To define kind.

[u/Carnotaurusrules]

Creationists that debate is this sub have an inadequate definition of kind. u/Old-Watercress6513 is a rare example of this, but his definition is parroted from other Creationists, which is,” If two animals can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, they’re in the same kind.”

This fails to account for modern speciation events in the modern world, taken London Underground mosquitoes or Apple Maggot flies. They’re slowly, but definitely surely splitting from their ancestral species.

Let’s say I’m just assuming those two species are going to become distinct species that won’t interbreed with the ancestral species.

It still doesn’t get any better for them, as Tragopogon mirus and miscellus, commonly known as goatsbeard plants, can only produce infertile hybrids with other species. Polyploidy is the cause behind instantaneous speciation events regarding plants, causing an entire set of chromosome to duplicated once or more. When the polyploidy plant tries to reproduce with its diploid cousins, it only produces sterile hybrids that can’t produce functional gametes.

Animals all across the world that can’t interbreed are lumped into the same kind by Creationists. Most of Passeroidea can’t interbreed, but Cognitum comes to rescue. Gray Wolves cannot interbreed with maned wolves, bush dogs, short eared dogs, bat eared foxes, painted dogs, or wolves, yet they all in the same kind. Not all Giraffids, Equines, Camelids, Cervids, etc can interbreed, producing fertile offspring, but why are they still in the same kind?

Any proposed definition of kind has to be able to meet 2. criteria.

1. A reason or reasons why you grouped these animals into a kind.

2. It has to be objectively verifiable.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist]

I mean, the demand for fertile offspring puts horses and donkeys into separate kinds, which oddly matches literal bible restrictions (leviticus says "no breeding animals of different kinds", so hebrews couldn't make their own mules), but is very much at odds with modern YEC woo, which has reluctantly accepted that equids are all related.

It's also fun that leviticus directly implies that different kinds could interbreed, despite being distinct unrelated creations, because if they couldn't, why would you need to prohibit it?+

[u/nickierv → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

Actually horses and donkeys both don't work for kinds and point to one of the massive glaring issues of that sort of classification: mules have a tiny but non zero chance of reproduction. I forget the exact numbers but I needed it for some project and found that in the last ~150 years or so there where something like 20-30 cases of mules reproducing globally.

Now I'm sure the creationist will be able to move that goalpost but they are not going to be able to address the issue in the same way actual science can: turns out a ~4 million year old genetic fork is hard to overcome whereas something like a ~1 million year split for the Ursidae family results in something like 20-30 known cases in the last 20 years or so. Also the minor issue of not many people keeping polar bears so issues with sampling.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/nickierv]

Biology, eh? Always trying to have "both" when creationists need it to be "either/or".

Out of curiosity, how was the fertility of the mules determined? I'm guessing back-crossing onto either horse or donkey, since the chances of getting two fertile mules at the same time seems vanishingly low. And was it usually females? Male sterility typically precedes female sterility, as lineages diverge.

Disclaimer: I don't know too much about fertile mules, but it seems like a similar state to ligers/tigones, where males are always sterile and females might be fertile, but can only either breed back onto the lion background or the tiger background. Limited introgression is possible, but ultimately a new and persistent lineage of ligers (or tigones) is impossible.

[u/melympia → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

The few cases I read about were most definitely backcrosses, the mozher being the mule.

In at least one case, the offspring was a male horse/mule offspring strongly resembling horses, and he has sired a number of offspring himself.

[u/nickierv → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

I think it was a case of back crossing but I really didn't look into the details much past getting a count.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

What’s that whole nephilim thing again? Hard to imagine more separate ‘kinds’ than humans and fallen angels (if that’s the view someone has of them, I know that other people still think they were humans of some sort)

[u/Mister_Ape_1 → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

The ring species phenomenon makes kinds utterly meaningless.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel]

There are a few creationists on here like your example that are guilty of this very obvious dodging. They will say basically, as you said, ‘if they can interbreed then same kind’. When it’s pointed out that some organisms they accept as related cannot ‘bring forth’, they always go quiet and run. To then pop up and say the same exact thing elsewhere.

I hope you’re able to get even an attempt at an answer. I’m also certain that you won’t, I actually expect to see some misdirect along the lines of ‘evolutionist can’t make up their mind on what species is’, despite the fact that it’s been pointed out to them several times that species is necessarily fuzzy because evolution is true. Which isn’t the case for kinds. Kinds cannot have any fuzziness; either an organism is part of the same kind or it is not. True dichotomy.

[u/GOU_FallingOutside → u/10coatsInAWeasel]

> species is necessarily fuzzy because evolution is true

This is one of the things that annoys me most about the “pokemon” version of evolution and speciation, as in “evolution can’t be true because no one has ever seen one species turn into another.”

But suppose we really did have a world of taxonomic groupings that were always entirely separate and perfectly categorical, and some switch suddenly flipped and turned organism A into organism B. (Your BULBASAUR has evolved into IVYSAUR!) That’s not only an inaccurate view of how the world works; it would be strong evidence that the theory of evolution is very wrong!

And it goes to the heart of the baraminology/“kinds” argument. Species is a fuzzy concept because change in populations is continuous across time and sometimes across geographic boundaries. If two populations of organisms look unrelated, it’s only because we can’t see the countless organisms that lived and died between today and their most recent common ancestor.

