tgamble

I was discussing Noah's ark and "kinds" on another board and told this

>"All dogs are members of the "grey wolf" species."

go figure.

Anyway, my question is how much genetic variation is there between what creationists call kinds (ie, dog kind including dogs, hyenas etc. or horse kind including zebras etc.) compared to, say, humans and chimps. Any websites or sources that document the differences?

Thanks.

RufusAtticus

Human's and chimps are more related. I don't have a reference right now. Look at my message in the "Novel Feature" thread for my take on "kinds."

-RvFvS

Automaton

Give them a list of nucleotide sequences for some purely hypothetical organism with one gene, and make each one slightly different, until you have a completely different sequence at the end of the list. Ask them what they think are the seperate "kinds", and what methodology they use to determine this. Then ask them what genetic mechanism suddenly cuts short and STOPS mutations from happening after a certain point of variation away from the "original kind", and only allows them to proceed if they deviate back to the "norm", and how this would work without two seperate genomes, one that is inable to mutate (which seems impossible), and a whole lot of molecular machinery that have gone totally undiscovered. Let's see them give you the ol' "I dunno, but it is, 'cuz goddidit!" answer and quickly change the subject.

Automaton

Oh, and here's something else. The invisible, magical mechanism that stops things from changing "kinds" would also be subject to mutation. Any mutation that crippled this system would be an evolutionary advantage, because as we all know, evolution itself is a desirable trait. This allele would especially become dominant after some rapid environmental change that would require equally rapid adaptation. The "kind mechanism" would have disappeared long ago.

Answerer

There is something I don't understand within the Noah's flood story,how is Noah going to catch thousands over species of frogs or millions kind over species of insects and other animals within just a few years before the flood arrives. I have some logic diffculty in these. So, can anyone help me with it.

Automaton

The less and less creatures (the ever plastic "kinds") that Noah could get on the Ark means the more and more rapidly evolution would have to occur after the flood to account for all the life we see today. There is no point of equilibrium between these two, a reasonable figure for one makes the other impossible.

Creationists also make up insane fairy tales about insects "burrowing under the mud" to escape the flood, therefore Noah not having to save them. But since they think the flood created the geological record, the poor insects would be covered under "millions of years" of rock hard sediment!

As you can see, all their little stories mutually conflict with eachother, and flood theory is just as coherent in believing the Earth flat.

Bill

This is the point of this thread: he only had to preserve one sample of each "kind." So, if frogs and toads were all of the same "kind," then only one set of samples would be required. Future species would be micro-mutations within the "kind" of frogs and toads.

Of course, Noah didn't have to preserve any of the water-based life forms (fish, etc.), so perhaps the frogs and/or toads were preserved on that basis. Only God knows, and He isn't saying.

==========

I rather think that the whole business about "kinds" of animals (where "kinds" aren't in any way related to normal taxonomic classes) is simply a defense mechanism to the whole silly business of getting all the animals into the ark.

== Bill

Automaton

What the hell is a "micro-mutation"?

Quetzal

The same as "macro-mutation" only over shorter timescales.

Quetzal

On a serious note: tgamble, good luck trying to define "kind". There's a whole new cretin "science" revolving around just this issue called "baraminology" (LOL). The cretinists are still trying to find some way to twist, distort, bend, fold, spindle, and otherwise mutilate linnean taxonomy to fit the biblical created kinds - which of course is why there has been no actual publication of baraminology to date (except for a few classifications). Not only do they have their work cut out for them to explain the three different reproductive plans of sharks (not counting their nearest relatives skates and rays)for example, but they're trying to find some way to put humans in a completely separate baramin from all other life.

As near as I can make out, baraminology has three basic objectives:

1. develop a classification system that would explain the diversity of life based on a point creation event ~6000 ya;
2. reduce the number of organisms living at the time of the flood (~4500 ya) to a number capable of being carried and collected by Noah on the ark (by assuming that simply lumping as many disparate organisms as possible into a related taxonomic classification reduces biodiversity!!!)
3. reduce the diversity of life on the planet to a rational number that could have been created simultaneously based on similar baramins (i.e., creation didn't require 30,000 species of beetles; just one, then the creator "programmed diversity" into the beetle baramin to permit this one pair to diverge into the plethora of beetles existing today.)

I can't wait until they start trying to shoehorn early fossils into this system. Where will anthracosaurs end up? Wonder what they'll do with archea (maybe "bacteria kind" or something). In their desperate efforts to provide somekind of psuedo-scientific foundation for their mythology, the cretinists have REALLY bitten off more than they can chew. Still, as long as they never actually complete the work, they can claim that they have a "scientific theory" in progress - adding to the ammunition they use to get cretinism taught alongside biology in science classes - the ultimate "holy grail" of cretinism.