Then there is no point in arguing for retention of the term or discussing the matter further.
You realise I was referring purely to the primate issue? It has a lot of utility outside of that realm.
So what happened to your precious human ‘kind’ created in God’s image ?
My statmeents on the improtance of regulatory regions and uhnman-specific genes aside I'm simply prepared to concede that humans are not a good example at the genomic level.
But there is plenty of evidence for information *gain* in genomes, like for example in the article I cited back in message 56 of this thread.
I have no problem with horizontal transfer! I'm talking about gai nto the enitre genomoshpere (not simply swappings)!
Plenty of other examples too. If divergence occurs primarily due to loss of information (genes), then why is it that we see organisms becoming more complex over time in the fossil record, rather than less?
I'm sure you're aware that creationist view the fossil record as a Flood and recolonization event.
There is simply no evidence that some hypothetical initial ‘set’ of genomes were created. How, in your slippery view of the world, would we distinguish a ‘created’ genome from one that evolved ?
If the data is consistent with the concept it does not matter if we cannot distinguish it from your scenario. It is unfrotunate, but not a problem per se.
When I asked if you deny branching of the human lineage, you said:
TB writes:
Yes, but it's just a postulate.
You could construe my comment in that way. I would prefer to say it was a postulate that humans were not related to other primates.
Sorry, that’s not good enough. Without some sort of testability, postulates are just pipe dreams.
Like I said, I prepared to concede - for the purposes of this discussion - your point on the human kind. But I'm going to point to the obvious realtive gains of genomic informaiton throuhgout the genomosphere.
Fine. But the basic morphological differences between Neanderthals and modern humans (and other lines of evidence, I suspect) strongly suggest they would have been genetically incompatible.
I can handle that too - although I doubt you could prove it.
But I guess this distinction doesn’t matter to your definition of ‘kind’. Speciation is of no real consequence to your view
Agreed.
of evolution because your imaginary immutable 'kinds' continue their evolution in parallel and can never be traced back to a common ancestor.
. . excpet to the original kinds potentailly.
So I ask you, yet again, once you have separate gene pools what can possibly limit the degree of divergence of one organism from another ?
Time and the alck of demonstration of the reality of the appearance of genuine genomic novelty. Of course, evolutionists have not proven that new gene types really arise. You assume they arose and then make statements of the consequences that has given the evidence.
I'm a structural biologist and bioinformatician. I know precisely what has and what hasn't been demonstrated about the evolution of new gene types. I'm happy to discuss it at that level if you want.
I meant that if the human lineage branched into Neanderthals 'below' the point where it became recognizably 'human' (which it did, despite your insistence in considering them the same ‘kind’), then what prevents the human lineage from being one branch diverging from another lineage (above the level of human ‘kind’)?
The first point is I see nothing about Neandertal that is not human. Secondly, we're kind of on the same sid on this. I'm prepared to say I beleive in macroeovlution and that maybe you could end up with genuinely 'new kinds' from a functional definition. That does not mean that our viewpoint is without use becasue, in principle, we still claim to be able to trace back mammals to, say a 100, original genomes and not further.
But now, from the above quotes, it seems you have conceded (1) you cannot provide a functional definition of how a ‘kind’ is delineated and held immutable and
Not quite. I defined a functional definition at the genomic level. I make no statements about the phenotype.
My personal intuition is that even on the mainstream tiemscale I wouldn't expect to see the arrival of eyes, immune systems and brains. But I can't argue that quantitatively.
you accept that you cannot disprove genetic evolution of humans from primates. So what earthly (scientific) use is your nebulous, biblically-derived concept of 'human kind'?
I prepared to conceede that it has little scientific use for primates precisely becasue mammalian differnees are primarily in regulatory regions.
I think I can rest my entire case at this point.
Fine. But don't build a straw man. Our claims and research concern the origin of all life forms. Not just mankind.
This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-11-2005 10:18 PM
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