You keep playing this trick as if you don’t even realize you’re doing it. Perhaps you don’t. When people bring up common descent within animals, you fall back on universal common descent. But that avoids the subject. What the fossils @Michael_Okoko showed you tell us is that synapsids, including mammals, are all within one “basic type”, and that dinosaurs, including birds, are all within one “basic type”. That, not universal common ancestry, is what you have to address. Avoidance gets you nowhere except a reputation for dishonesty.
No good. He’s a creationist (or possibly an extreme saltationist) who is grossly distorting the record in service of his beliefs. We could talk about the various claims he makes if you would care to bring up some of them.
So you admit that it doesn’t take much genetic difference to make a large phenotypic difference, which in the context of human relationships you had previously denied. Of course, differences don’t come from phylogenetics, but that’s yet another word you’re misusing. Phylogenetics is a scientific discipline involved in estimating phylogeny. Obviously it doesn’t create the differences; it merely notices them.
You should realize that given the way you write, nobody can really be sure what you mean.
Why would HGT be necessary? He could just create the organisms that way to begin with.
And once again you are confusing the subject by switching frequently between the origin of life and the evolution of various groups within animals. Again, all that you will gain from that is a reputation for dishonesty.
You have never made this clear, and this is the very first time you have mentioned it. Of course, nobody at this point expects clarity from you, and I expect you to contradict this clear statement in the near future. But if you really want to assert that, please explain.
Shall we get down to the question of why animals show nested hierarchy, and where in that hierarchy the separate “basic types” lie?
Whaaaat? But this “another claim” of mine did not exist when you cited that paper as a response. How could you “reference a study” on a nonexistent post? LOL, you have really lost it.
In any case, please highlight the part of the paper that conflicts with the quote from my comment that you bolded above. I bet you did not see this recommendation in the paper:
You provided no evidence whatsoever, just repeated assertions.
Stop trying to shift the goal posts. You claimed there were gaps in the fossil record between the major groups, which is a prediction of the orchard hypothesis. However, when we examine the fossil record, we see many fossils transitional between the major groups, whether its from aquatic to terrestrial life, dinosaurs to birds, reptiles to mammals etcetera. These observations falsify the orchard hypothesis because we see no demarcations between the major groups. This comment of mine was never about universal common descent, but common descent between the “advanced life forms” (like apes and fish) you have being yapping about. The evidence for UCD stems primarily from genomics and genetics because not every organism that existed can fossilise, but if the genome present in extant organisms came down through many, but connected branches of descent, then DNA should tell us so (and it tells us so).
Citing a recorded debate doesn’t help you one bit because you can actually look at the evidence for yourself. If mammals and reptiles were separate from the start, then we should find no fossils that possess features of mammals and reptiles, and also look more reptilian the older they are and more mammalian the younger they are indicating the transition. When you throw in genetic data, the picture gets a whole lot clearer because it places us comfortably as descendants of reptiles on phylogenetic trees. The genetic and morphological data unite to report the same story about our natural history and that of other extant organisms.
You can’t have both because to get a fish kind and an ape kind, they must be sufficiently different at the biochemical level. So when you claim that God must have made them extremely similar at the level of biochemistry, then you are spouting a completely moronic claim completely at odds with biochemistry.
Now you say the “differences would mainly come from morphology” which is another ridiculous claim, because your biochemistry deeply influences your morphology. Fish use gills, you use lungs, why? Its due to biochemical differences. Fish have scales, you have hair, why? Its due to biochemical differences. Insects have antennae, wings, etcetera, but you have none of those, why? Its due to biochemical differences. For separate original (fish, ape, insect, for example) kinds to have existed they must have been sufficiently different at the molecular level to produce the striking morphological differences between them.
Thus, if the original kinds were sufficiently distinct at the molecular and morphological level, when we reconstruct phylogenies of extant organisms the orchard pattern should reflect in the data. However, we see a (generally consistent) tree pattern instead. Separate creation is just not supported by the data.
Well if you had gone to learn basic biochemistry as you had been advised several times on this platform, then you would not have made this sort of silly mistake of conflating biochemistry (when you wrote “biochemical similarities”) with biochemical/molecular sequences. I am glad you saw where I indicated the conflation and now seem to have corrected yourself.
