Flood believers, what exactly is a kind? How is it different from a species?

Question

I keephearing that Noah took one of every kind of animal on the ark. But nobody will say exactly what a 'kind' is. There is a specific scientific defintion of a species which (for practicial purposes) says that two animals are part of the same species if they could produce a viable offspring.

Now I know that the way Ii've worded it means two males are not part of the same species,, but I've shorteened it down by for easier consumption. By viable I mean able to produce offspring of their own. For instance, lions and tigers can mate and the result wiill be aliger. But ligers are unable to reproduce.

So in order to understand the viability of the flood theory, I need to understand what constitutes a kind.

People, please understand that dog is a species biologically speaking, so many of you are equating a species and kind. Which is fine with me, but I just want you to be aware of that.

Theophilus, that is a complete cop out and you know it. If you want the bible to be read and applied literally, then its words must have meaning. Otherwise, what is the point?

JayZ: First off, that does nothing to answer the question. But OK. Basically the argument you are presenting is that greater complexity is obtained by reducng the amount of information in the code. If that were the case, there should be evidence for it in the genetic code of closely related animals. For instance, the genetic code for a horse (being a kind - as near as I can understand the term) would have to have ALL of the genetic code for a zebra (since a zebra is just a specialized horse in this definition). But this is simply not the case. Also, evolutionists are asked why evoluition has never been observed. So I think it is fair to ask why this degenerative process has never been observed.

Answer 1

Not quite an answer, but then I'm not a flood believer. Have you seen this site? It's wonderful for flood questions to poke at Christians.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Answer 2

Creationists, starting from the Bible, believe that God created different kinds of organisms, which reproduced ‘after their kinds’ (Gen. 1:11–12, 21, 24–25). Each of these kinds was created with a vast amount of information. There was enough variety in the information in the original creatures so their descendants could adapt to a wide variety of environments.

All (sexually reproducing) organisms contain their genetic information in paired form. Each offspring inherits half its genetic information from its mother, and half from its father. So there are two genes at a given position (locus, plural loci) coding for a particular characteristic. An organism can be heterozygous at a given locus, meaning it carries different forms (alleles) of this gene. For example, one allele can code for blue eyes, while the other one can code for brown eyes; or one can code for the A blood type and the other for the B type. Sometimes two alleles have a combined effect, while at other times only one allele (called dominant) has any effect on the organism, while the other does not (recessive). With humans, both the mother’s and father’s halves have 100,000 genes, the information equivalent to a thousand 500-page books (3 billion base pairs, as Teaching about Evolution correctly states on page 42). The ardent neo-Darwinist Francisco Ayala points out that humans today have an ‘average heterozygosity of 6.7 percent.’ This means that for every thousand gene pairs coding for any trait, 67 of the pairs have different alleles, meaning 6,700 heterozygous loci overall. Thus, any single human could produce a vast number of different possible sperm or egg cells 2 ^ 6700 or 10 ^ 2017. The number of atoms in the whole known universe is ‘only’ 10 ^ 80, extremely tiny by comparison. So there is no problem for creationists explaining that the original created kinds could each give rise to many different varieties. In fact, the original created kinds would have had much more heterozygosity than their modern, more specialized descendants. No wonder Ayala pointed out that most of the variation in populations arises from reshuffling of previously existing genes, not from mutations. Many varieties can arise simply by two previously hidden recessive alleles coming together.

An important aspect of the creationist model is often overlooked, but it is essential for a proper understanding of the issues. This aspect is the deterioration of a once-perfect creation. Creationists believe this because the Bible states that the world was created perfect (Gen. 1:31), and that death and deterioration came into the world because the first human couple sinned (Gen. 3:19, Rom. 5:12, 8:20–22, 1 Cor. 15:21–22, 26).

All scientists interpret facts according to their assumptions. From this premise of perfection followed by deterioration, it follows that mutations, as would be expected from copying errors, destroyed some of the original genetic information. Many evolutionists point to allegedly imperfect structures as ‘proof’ of evolution, although this is really an argument against perfect design rather than for evolution. But many allegedly imperfect structures can also be interpreted as a deterioration of once-perfect structures, for example, eyes of blind creatures in caves. However, this fails to explain how sight could have arisen in the first place.

Adaptation and natural selection

Also, the once-perfect environments have deteriorated into harsher ones. Creatures adapted to these new environments, and this adaptation took the form of weeding out some genetic information. This is certainly natural selection—evolutionists don’t have a monopoly on this. In fact, a creationist, Edward Blyth, thought of the concept 25 years before Darwin’s Origin of Species was published. But unlike evolutionists, Blyth regarded it as a conservative process that would remove defective organisms, thus conserving the health of the population as a whole. Only when coupled with hypothetical information-gaining mutations could natural selection be creative.

Answer 3

Do you think the word species was of common use at the time of the flood?

I would guess not.

Everyone was so illiterate back then. However with a little instruction form God, Noah built the largest ship built in that day, and it stayed afloat.

Anyone that does not accept the flood, and feels it necessary to understand it completely, doesn't really want the answer.

grace2u

Answer 4

I am religious and a Christian, I think that the story off the flood was a parable, a story to teach a religious principle or concept. It was most likely borrowed from the ancient Babylonian story's of Gilgamesh, there is a flood story almost identical to the biblical flood story but the story of Gilgamesh predates the biblical account by a thousand years.

Answer 5

kind=kindred...smile

AV - kind 31; 31

1) kind, sometimes a species (usually of animals)
++++
Groups of living organisms belong in the same created "kind" if they
have descended from the same ancestral gene pool. This does not
preclude new species because this represents a partitioning of the
original gene pool. Information is lost or conserved not gained. A
new species could arise when a population is isolated and inbreeding
occurs. By this definition a new species is not a new "kind" but a
further partitioning of an existing "kind".

Answer 6

Lions, tigers, horses, dogs, elephants, bears, etc. Each of it's kind. You didn't need a chihauhau and a dalmation. They are both dogs. So we restarted with each kind and then variations occured among each kind to give us the many differences within each kind. Micro evolution. The only kind of evolution that makes sense cuz it shows variation within each "kind" that has actually been observed. Now that's science. Something tangible and observable.

Answer 7

actually...

Genesis 7:1-3

1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven [a] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

could look up this, and see what each is down to the degree. *shrug* it seems to me they are quite similar.
Linnean Classifcaiont: : kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.

Answer 8

The Bible says animals will bring forth after their kind. So your definition is correct when you say that animals that can mate and produce offspring are of the same kind.

Answer 9

I wasn't there but species seems more appropriate. And it was two of every unclean animal and seven of the clean variety. But why he didn't kill those two mosquitos I'll never know.

Answer 10

One example of kind would be the wolf. All, dogs can be traced back to the wolf family.