RufusAtticus

Don't you just love it when the only response a creationist has to a long, thought out post is, "you're only clutching at straws?" I don't think lightbearer even read my post.

...according to its kind.

Monkey

I doubt he read it.

:banghead:

I once wrote Kent Hovind to try to get a reasonably accurate account of how many "kinds" of animals there were on the ark but never got a reply. If I remember correctly from one of his debates, there was apparently about 700 "kinds" of animals.

Science estimates http://www.wri.org/wri/biodiv/b02-gbs.html

Now if the flood happened roughly 4000 years ago, isn't that A HELL OF ALOT OF EVOLUTION!? 700 kinds to 10,000,000 species in 4000 years? What about extinct species? What did the carnivores eat when they got off the ark? Plus the evolution of complex interactions between species, symbiosis and such, shouldn't something click in their heads that says "This doesn't make much sence!"

MrDarwin

Rufus, if you want to nail him on the "kinds" bit you should do a bit of digging to find examples of modern-day species being found in the fossil record and presumably "pre-flood". For example, showing that several species of horse, or elephant, or primate, or bird, existed "pre-flood" would demolish his contention that these taxa arose "within kinds" after emerging from the mythical ark. (Although the marine record is much better, stick to the terrestrial critters so he can't claim they survived without being on the ark.)

(And if he does raise the "floating mats" bit, or say that aquatic creatures didn't have to be on the ark, you might also ask why it states so clearly in the bible that all living things were wiped out by the flood, and tries the "breath of life in their nostrils" routine (which is how they get around thousands upon thousands of insects being on the ark, since they don't have lungs or nostrils, and thus presumably don't breathe(!), ask about whales--although I bet he'll wiggle out of it by claiming that blowholes aren't nostrils!)

Bubba

This is exactly why I seldom post at CF anymore. The quality of creationists there is at an all time low it seems.

Bubba

Nickle

There are quality creationists?

Albion

Not at CF, at any rate.

lpetrich

Actually, insects have a sort of "nostrils". They breathe with the help of tracheae, air-filled tubes that run through their bodies. These tubes connect to the skin, where they open into the air in several "spiracles" -- the "nostrils".

Another

Maybe he read it, maybe (probably) he didn't. It may not matter.

Opinions based in faith are as resistant to argument as the associated theory is resistant to material testing. Myself, I have questioned the utility of debates along this vein. True, you may sharpen your argument, but your sword will never cut the phantom. Entertainment value and understanding of human thought may be the only redemption here.

rafe gutman

another tactic to argue against the ludicrosy of "kinds" is to look at sequence difference between two organisms of different species that are said to be "within kind". one example is the house mouse (mus musculus) and the western wild mouse (mus spretus). in a recent Science article, they compared several genes in these mice for sequence differences at "silent" sites (sites that don't lead to amino acid differences). they then estimated that the two genomes were ~2.5% different. with a 3 billion bp genome, that amounts to ~75 million differences. if you assume they are both equally divergent from their common ancestor, then both species had over 30 million point mutations become fixed into their genomes in around 4000 years, which of course is pretty crazy.

you might want to first ask the creationist what kinds of differences we would expect to see in the genomes of two organisms "within kind" versus two organisms in different "kinds". any reasonable person would say they would expect the organisms within kind to have extremely similar genomes, but those in different kinds would be much more different.

(here's an article on the evolutionary history of mice)

Coragyps

Rafe - I got nothing but silence from creationists on another board a few months ago when I pointed out that chimps and humans are more closely related than two of the mouse species in that paper. (As measured by DNA differences, at least.) I guess that there are more than one "mouse kind", even within the genus Mus ?