Now you have clarified you really meant “biochemical sequences” not “biochemical similarities”, it doesn’t solve anything because the same challenge still remains. When two DNA sequences taken from two organisms have the highest amounts of similarities, it indicates both organisms are either the same species or are closely related. At the level of single nucleotides, DNA sequences from me and you would be extremely similar: about 99.9%. If you my compare DNA to that of any of the chimps in the rainforests of Nigeria, the percentage sequence similarity is 98.8%. Do same for gorillas and me/chimps, we get 98.6%. Do same for me/chimps/gorillas and orangutans, we get 96.9%. Do same for me/chimps/gorillas/orangutans and monkeys, we get 93%.
Thus, saying God made the original kinds extremely similar at at the level of DNA sequences is just as moronic as your previous mistake that original kinds were extremely biochemically similar. The sequences must be sufficiently different as well to have separate original kinds. Chimps and humans share 99.9 percent of their coding genes: the figure is about 70% between Zebra fish and human. Do the maths and see why there must have been sufficient difference in sequences and expression of the coding portions of those sequences to have separate kinds.
Again, sorry to belabor this point, if the original kinds must have been sufficiently distinct from each, then phylogenetic reconstruction would easily find them giving orchard patterns in the data. We don’t see an orchard pattern, but one that is tree-like. Common descent at all levels wins.
Your model is based on a form of biochemistry that is fictional as I explained above and it is sufficiently refuted by available data (because we see trees, not orchards).
Huh? You clearly did. When you claimed God used HGT to create the “highest amounts of biochemical similarities” among the original kinds, you were basically talking about biochemistry not biochemical sequences. When I say two humans are extremely biochemically similar, I mean their metabolism, molecular transport systems and gene regulatory features, for example, are almost the same. When I say two humans are extremely similar at the level of biochemical sequences, I mean their DNA composition are almost a perfect match. You clearly conflated both.
And I have told you that viruses are parasites. They destroy life, not make it. If prokaryotes, the most ancient lifeforms, didn’t evolve mechanisms to curb viral infections, they would have been wiped out a long time.
In addition, current evidence suggests viruses originated from ancient cells, not the other way round.
Sure, after viruses likely derived from ancient cells, they would then begin to contribute to HGT between those cells.
You are still repeating the silly claim that HGT replicates patterns of common ancestry in the absence of common descent. That’s false.
Um, it took about 2 billion years for eukaryotes to evolve and this happened via endosymbiosis between an archaeal host and bacterial visitor. That unicellular eukaryote population formed after the endosymbiosis event went on to evolve to humans, chimps, dogs, insects, etcetera. You and bread mold are distant cousins on the eukaryotic tree of life. That’s what your DNA says.
Genes don’t get swapped between organisms via vertical inheritance, they do so via HGT. Add basic genetics to the list of things you need to learn.
Again, the study you cited explicitly stated that HGT replicates patterns of common descent only when recent common descent has actually happened.
“Strawman”! You are completely unserious. Phylogenetic breaks are a prediction of the orchard hypothesis.
Everyone should observe he is still saying “biochemical differences”, not biochemical differences in sequence composition which are two different things. To make matters worse, he is now saying he “would not expect biochemical differences”, in other words, there would be no differences in genome size, gene regulation patterns, sequence similarity, metabolic processes and patterns, etcetera. How can you make separate ape and insect kinds or bird and dog kinds, if there aren’t adequate biochemical differences between them? You sound completely ridiculous and out of sync with basic biochemistry.
You forgot the “if”, twisting my comment to make it seem like I made an assertion, when I clearly made a hypothetical statement. This is the full quote:
“If God created a single population of unicellular organisms similar to LUCA and caused it to evolve to all current lifeforms we would still see the tree of life pattern in the data.”
More importantly, current evidence lends support to the reductive or escape origins of viruses from ancient cells. Your virus-first hypothesis lacks support.
What has Craig Venter’s reconstruction of an already existing virus using its published sequence have to do with our discussion to support your claim that the first viruses arose via intelligent design?
Again this is false. All they need to influence cells in some way is supplied by physics and chemistry. Intelligence is not required. In all the experiments involving viruses like PACE, the viruses do the infecting on their own. Add basic virology, chemistry and physics to the list of things you need to review.
This is my last response to you on this thread. Sink in your own ignorance.
As @Michael_Okoko has noted, that claim was made in post #154, after you referenced the study in post #150. You could not possibly have been referencing the study in response to that claim.
The point of contention here is whether HGT can recreate the patterns of shared ancestry/common descent/vertical descent.