[u/Autodidact2]

That definition doesn't work because of the millions of species that would have had to fit onto the ark.

[u/NotAUsefullDoctor → u/Autodidact2]

Did the ark contain both European and North American rabbits? Bu that defition they are if a different kind. How did the North American ones get across the ocean after the flood?

[u/Autodidact2 → u/NotAUsefullDoctor]

Did you mean to reply to me?

[u/NotAUsefullDoctor → u/Autodidact2]

No. No I did not. :face_palm:

[u/Doomdoomkittydoom]

A "Kind" is "Species" with the promise not to notice any similarities between them going forward this time.

[u/Knight_of_Rohan1964]

It's a problem that will never be solved, because their model ("animals were created in different kinds that cannot cross-breed") would predict variations within the same kind to be clearly distinguishable from variations between different kinds. Since this is not observed (genetic and anatomical differences between species, families and phyla are clearly in quantity, not kind), and they refuse to drop or significantly alter the premiss of the model, the result will be a fragile concept that can't be backed by real world measurements.

[u/LeeMArcher]

They can always hand wave as “God’s mysterious ways.” Which is the issue when one’s explanation is a god who made the entire universe. 

Some Christians will hem and haw over how powerful god is, because they want him to be all powerful, but if he’s too powerful, it’s hard to address certain problems inherent to “his creation.” 

But at the end of the day, their eventual answer will be, “well, that’s how god decided to do it.” That explanation can be applied to everything, therefore it actually explains nothing. 

[u/shemjaza → u/LeeMArcher]

If their only claim was "A mysterious omnipotent creator made everything." This world work better.

But they add nice and honest to his attributes so creating a vicious web of ecosystems with evidence for evolution down to their very genes gets very weird, very fast.

[u/theresa_richter]

Using that original definition... if two humans spend their whole lives attempting to reproduce and fail, does that mean they were different kinds?

[u/Mister_Ape_1 → u/theresa_richter]

I am Aroace and sterile. Because I am a kindless, immortal being who does not need to reproduce, and is unique in creation. That at least is what it should be according to this kind of logic. Is not so ?

Actually, my closests friend literally stated multiple times with a serious voice tone she is not human, her natural lifespan is infinite, and she comes from another Universe.

But the YEC narration could not accomodate for that. The only monotheistic references to a Multiverse are in Kabbahla and some Islamic schools.

I wonder, if her view and the YEC world clashed, who would be found to be the most rational. But I know my friend would win regardless of the number of people opposing her, as long as she is allowed to resort to her own ways to get around problems.

[u/teluscustomer12345]

If two animals can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, they’re in the same kind

This isn't really a full definition; if two animals can't interbreed, are they different kinds? Creationists deliberately keep this vague to make it harder to prove them wrong

[u/Carnotaurusrules → u/teluscustomer12345]

It’s a deliberate tactic that allows them to shift the goalposts whenever they want.

[u/Syresiv]

The fact that they always say "animal" is a sign of poor understanding. Evolution is about organisms, not all of which are animal.

But also, this definition isn't even an equivalence class. It's symmetric, and it makes sense to add reflexivity by fiat (although I'd prefer most creationists just go attempt to prove reflexivity), but it's not transitive.

Like, even if we expand it to say "had they been born opposite sex", and "at any point in the life cycle, barring sexual injury", ring species exist.

This is fine for us on the evolution side, where lines are artificial and of course nature will find a way to fuck with them. But if you believe each species was specially created and can reproduce with another individual if and only if it's an opposite sex member of the same species, then this non-transitivity is a real problem.

[u/Dilapidated_girrafe]

More now are going to the "original kinds" but accept speciation now because its so obvious that speciation actually happens now.

[u/Carnotaurusrules → u/[deleted]]

He’s basically saying there are different body plans that constitute a kind like a rabbit kind, equine kind, and finch kind.

He says the finches aren’t turning into hawks, they remain the same body plan, which is true they would never turn into hawks

Is Artiodactyla a body plan, or is chalicotheria one, or is the tapir a body plan?

The best argument against this drivel is the phylogeny challenge from Aron Ra. It demonstrates there is no way to separate a daughter clade from a parent clade logically.

Maybe the house finch has the passerine body plan, or Neoavian body plan, but it could also be the Theropod body plan.

I was also wondering if you would want a link to the phylogeny video?

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

Creationism is nonsense but the reponses to them seem to me quite inadequate. Much of what you say f.ex. is either question-beggging, irrelevant, and/or unsourced. I dont see why you waste time on them but if you want to, you have to do much better.

[u/RobertByers1]

Kinds is not defined for all biology in the bible. So its people figuring it out. The snake is a kind. The bird seems not to be.

[u/Carnotaurusrules → u/RobertByers1]

So did the green anaconda have a common ancestor with monitor lizards and plesiosaurs?

Do you think any dinosaur or marine reptile were actually just big, weird snakes?

[u/RobertByers1 → u/Carnotaurusrules]

Wha? All sdnakes once had legs. God changed this. All snakes are one kind probably one kind off the ark. Then morphed as it suited them.