Who can be saved? A Christian perspective

Right, geology isn't useful? Radioactive dating isn't useful, the evolution of antibiotics isn't useful, knowledge for its own sake isn't useful.....and on and on.My god-daughter's life was saved by the medical cloning of pig tissue which was used to reconnect parts of her lower intentine after a traffic accident. The tissue wasn't rejected by her body because of the closeness of the pig genome to our own. Evolution did that. Hallelujah!

As I understand it, practically speaking the discovery of such mineral deposits involves the identification of the relevant rock associated with the relevant time period, which is more about physical identification than time and doesn't really require dating beyond that identification. If it occurs in, say, a rock identified as Triassic, all that's necessary is recognizing the rock called Triassic. I could probably do this myself without having a clue about its age.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't think you read what I said very well. Ordinary everyday genetic change, or microevolution, is all you need to know about antibiotic resistance, which has nothing to do with the ToE conjurings about the distant past, and you certainly don't need the theory of evolution to identify the genetic closeness of pig tissue to human -- that closeness exists without any notions of genetic descent entering the picture. Science does not need either the ToE or the OE to have the necessary knowledge in these cases.I hope your God-daughter is doing well.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

According to biblical teaching, species were immutable. Now they can evolve - but not too much, just enough to get them in and out of the Ark. Got it. Evolution has nothing to do with the ToE? And, of course it's the closeness of the relationship that proves the relationship, which confirms the ToE. It's perfect isn't it? So far so good - thanks to science.

The Kind can't turn into anything but the Kind but it can vary a great deal within the Kind, what's the problem?

What's a 'kind'?

A Kind is a Species. The terms are synonymous but the classification system accepted today doesn't offer a clear definition so I don't attempt to define it beyond something like Cats, Dogs, Bears and Giraffes.

Yet once again reality and truth show that the kinds in the creation myths are simply the result of the ignorance of the authors of the Bible stories and that the myths do not reflect reality.

Ok, let's drop the superfluos word then and just call them what everybody else outside religious dogma call them and stick with species.So we both accept that species evolve. That's progress, your lot didn't allow that 200 years ago, now they do. I just wonder what the previous 10 years arguing about it were all about.

I often use Kind instead of Species because Species is a term the ToE defines in ways that don't apply to what I think a Kind is. But otherwise I'm fine with Species.There should never have been a problem recognizing that a Species varies within itself so I don't know why there ever was a problem or why it ever changed if it did.

If you have a definition of species that is different to biology, then 'kind' does not equal species.So what is a 'kind' according to you?

Kinda interesting but irrelevant to the question of who can be saved.

Beyond Cats and Dogs which are certainly each a Kind I don't have a definition of Kind. It is determined by the genetics and that is too hard to judge from the phenotype. So, I don't know if "Ape" is a Kind or "Chimp" is a Kind. But wherever the genetic diversity is depleted through the processes of (micro)evolution, that defines the boundary of the Kind. It's whatever "reproduces after its own kind" and never produces anything but that kind.But jar is right, this off topic side issue has gone on too long already.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So using your super sleuthing geology skills how do you identify which granite intrusions are Mesoproterozoic and which are not?In parts of southern Australia almost all the large copper deposits are hosted in igneous rocks aged around 1590 Million Years old. Yet there are younger granites and volcanics which are mineralogically, and texturally very similar. These are barren. Which is why major multinational mining companies spend money on radiometric dating, and indeed often keep the results confidential to give themselves a competitive advantage.So please withdraw your comment about 'true science'.

Addressing two of your messages in one reply (both of them very much off-topic, I would say). Message 442
That sounds too much like a small child just learning to talk for whom everything with four legs is either a "doggie" or a "horsie".That also violates the original reason for the "originally created kinds" argument, which was to make room inside the Ark for all these multitudes of species that the goat-herders sitting around the campfires repeating these stories could never have imagined. Not to mention the impossible task for Noah to travel all over the globe into every single ecological niche to collect all of them, not to mention the even more impossible task of delivering each and every one to them back to where they would need to go. So the solution was that those hundreds and even thousands of different species we find all originated from a very few "originally created kinds" which then hyper-evolved almost instantaneously to all the species we know.Plus, you completely kill the basic "microevolution" argument that you want to promote. If a kind is a species, then every single species of cat is a separate kind, which you say cannot intermingle. You have just killed your position. Message 445
Uh, no. Not in the least. The classification system was developed by Carl Linnaeus in the mid-1700's, at least a full century if not more before Darwin published. He came up with species, so it is most definitely not a ToE term.Now, the problem we face is the species problem, just how to we recognize that we are looking at a different species. Reproductive barriers is one way, but there are at least two flavors of that: 1) genetic inability to reproduce, and 2) they just never meet or there is no "urge to merge". And those two basic barriers can also be subdivided further (eg, differing degrees by ability to create hybrids, is the separation purely geographical or are they just mutually repugnant). Within a species, no. But between two species which are still interfertile, yeah there can be a problem if the sexual signals don't work. Dr. Jonathan Miller, MD (PBS' "The Body in Question" some decades ago) wrote a wonderful primer which I think was Darwin for Beginners (various editions available on amazon.com), in cartoon format. In that, he described the situation where the phenotypes are too different so that then "the f**k is off".There can also be a problem where the genetics are a bit too off. Some hybrids are fertile and some are not. How can "variation within a single species" account for that? Variation within a single species should always produce fertile offspring. So why would that sometimes fail? Your "variation within a single kind" cannot explain it, yet evolution can.