In general we know that HGT erodes the phylogenetic signal in genetic/genomic datasets, making it difficult to reconstruct the patterns of common descent due to the vertical inheritance/transfer of genes. Many comments ago, Meerkat linked to a paper which demonstrated via simulations that HGT can recreate or maintain the patterns of shared ancestry.
The question to ask is what could cause HGT not to erode phylogenetic signals, but recreate or maintain them. The answer, according to the study is bias: several factors bias HGT to obscure the patterns of vertical descent, and one factor makes HGT make those patterns a lot clearer.
First, what can bias HGT to replicate or maintain phylogenetic signals due to common descent? Here we go:
Second, when does HGT obfuscate the signal of common descent? Here we go again:
This is plain English that no one should get confused over. Remember the researchers ran a simulation to test if HGT could be biased by common descent to replicate its patterns. This is what they found:
Its pretty obvious by now, per the paper, that HGT not biased by shared ancestry itself cannot produce the patterns due to shared ancestry.
Since the patterns of vertical descent can be created by vertical inheritance (VI) alone or a synergy of VI and HGT, then it will be difficult to tell when HGT is reinforcing common descent or the extent of the relative contributions of VI and HGT when both are acting.
Meerkat has the erroneous impression that HGT can act alone to generate the patterns of common descent, but that claim is not supported by the data of the simulation experiments or the statement of the authors as shown above. There must be common descent to influence HGT to recreate its footprints. Meerkat is misrepresenting the biased gene transfer paper.
This contradicts everything you have been saying all along. Under a de novo creation there are no preexisting ancestors whether its for unicellular or multicellular life. No preexisting ancestors means no vertical inheritance, and no vertical inheritance means no biased HGT to reproduce the patterns of common descent. This makes your model crap and effectively falsified by data since biased HGT can no longer rescue it.
I have shown the relevant quotes and they totally destroy your model. As long as the de novo unicellular and multicellular original kinds lack ancestors, HGT can’t help you.
Whether I saw it or not is irrelevant because they are just speculating at that point. It may improve in the future, but right now there is a deep conflict between the two models, which conflicts with your claim.
Oh! In that case, I guess that means we have been talking passed each other for some time now on this point. You asked me what evidence supports separate creation and my answer was the fossil record. If I knew you were referring to limited common ancestry this whole time, I would have moved on and focused on other point and probably would have responded better with more clarity.
As far as the Orchard hypothesis, you were the one that suggested that my argument for a separate but dynamic creation model was basically no different than the Orchard model. So I went along with what you said without actually investigating the details of that model. Apparently, it is not something that I would have signed off on if you truly felt that it was already falsified.
Going forward, let’s just drop the Orchard model to avoid any confusion since it’s technically not my model but it is from the YEC camp that I am not a part of.
Yes , this is correct. Sorry for mistakenly conflating phylogenetics with DNA similarities in my discussion with you. This was not my intent.
Although I am still suggesting that my model would still possess the appearance of Universal common descent within phylogenetics, we should expect to find more examples of sequence or functional convergence between closely related organisms, which would show them to be unrelated.
From one of the studies I provided:
“Most studies have focused on their role as predators and parasites, but many of the interactions between marine viruses and their hosts are much more complicated. A series of recent studies has shown that viruses have the ability to manipulate the life histories and evolution of their hosts in remarkable ways, challenging our understanding of this almost invisible world.”
Well, I was not arguing for one particular origin of virus hypothesis but was suggesting that all of them were true because I didn’t see why they should be considered mutually exclusive and it’s more parsimonious. So someone would have to explain why they have to be mutually exclusive ideas. If they are successful, then I will just argue why the virus first hypothesis is the best explanation.
I will just explain this again some other time when I revise and update my theory and its models.
