What "kind" are penguins?

This is one of those rare instances when I think Faith has got it right.Although it isn't explicitly stated I think it is pretty clear from Nuggin's Message 1 (shown below) that he is trying to investigate the (Biblical Literalist) Creationist - i.e. YEC - Classification concepts and as such in this thread we should at least try to use the YEC asssumptions.Maybe Nuggin can confirm or deny this was his intent.

---

Oops! Wrong Planet

evidently, they do. yes, that's fine. you see genesis as fact. good.but if you can't determine the meanings of the words it's written with -- or what god created on the 5th and 6th day, it's hard to claim that you believe it as fact. again, this a problem with vaguery not your belief.

---

Well, not off topic at all IMHO and I believe an important point. You have every opportunity to make the best possible case, to present the YEC model, but that does not or should not exempt it from being challenged both theologically and scientifically.If YECs are going to claim that there is some real thing called KIND, then it should be one that can be determined.Let me ask a few questions which hopefully will lead us towards the topic.First, do you agree that the YEC model must conclude that everything living today is descended from critters that were on the Ark?

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No need. I've said all I have to say on the topic already.

Faith, I'm not asking you to say -- there was an original kind of dog called a "Mo-Dog" and it looked like this, and had these characteristics, etc. etc.I fully understand that you can't demonstrate what animals were originally created.My problem is that you can't even define what "kinds" of animals were originally created. You can't even say, "okay, there were beasts of the land, beasts of the air and beasts of the sea."I believe the reason you can't do this is that you are too self aware. You know that as soon as you say, "one kind was beasts of the land", the next question will be - is a penguin a beast of the land or of the sea? Is it therefore not a beast of the air - like all the other birds?When you build an arguement in fact, you have fact to fall back on.
When you build an arguement in the belief that everything is unknowable, you have nothing to fall back on buy your lack of knowledge.

You are correct in that the central question here is basically this--Can any creationist explain what they mean when they say "kind"?Unfortunately, Faith has basically owned up to the fact that they can not, since no creationist actually knows what's said in the Bible, just that whatever is being said must be true.It seems the argument breaks down simply to this -"The Bible says that there were animals, therefore there were animals. We don't have any idea what those animals were, or what they looked like. But we do know this -- Anyone ELSE who has an idea about what they were or what they looked like must be wrong because only we can be right and we've already decided we don't know."Doesn't seem like a very well thought out arguement, unfortunately. I was sort of hoping for some clarity on the issue. Sadly, it seems, every time we ask for more clarity, they just try to make the water murkier.Cognative dissodence, anyone?

No, we know there are KINDS, not just "animals."

You have such a bizarrely skewed idea of what I think I don't even know where to begin to discuss it or correct it. I don't see how what I've said so far is that difficult to follow.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but it seems like this is what you've said so far:"We know that there were animals before the flood. However we don't know what those animals were. We do, however, know that there were different kinds of animals."That's perfectly fine. Where we get into trouble, is when we ask:"What do you mean, "different kinds of animals"?"This is where the Creationist/ID view point kind of falls apart.How can you know that there are different kinds of animals if you don't know what constitutes a "kind" or what animals there were to begin with? Or even better, how many different "kinds" of animals were there?It's your theory. You get to make it all up. All we're asking you to do is put in a little more time and imagination and come up with the numbers and a reason why you picked those numbers over some other number.

how about this, an estimate of the order of magnitude of how many kinds there were on the ark, or at creation?are we talking <10? 10-100? 100-1,000? 1,000-10,000?

---

I DO NOT understand this problem, this incessant harping on this question I've answered already. We know there are different kinds because the Bible says God created different animals and Adam named them.But since the kinds were not identified in scripture where on earth would we get a clue to what they were? All we can do is extrapolate from what were casually referred to in other parts of scripture plus what we see NOW and that's VERY iffy. It SEEMS to me that there had to be a Cat Kind, and a Dog Kind and a Bear Kind and an Elephant Kind for instance, but for most animals it's not that easy even to have a guess at it. A Reptile Kind? Or a Dinosaur Kind separate from other Reptile Kinds or what? How could I even guess? Apparently more than one Bird Kind but again how could I guess how many or which? Maybe some creationists have a more definite idea than I do. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

so, like i previously suggested, colloquially equivalent to family, in linnean taxonomy?

---

Maybe some, maybe a few, maybe not all, WHO KNOWS??

The reason you're being pressed on this is that you seem very willing to produce ideas such as post-flood evolution or super-fast continental drift despite the fact that neither have a clear basis in scripture.Why are you so cagey about this subject?If you can't define a "kind" then your entire hypothesis falls apart. If you DO define a "kind", then that definition will come under scrutiny. I'm left with the impression (rightly or wrongly) that you are clearly aware of this and as a result are avoiding the question.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

Well at least that's an explanation, thanks. I'm not being cagey at all. I honestly truly do not see any basis in scripture -- or in science -- for being definitive about what a Kind is. This isn't something we can just theorize about, it's a flat fact, but we don't know exactly how to define it.I have no problem with theorizing about events that seem likely to have happened in order to account for certain knowns, such as the flood and known facts about continental drift and the natural necessity of (micro)evolution since the flood. Both are logical reasonable ideas that are attempts to tie together some knowns.What a Kind is just doesn't have enough certainty to hang anything on. I know it's not a "species" by today's standards because "species" are just about by definition a new variation on a previous species. Beyond that there's not much that can be said for sure.