that they have been less affected by the Fall than other creatures. There should be less genetic potential the more affected by the Fall the creature is {and in fact the worm situation would be the situation with LESS evolution}. How much junk DNA do these creatures have proportional to human junk DNA by the way?This message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 03:00 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 03:01 PM

So have you come up with an objective way of determining degrees of relatedness among animals within Kinds?What about the degree of relatedness *among* Kinds, or do you deny that there is any?My point is, we have no a priori reason to weight similarities in behavior more heavily than similarities in morphology. That is a subjective judgement you are making. And by the way, behavioral traits work very poorly as criteria for relatedness. They are too
phenotypically flexible (this complicates objective measurements) and far too variable within lineages to be very useful as distinguishing features *of* lineages. They also tend to be very poorly conserved over time compared to morphological traits or others that are more directly linked to genetics.

It does not show that we are RELATED at all. There is no evidence for descent in any of this. All it shows is similar design of the macro structures.

Not I. Keeping my eyes open though. I gather science hasn't arrived at anything very definitive in this area.

Like two mice - Mus musculus and Mus spretus - which have limited interfertility, while differing in DNA more than humans and chimps do.

From what I've seen of the judgments some here make about these things, I am absolutely not impressed. I like my own subjective judgments a lot better.

You know, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I try to take in all accounts and/or explanations for explaining life on this planet...but this goes beyond anything I can accept. The unbelievable juggling of facts and the amount of mental gymnastics you have to play in order to arrive at such a patently ridiculous claim stuns me. To be completely honest, I don’t believe you Faith. Why? Well , even when provided with facts, you ignore them and call them rough analogies. To me . that’s mental (if not intentional) dishonesty. But hey, it’s a free Country and you can believe what ever you want. Please, though, just don’t ask me to accept that such methods should be allowed in the teaching of science to our children. What do you know of vertebrate anatomy, genetics, cladistics and animal behavior that allows you seriously claim something like this? Admit it, this is just mere uniformed speculation on your part and means nothing at all. Again, that’s fine with me . it’s your life and if you choose to remain blind to science, so be it. I just don’t see how you can get through a typical day arbitrarily picking and choosing what you will accept as fact and what you will reject.I'm not trying to be combative or insulting, but it's not easy Faith. You willfully ignore any evidence that contradicts your preconceived notions about life on this planet. Sorry, but while I know you don't really care about my opinion, I find that sort of attitude almost childish in nature. Opinions are one thing, but to attest that you are right and "we" are wrong because the Bible says so is simply ignorant.For example, you yourself have claimed to be struggling with a lot of genetic information provided to you at this site by numerous posters. Normally, that would be a good thing. The problem in your case, as I see it, is that unlike a "student" who is trying to learn about genetics...you have no plan on learning anything. All you want to do is take what has been taught to you and twist it around or ignore it completely in a feeble attempt to justify in your mind that all this genetic information you have acquired and learned about is, in fact, incorrect (if it goes against your beliefs). Does that not trouble you spiritually? Are you not at all bothered by the fact that you have to take information provided to you by experts in the field and then play mind games with yourself to try to come up with an explanation of why it is wrong?But this is a thread to see if we can get a definition of "kind", and it appears that none is forth coming. We get the "we're working on it", and the "it's a working hypothesis", and the "I'm sure we'll get one some time in the future", and the "it really doesn't matter" sort of stuff...but we never actually get a definition.Anyway, sorry if I insulted you, it was not my intent. I just got back from getting a root canal done and I'm a but drugged up and grumpy.

OK. My point is this. Science has to remain an objective process. We can't have predetermined ideas about how things MUST work. Science has developed very objective procedures for quantifying (

Depends on the authority of the predetermined ideas. You can't overrule God with science, and this IS an objective process.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 02:50 PM

Of course it must, but the majority of scientists ridicule the idea and its source and are not the slightest bit interested in working on the problem. After all, Darwinism completely eliminated the Bible as a source of anything of any scientific interest. There are few scientists willing to touch it at all. This kind of work takes resources the creationists don't have.This message has been edited by Faith, 02-21-2006 02:53 PM

That's fine Faith, you are free to 'like' anything you want.
But science eschews the subjective and demands objectivity.
In science, subjectivity implies inherent bias.For example, I might say I want to study weevil evolution.
I also like to study behavior so I am going to catalogue all the behaviors of my group of weevils and rank their relatedness according to the number of behavioral similarities.That would be a rather subjective approach because I have decided a priori that behavior is going to reveal relatedness without any evidence to support that assumption. A better (objective) approach would be to say I am going to examine a series of non-transcriped DNA segments cut at random with some enzymes and see how much sequence similarity there is between them. This is a more objective approach because I am not deciding before hand that any one section of NT DNA is any more important than any other. But I know that the longer the different species have been separate, the more changes they will have accumulated in these sequences *simply by chance*.We have to have objective means of measuring relatedness.
There is nothing objective about the term 'kind'.
Rather it seems to be subjectively defined as 'things that look pretty much the same'.This message has been edited by EZscience, 02-21-2006 02:06 PM