Also, you are right about the study not really showing the virus was created from scratch. Here is a better study showing this:
No, they do a lot more than that when they are given specialized proteins to give them a boost in function and fitness:
“Phage protein pIII, which is encoded by phage gene gIII, is essential for phage maturation and infectivity.18 The infectivity of M13 phage scales with increasing levels of pIII over a range of 2 orders of magnitude. PACE utilizes a mutant M13 bacteriophage whose gIII gene is replaced by that for the protein of interest (the mutant phage is called Selection Phage, SP, FiguresFigures22 and and33).2,16 Thus, the SP expresses the protein instead of pIII in host E. coli ; the SP cannot produce mature phage particles by itself. To complement the SP, gIII is supplied on a separate plasmid in the host E. coli (Accessory Plasmid, AP) as part of a selection system that activates pIII production (the “gIII selection system”) in response to the activity of the protein of interest. SP can only propagate by expressing the protein from phage DNA, followed by expression of gIII that is mediated by the protein’s activity (FigureFigure22B). Thus, successful SP propagation is linked to the activity of the protein of interest .SP carrying a mutant protein with enhanced activity will have a fitness advantage over other SP particles, because the enhanced protein activity allows for increased pIII production, thereby increasing offspring production. Over time, SP harboring the coding sequences expressing improved proteins will outcompete others in the population. If phage-dependent activity produces sufficient pIII product, then there will not be a fitness advantage gained from producing additional pIII, which makes fine-tuning the stringency of the selection circuit a key step in developing PACE.”
I never said they can act alone because we don’t know this. I am saying and accept that both processes were at play. But, you are going a step further and saying…
Again, I found nothing in their paper that argued this and all you did was provide the same quotes from before that I told you is talking about something else. Therefore, I will continue to make the case that HGT mimicks the same patterns as common descent regardless of whether there must be common descent in order to create the HGT process first or not. Someone will have to give me another study confirming your claim in the future.
Although @Meerkat_SK5 replied to this post, he chose to only respond to the content after this point.
Maybe he thought no-one would remember what he’d done.
Unfortunately for @Meerkat_SK5, how some-one responds to errors is one of the best criteria for judging whether they are discussing in good faith, and hence worth spending time on.
What features would a fossil need in order to be inconsistent with separate creation? Specifically, what features would a fossil need in order to evidence common ancestry between humans and other apes? Mammals and reptiles? Whales and terrestrial mammals? Dinosaurs and birds?
Could you give us an example?
Also, why would your model produce evidence identical to what we would expect from universal common descent?
There is no vertical inheritance for separate creations, so that can’t be a process involved.
I specifically asked you to highlight parts of the paper which showed that morphological data from fossils and living organisms don’t produce phylogenies consistent with the common descent of all fossilizable organisms. You haven’t. You know why? its because the paper isn’t saying the same thing as you. The paper is about the causes of conflicts between gene and species trees (both of which show common descent). It has nothing to do with whether the fossil record shows shared ancestry or not. You are misrepresenting it.
In addition, when the authors call for “better integration”, they are not speculating anything. The “better” in that phrase should tell you that fossil and phylogenomic data have been used together, but they are recommending that it be done more frequently than the extent at present because fossils tend to improve tree congruence. The papers below are examples of fossil data being used together with other datasets to build phylogenetic trees and notice how adding fossils solidifies the phylogenetic trees built from the molecular and morphological data of extant organisms:
You have no clue what you are talking about here. That paper is about incongruence between gene trees and species/organismal trees. Gene trees and species both show common descent, but they clash at times on where a particular taxon should be placed. For example, a gene tree might place an Alsatian dog and German Shepherd as the closest relatives, but of whom would be distantly related to, say, a Labrador, while a species tree might put the Labrador and German Shepherd as closest relatives, and the Alsatian as a distant relative to both. In both cases, there is common descent between all three dog breeds, but some disagreement on which taxon is more or less closely related to the other.
You are just clueless.
You are the one who has neither been here nor there. I have been careful to point out when I speak of common descent at a universal or more restrictive level. I showed you a paper which tested universal common ancestry using protein sequences from a wide range of taxa via a technique called ancestral protein reconstruction and it passed, but not so for the orchard or separate origins hypothesis. I continued to hammer on that paper until you brought up the fossil record, which I showed still supported the common descent of all “advanced life” (dogs, humans, chimps, insects, birds, reptiles etcetera). I have been consistent, not so for you.
I am sorry to disappoint you, but the fossil records dissolves the orchard hypothesis. It shows the transitions from fish to land animals, reptiles to mammals etcetera, all of which are observations inconsistent with a separate origins model.
You are clueless I say, clueless.
Do you see why I say you are clueless? According to the orchard hypothesis, major groups of organisms descend from separately created kinds. An original fish kind gives rise to all extant fish kinds or an original dog kind gives rise to all extant dog kinds. That’s what you were arguing for all along even before I told you the official name of the model was the orchard hypothesis.
The orchard hypothesis is “technically” your model because you are arguing for separate creation events wherein all the original kinds of organisms appeared at once and diverged into their descendants today.
