Atheist121

The first time I saw the word "kinds" used by a creationist was in a defense of Noah's flood. Someone was criticizing the flood myth's authenticity by arguing that there are far too many species of animals to gather and take on the ark. The creationist claimed that the Bible uses the word "kinds," which is vague and does cannot be restritcted to mean species.

The next time I saw a creationist use the word, it was offensively. They argued charged that macroevolution is unsupported because we have never seen one "kind" of animal change into another. But this is a mistake, in my opinion. No creationist has ever defined what a Biblical kind is, and none probably ever will. In every day language, kind can be defined as "a group united by common traits or interests" (www.m-w.com). While the kinds cannot be constrained to species, a species is, by definition, a kind. Thus, when speciation occurs, one kind of organism IS evolving into another. As long as the word "kind" is kept vague and undefined, it can be said that we've seen changes across two distinct kinds of organisms.

Valentine Pontifex

This arguement is not a good one.

Creationists are not using "kind" to mean species period. Species is not by definition a kind. The only way to do this is to use two distinct definitions of the word (the creationist definition and one of the dictionary's definitions) at the same time which is a logical fallacy.

While the concept of "kind" is vague in practice it crystal clear in creationist "theory." (I am using the word "theory" not the scientific sense here, but in one particular vernacular sense: practice and theory.) In practice, of course, you are right. This concept allows them to say if evolution between two related taxa is demonstrated that the two related taxa are part of the same kind.

But you are quite wrong in saying that the word is undefined. You might want to beef up on your readings of creationist literature. Creationists usually define kind in terms of the original animal populations when creation occured and all their descendents. There is nothing vague about these sort of definitions. Indeed if common descent is true (and of course it is) then by definition there is currently one kind of life currently on Earth. If we are to assume, for sake of argument, that common descent is absolutely false even for taxa such as mammals then deducing what are the kinds is a major problem. And this is were the vagueness and moveable goalposts aspects of the word come into play. Definitions that depend on what we don't know are not all that useful in the real world.

Frank Marsh, the creationist who started all this "kinds" talk, tried to narrow it down with a definition that could, to a certain degree be applied to the real world. (Though it does share some of the problems that the word "species" has.)
He suggested that it be done based on the ablity to hybridize. (Not that this is far broader than Mayr's biological species concept -- don't confuse them. Marsh's definition makes lion and tigers the same kind while Mayr's makes them two distinct species.)

Siegfried Scherer in Mere Creation suggests the following criteria for determining kinds:

Note that "basic type" and "kind" as well as "baramin" are all refering to the same concept.

A couple of pages latter:

The third criteria is aimed at allowing hybrids that would die before birth (and possibly long before birth) to be included as the same kind.

Of course I agree this is all nonsense, but it is simply not true that creationists are not trying to define these terms.

And too bad ethics prevent us from crossing a chimp and human sperm and eggs in the lab so that they are the same kind by criteria #3. ;-)

[ September 08, 2002: Message edited by: Valentine Pontifex ]</p>

Atheist121

If I were to argue that we've seen a change across kinds because we've observed speciation, I imagine (actually, I've experienced) that they would respond with something along the lines of "We've never seen a dog change into a cat." The point of my argument wasn't that speciation really is a change across Biblical kinds, but that one can argue that "kinds" in the Bible means species just as well as they can argue that it means something else. I was basing this on two things:

1. As far as I know, the Bible never attempts to define precisely what it means when it says "kinds."

2. In my experience (while yours seems to be different), Creationists tend to avoid giving a precise definition of kinds.

Even they are trying to define kinds, as you say, that doesn't help them too much as it isn't Biblical, which turns off many of them (mainly the stricter fundamentalists). If the Bible never defines kinds or even use it in some consistent way that points to a strange meaning of the word, then it seems to me that it would mean what it normally means, which is "a group united by common traits or interests." While one can't limit this to mean species, it really also can't be limited to some definition that a creationist comes up with.