ex-xian

I don't think there are any creationists in here, but does anyone have a link there they explain exactly what they mean by "kind?"

Luiseach

I'm not a creationist, sorry, but what's the context for the use of the word?

Doubting Didymus

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. He Laughed Dryly.

Good smegging luck.

Doubting Didymus

Creationists often argue that while evolution can alter populations, such as the case of the evolution by natural selection of resistant bacteria, this evolution can only occur within certain group barriers that they refer to as kinds (taken from the biblical usage of the word). Some creationists think it is at the species level, some try to use vague biblical passages, and some attempt to use a strange form of common sense. The number of kinds ranges from around 10 to literally billions. It is beyond the considerable capability of the entire human species to get a consistant answer to mr. Seekers question so far.

Albion

A "kind" is whatever creationists want it to be. One thing they don't seem to want it to be is an exact number.

Undercurrent

A kind-like partition, P, is a set of subsets of the set of species on earth, having the properites:
[list=1][*]A intersect B is empty for all A, B in P[*]The union of all sets in P is the set of all species.[*]{Humans} is in P[*]|P| is sufficiently small that |P| animals could reasonably be presumed to fit on a large boat.[*]Species directly relevant to human endeavours exist as singletons in P. (e.g. {cows}, {dogs})[*]Species that people in the SW US have only ever seen on the discovery channel are members of elements of P having cardinality of at least 1000.[*]Shut up! That's what.[/list=1]

A kind is an element of a kind-like partition. Properties 1 and 3 ensure that people did not evolve from no monkeys dag nab it. Property 4 ensures that the flood story being the honest-to-God troooth makes perfect sense (again, dag nab it.) Property 7 is invoked only when the creationist is made to seem stupid by his choice of kind-partition.

RBH

From a 'review' of baraminology A "holobaramin" is a "kind," the boundaries of which are discerned by "discontinuity systematics," a truly scientific technique due to Walter ReMine. No evidence is offered for the estimate. The first criterion for defining a "holobaramin" is RBH

Oolon Colluphid

‘Baraminologist’ Kurt P Wise says of ‘baramins’ (= ‘kinds’):

http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_P...e/SC2W0799.pdf

Which is likely to come as a surprise to those creationists who think a kind is a species or genus. (Others I’ve encountered have claimed order or even class... .)

Wise says that
As you can see from those (especially the bovids!), the problem creationists face is that, the more they try to lower the number of kinds (by making 'holobaramins' bigger groups) in order to fit them on the ark, the more and more drastic is the microevolution they have to allow to explain present diversity.

How do you spot a ‘holobaramin’? It’s to do with what can and can’t change into something else, apparently. Wise again:
This sounds like Wise has never heard the term ‘common ancestor’. Yet a common ancestor is precisely what he proposes for the bovid family, that everything from a yak to a dik-dik are derived by microevolution from an ancestral original baramin! If asked whether you could derive a dik-dik from a yak, doubtless he’d say... what? If the microevolution that produced the separate two works by branching, with antelopes and cows now separate, why does he think evolution argues for deriving an aardvark from an arthropod?!

“There doesn’t seem to be any way for one of those groups to be transformed into another… Even human imagination has been unsuccessful at envisioning a way to transform most of the major groups from any other.” Not only is this an argument from incredulity; he’s only a short hop in Ignorance Space from saying evolution claims humans are descended from modern monkeys… or mice, or lizards, or bedbugs, or oak trees.

Baraminology is so ridiculously logically flawed that personally, I don't see why they don't just admit to evolution and have done with it.

Cheers, DT

Albion

Well, as long as humans get to be in a "kind" all by themselves, do creationists really care what other "kinds" there are anyway?

ex-xian

Wow, thanks for all the info guys. I still have many friends still in the fundy camp, so I'm studying up on what they might say against evolution.