Dropping the orchard hypothesis means you will no longer argue for separate origins anymore, which is a consequence I don’t think you realize yet.
You just said you were dropping the orchard model and would craft another later, but now you are bringing it up again. That’s confusion on a whole new level.
Um, you are still confused. What you conflated all along was biochemistry (when you mentioned “biochemical similarities”) with biochemical sequences, which I pointed out (alongside its absurdity). You then switched to the original kinds having the highest amount of similarities at the level of DNA or protein sequences, for which I explained to be equally absurd as well. You never conflated phylogenetics with DNA similarities. Stop this fooling around and educate yourself on the basics. You can start that education (with Dr Dennis Venema) from here:
This quote did not deny what I wrote, so are you showing it to me? I did not deny that viruses have impacted the ecosystem greatly, rather I was pointing out how shaky your claim that the designer made viruses first and used them to create bacteria, when we observe the opposite in the present. Viruses are killer machines, not life-builders.
You have argued in this thread and other threads that viruses came first via the designer. Why are you lying?
Well the best available evidence rules out the virus-first hypothesis, leaving us with the virus-later hypotheses. This makes your claim that the designer created viruses before cells a baseless assertion.
The virus-first hypothesis is not supported by the data. You have no case.
Did you read the paper at all? They also reconstructed an already existing virus using its published genome sequence. Stop citing things you don’t properly understand.
I repeat, viruses do “a lot more” without an ounce of intelligence. Their actions are solely driven by the blind forces of biochemistry/genetics (mutations, recombination etcetera) and evolution (drift, selection etcetera). The versatility of viruses is one reason why we use them in research.
Not surprisingly, you misunderstand the PACE paper and this sort of misunderstanding arises because you have no foundation on the things you want to talk about. Let’s break down what happened in that paper.
PACE is a form of directed evolution using viruses that infect bacteria. Viruses which infect bacteria are called phages.
The phage described in the paper is called M13 and it uses a protein called phage protein III or simply pIII to mature within infected E. coli cells. pIII is encoded by the gene called gIII.
Now comes the part you misunderstand. The M13 phage used in PACE is a mutant whose gIII gene has been replaced by the researchers with the gene that codes for their protein of interest. Since pIII is necessary for M13 maturation, deleting it makes the virus unable to complete its maturation, effectively inhibiting its infectivity. However, the researchers need the virus to express and evolve their gene of interest (and consequently its protein product following several rounds of mutations during DNA replication and transcription) and this will only happen if M13 finishes maturation within an infected cell and escapes to infect new cells. Thus, the researchers inserted the glll gene into a plasmid and inserted that glll-containing plasmid into E.coli. Thus, when the mutant phage infects a cell, its protein for maturation would already be present in that cell, allowing it to drive the evolution of the protein of interest.
Get it, they did not give this mutant virus any “specialized” protein. They gave it back the gene it had before, which they replaced with their own gene of interest. Wild type M13 has its glll gene intact and it matures within E.coli cells without aid.
Finally, stop citing PACE to show how viruses could have originated because PACE uses already existing viruses. It can’t tell you anything mechanistic about the origin of viruses. It is for directed evolution experiments of proteins and DNA.
Do you have reading problem? I clearly laid out excerpts from the paper which say that biased HGT only mimics the patterns of common descent when common descent has actually happened. You don’t understand the paper, hence the nonsense you keep saying here. Look at the quotes from my last comment again:
Then you are continuing to misrepresent the paper because it doesn’t say what you are claiming it does.
In addition, what you wrote above is nonsense. Common descent does “not create the HGT process first”. Another result of your ignorance of basic genetics.
You want another paper? Fine. I have got another paper by the same authors and they say exactly the same thing:
See another excerpt from their correspondence with Ford Doolittle, one reviewer of their paper:
Your original kinds didn’t experience vertical inheritance so HGT cannot help the create the illusion of UCA. Your hypothesis is defeated. Suck it up.
You might have been consistent but not necessarily clear on this issue. You never said until now that the evidence still supported the common descent of all “advanced life”.
For example, you said in post 154…
I boldened that part to show you did say this statement previously when you suggested you did not say it. Apparently, someone else has amnesia instead of me. LOL
You never provided any sources supporting this assertion. All you did was reference a portion of my source and , from there, extrapolated it to suggest it confirms your claim in it’s entirety, which it does not. My source did not suggest that ALL advanced life was universally connected.
