CodeMason

Ask your friend to look up Down syndrome, and then see if he still believes the amount of chromosomes can't change.

liquid

Downs syndrome might not be such a great idea. The creationist would probably just state that it shows degeneration perfectly.

Far better to use all the examples in plants.

ex-robot

Hey T! Actually, Frank Marsh has discussed this in the past with Remine, Woods, and Wise more recently. I believe for the most part, it has been mostly theoretical. The actual work in determining what is and what isn't a kind has started from what I understand. They had that recent Discontinuity Conference at Cedarville recently to discuss these matters. The only report I found so far was from icr below:

<a href="http://www.icr.org/headlines/discontinuityconference.html" target="_blank">Discontinuity Report</a>

Has anybody else seen other reports? It does look interesting that they are doing actual hybridization studies. I wish this or another report went into much more detail. Another intersting point is that Wells, an old ager but non-christian, was present along with old-earth and young-earth creationists. I'm surprised that Wise, Woods, Cumming of ICR, and other YEC would band together with infidels and OEC to tackle the "Kind" problem. At any rate, I'm glad they are.
You say evolution of this and that, but they will use the more detailed description of what happened like mutation, natural selection, recombination, etc. They don't deny the nuts and bolts of what we can observe today. They deny how evolutionists phrase it. The term "Evolution" will always be associated with common descent to most people and not change over time or more precisely, any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.
How so? Can you explain a little more. What do you mean by can't "evolve"? They obviously believe organisms can change or "evolve" quite a bit. There are obviously plenty of basic kinds that they would consider related by common descent like dog, cattle, cat, bear, etc. Now how they determine kinds with all the different types of rodents, birds, etc. is much harder to fathom. Another thing that I don't get is that they are basically against common descent, but they believe in a limited version of common descent within organisms of a "kind". What is the technical name for that????

This is probably the best summary of the theorizing of genesis "kinds" I have found so far:

<a href="http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/37/37_2/baraminology.htm" target="_blank">Baraminology</a>

xr

theyeti

This "Discontinuity Systematics" was something coined by Remine I think. It's just basically an assertion that life it not connected by descent, and as far as I know, nothing much else. Like with everything else about creationism, it seems to be nothing more than a negative claim against evolution, and not a positive claim.

The link you gave doesn't indicate that at all. Rather it says that "Hybridization studies indicate a relatively small number of basic types." I doesn't say they did the studies themselves. Either way, their claim requires the assumption that species related by common descent must be able to hybridize, which just isn't true. I'm too tired to link them right now, but we've had several discussions on this recently. I think the "scigirl and Douglas debate peanut gallery" thread might be a good place to look.

Wells is a moonie in case you didn't know. Mabey he's an "infidel" in the eyes of YECs, but other than that I don't know what you mean by "infidels". That Wells would associate with them is not surprising; creationism is in its entirety a political movement, and they band together when it suits their needs. Wells is with the Discovery Insitute, and under Phil Johnson's "big tent" strategy, they are trying to use the bigger numbers of YECs to form a coalition to "defeat Darwinism" through political action. After that they will supposedly work out their differences. Wouldn't you love to see that cat fight?

Mabey it's the cold medicine, but I'm having a hard time understanding you here. I think you're talking about the creationist distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution". But that was not what I was talking about at all. I was talking about evidence of "macroevolution" (i.e. evolution at or above the species level) and how creationists use "kind" to avoid acknowledging it as evidence. Speciation is just written off as the same "kind". But this ignores the whole point; all evolutionary divergences start off as speciation events. It takes quite awhile before they look significantly different, and as time goes on, the differences become more and more pronounced. How much change before they become a separate "kind"? That's precisely the problem -- we have no way of knowing because there is no definition of "kind"! There is therefore no ammount of observed or inferred evolutionary change that will make a creationist admitt that "macroevolution" has occured; there is no ammount that he can simply not call the same "kind". Such a distinction is not relevant to science at all, it is simply an evasive debating tactic on the part of creationists.

I think you mean "microevolution". There are two basic reasons they accept it. Number one, "microevolution" has been observed on numerous occasions and so have many speciation events. It's also ridiculously stubborn, even for a YEC, to deny that, say, tigers and lions share a common ancestor. Remember hybridization? Even they are forced to accept that as evidence of common descent.

Number two they have this Noah's Ark thing to contend with. It's not easy cramming two of everything onto that Ark unless you're able to cut the number down by allowing, for example, two surviving kitty cats to give rise to all extant cat species within less than 4000 years. YECs are forced to accept a far greater rate of evolution than any "evolutionist" would.

Anyway, you seem to be missing the point of this whole thread. We don't know what a "kind" is or why one can't evolve into another. (And by "evolve" here, I mean related by common descent. For example, why can't dogs and bears be related by common descent? What is it about them that makes them different kinds?) This is their claim, and until they give a rigorous definition what it is they're talking about and why there is some sort of magical barrier, then there's not much point in proving them wrong.

Exactly what I thought:

"In baraminology the primary term is holobaramin from the Greek holos for whole. The holobaramin is all and only those known living and/or extinct forms of life understood to share genetic relationship. It is an entire group believed to be related by common ancestry."

Well that just cleared things up nicely, now didn't it?

theyeti

scigirl

Thanks for the kind replies everyone--I'm glad that avoidance of writing my master's thesis is paying off!

I don't think we know the answer to that question. And I don't think we have to know to believe that it did occur since the circumstantial evidence (G banding patterns, evidence of telomeres) overwhelmingly points to chromosome fusion.