Yes, but I never stipulated how many basic types there are nor did I suggest what major groups from the common descent model would be considered basic types. The Orchard model apparently does suggest these things and thus it can’t be considered a separate creation model that I would have advocated for.
This is why I said that all of the hypothesizes were probably true because we would expect this to happen from the regressive hypothesis on viruses.
Besides, there are many more studies that I can show you that reveal how viruses play a beneficial role rather than not.
I would agree with the scientists who have made that determination because they are probably assuming (materialistic) methodological naturalism
But, they are not using my model that incorporates idealism as a framework for causation.
Not quite, they created another virus and used it’s parts, such as specialized proteins (enzymes), to construct a RNA virus in order to solve the problem of an unstable RNA. This is how human designers operate all the time. They use preexisting mechanisms, material parts and digital information to assemble designs in order to solve a problem.
This is no different from what we see within origin of life experiments as well. For instance,
whenever unguided chemical processes under atmospheric conditions were left to themselves without any interference, they did not produce the desired results. Rather, the living state would always subside and turn into “useless networks of RNA sequences” as demonstrated by Szostak and Bartel (1993) where more than half of the pool of RNA molecules precipitated when incubated for 90 minutes at 37º C in high concentrations of Mg2+ and monovalent ions and even more rapid at higher temperatures.
They were able to solve this problem by tying the molecules onto a substrate to make sure the pool of RNA molecules do not diffuse and form intermolecular reactions, and, thus, safely incubated. [just ask for reference]
This is consistent or similar with what we see from observations. For example, the mineral surfaces of the earth would have contributed centrally to the linked pre-biotic problems of containment and organization by promoting the transition from RNA virus particles that lack important proteins to highly ordered local domains of key bio-molecules of a DNA virus or molecule.
So saying that God designed RNA viruses within hypothermal vents to create unicelluar organisms is supported by evidence. Besides, the paper suggested that the DNA virus they used was created as well. But, I am not sure it was from scratch though.
Well, as I just argued before, these are not blind forces at play here but let’s assume it was initially this way for the sake of argument.
Just because they did not design and use specialized proteins beforehand does not mean it did not require an intelligence to produce the effect. As you suggested, it was the protein of their choice or interests. Without the guided help of the researcher, it would have been unsuccessful. Otherwise, it would not have been labeled a directed evolution experiment.
Well, the point of referencing this experiment was NOT to support the origin of life but aspects of directed evolution experiments that are consistent with observations, such as the…
Major viral impact on the functioning of benthic deep-sea ecosystems
Viruses ability to manipulate the life histories and evolution of their hosts in remarkable ways.
No, what all your quotes have suggested is that common descent must be at play DURING the process of HGT NOT before it.
Whoa, remember what I said before, the preexisting ancestors in my model would naturally be unicellular organisms rather than other advanced life. So even if you found a quote from their paper that supported your contentions, I don’t see where there would be a conflict in my model. Even if you are applying this objection to unicellular organisms instead, I still don’t see where the conflict would be if common descent does not include the first life.
In that case, Viruses would be the preexisting ancestors of unicellular organisms as I explained in my model. Again, I still see no conflict here because I never said that vertical inheritance did not play a part during the inception and evolution of viruses that evolved into unicellular organisms.
Meerkat is like a wanderer when he argues. He says this and when you point out why its wrong, he tells you he didn’t mean it. In some cases, you find him repeating what he didn’t mean some comments later. Just look at his last response, littered with the usual errors and outright ridiculous statements.
I see @Meerkat_SK5 has gone back and changed his original post to say “These basic types of animals would NOT be static but dynamic” without marking the edit in any way, and without admitting to having blundered.
It also raises the question of whether ‘dynamic basic types’ is any much coherent than a ‘dynamic static types’?
If the basic types are dynamic, then they were changing, and if they were changing, then there was surely more basic types that precedes these changes. Either those changes started at earlier some point, at which stage we get static true basic types, or the changes go ‘all the way down’, and it becomes unclear how this model differs from the evolutionary one.
Well of course nobody quite knows what he means by it, but he’s just (I think) using “basic type” to refer to what other creationists call “kinds” or “holobaramins”. Since these are frequently considered to be represented by families or even suborders, most creationists allow for some evolution and diversification after creation. What’s unusual here is the degree of confusion and obfuscation, which far exceeds the usual.