But of course we want to know--and it is a fascinating question. Since most large chromosome events lead to sterility or death, it is difficult to imagine this fusion happening.

That same website has this to say:
scigirl

theyeti

Oh yeah, at the bottom of that link, <a href="http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/37/37_2/baraminology.htm" target="_blank">Baraminology—Classification of Created Organisms</a>, they do give a list of how the determine what's a "holobaramin" (a.k.a. "kind"). Perhaps I was a bit too hasty last night; it seems that they do try to define "kind" ...sort-of. Let's go through the list, shall we?

Well, there you have it. Scripture takes precedence over reality. Should've known. Real scientists don't give a whoop what the Bible says in regards to the natural world. Just like they don't care what the Koran, the Vedas, Book of Mormon, Necronomicon, Satanic Bible, War and Peace, and Hop on Pop say. Nothing is allowed to take precedence over empirical reality. This is precisely why we have this whole creationism nonsense to begin with.

Well, it looks like criteria # 2 is too unreliable. Next.

Much too vauge. What is it exactly about ontogeny that defines kinds? Why does the fact that all placental mammals have essentially the same embryonic development not make them the same kind?

This actually seems to make some sense, at least for the living forms. But this is of course obvious; seeing a continuous parent-offspring relationship makes it hard to deny, and there is no controversy here. But how do you get a clear-cut lineage for fossils? They just deny that any are transitional and they deny the relative dates, so what's the point? This category can only be used on living organisms that have been tracked during historic times, and is thus pratically useless.

Way too vauge. Totally vauge. Vauge within vauge. Creationists have never accepted morphological or molecular homologies as evidence of common descent. Do they accept the homology of vertebrate limbs? No. Do they accept in correlated phase introns within homologous pseudogenes that contain identical nonsense mutations? No. If they won't accept that, they won't accept anything.

This is the most absurd one yet. YECs claim that geological strata were all laid down within one year during the Flood and that the trillions of organisms in those sediments were alive at the same time. Furthermore, the cataclysim was so violent that there is no way to give relative dates to any of them. Just how is one supposed to determine any relationships this way?

Not just totally vauge, but totally pointless. There is nothing about being closely related that requires a similar niche.

Well that's all the fun I can stand.

theyeti

hezekiah jones

Thanks. I've been waiting for some enlightened commentary on "barmy-inology." Another ration of creationist horseshit, as suspected.

Once again, why do "creation scientists" set about establishing their own parallel universe of terminology, rather than attempting to integrate their very "special" observations into the mainstream of legitimate science? Why, it's censorship, of course!

Asha'man

Hmm, I guess I should spend more time reading the links that people put in here...

thanks for your patience, scigirl.
(but don't put off that thesis too long)

ex-robot

[quote]Originally posted by theyeti:

Thanks for the insight. I am going to have to read up more when I find some more details.

Thanks for pointing that out. It doesn't indicate who did the studies. I would think they would have to do some themselves sooner or later if they haven't already. I'll have look for it again, but I believe the subject of mutations causing the inability to hybridize between kinds has been discussed. I'll look at the peanute gallery. ??? Thanks
yes, I knew he was a moonie. That is what I meant by an infidel in the mind of a yec. I was just surprised at all the oec, yec, and a moonie coming together when I thought they hated each other.
no, I wasn't talking about that specifically.
that is the problem. I belive the kinds is at the family level.
I understand that. All I'm saying is that if you are arguing for kinds, initial speciation is not going to that big of a deal. Not having the ability to interbreed anymore, increase or decrease in size, length of fur/hair, etc. is not going to do it.
I believe you quoted one. I don't know if that is the offical defintion. I would think that the family level would be in the right direction if a member of a family crossed over to another family.
The amount of change needed to be observed would never appear in their lifetime. You would have to show observable, dramatic change on the scale of reptile to bird, reptile to mammal, and so forth. I don't believe it is evasive at all in regards to the ones who actually know what they are talking about. They definitely don't have it all together. If they believe in a limited common descent and actually do original research whether hybridization or other studies, it could prove to be useful minus the new terms. I don't understand why they would want to create a new classification system and confuse everybody. If the kind is at the family level, they should stick with family, genus, phyla, etc. and put forth their research as to why their taxonomy is a better fit with the data.

Oh, I know they accept tigers and lions being in the same cat kind and believe these two species of cats are related by common descent. No creationist with a clue would deny common descent of tigers and lions. Although they might rephrase it just to piss you off.
That is another good point. A good test case might be dogs. I don't know if anybody has studied how long it has taken to develop the diversity of dog species we have today, but it would be extremely interesting. But dogs have diversified a lot due to human intervention. Most of the current "big" cat species would most likely have had no human intervention.
I'm not missing the point. I understand the frustration, and I am not satisfied either.
You are absolutely right. I'm hoping after they do their research, that this all comes out. I just wish they wouldn't have a big conference and then hide most of the details.

"extinct and living understood to share genetic relationship"? How would they determine the genetic relationship between a living and extinct organism??

xr

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: ex-robot ]</p>

ex-robot

What do you know? Cumming (Biologist/Harvard) ICR says they can change as of 1991.

<a href="http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-215.htm" target="_blank">patters of speciation</a>

9th paragraph down, 1st sentence, if you don't count the lists of items.

Also, theyeti if you are reading this, I might have seen the discussion on the inability to interbreed with the parent species but still belonging to the same kind here. Cumming discusses it in the same paragraph as the chromosome counts. He doesn't specifically say that this means they are still the same kind despite the inability to interbreed, but I think it is safe to assume that.

xr