I explained in another thread a different take.
@T_aquaticus do you mind splitting out the BL related posts in a sensible way please?
Um, maybe just leave it here. Polluting another different thread with out of order posts is not a solution.
Next time @eddie and @T_aquaticus, start a new thread to deal with important off-topics.
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Yes, I understand that. But Joshua was speaking only of rough equivalences, not precise mappings, between RTB âkindsâ and traditional classifications, and thatâs all I was talking about. And itâs quite clear that someone who thinks that God didnât create any kinds more general than the âcat kindâ has a very different idea of how much natural evolutionary change is possible than someone who thinks that God might have created âthe mammal kindâ, the âreptile kindâ, the âfish kindâ, and so on. And if there are, as Joshua suggests, RTB people who believe that God only needed to directly create the prototypes of the 30-odd (or whatever the current number is held to be) phyla, and after that all the classes, orders, families, genera, and species evolved naturally from those created forms, then such RTB people are pretty much âevolutionistsâ in any normal meaning of the term, whereas if the RTB stick to the idea that God created kinds roughly corresponding to our species level, or at best our genus level, then they are clearly âanti-evolutionistsâ in the normal meaning of that term. So the question is: what is the range of beliefs among the RTB people about the possibilities of radical biological change by natural evolution?
Iâm told privately by someone who knows Ross personally that Ross himself holds to a pretty narrow range of possible natural change, perhaps extending up to the genus level for invertebrates but not getting much beyond the species level for vertebrates. If that is true (and I donât say it is, because I donât know Ross), then Ross is pretty much a creationist by the traditional definition of creationism. Whether other RTB people allow for greater amounts of naturally generated evolutionary change, I canât say. But this is exactly the problem. John Harshman is right to ask the RTB people to define the created âkindsâ clearly. It doesnât have to be a one-to-one equivalence with species, genus, etc., but there has to be some definition. Otherwise the whole notion is vague, and not amenable to scientific investigation (or for that matter even philosophical investigation).
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What I suspect it boils down to is humans. Many of us have noticed that the definition of kinds is usually broad enough to incorporate obvious common ancestry (e.g. the cat kind) but narrow enough to exclude common ancestry between humans and other apes. Of course, this runs into a few hiccups as genomes are sequenced in those putative created kinds. If memory serves, the genetic differences between human and chimp is about the same as house cat to tiger.
However, if @swamidass is correct and they are adjusting their views about human evolution then we might see something along the lines of creation âweekâ occurring during the Cambrian. Who knows, time will tell. What wouldnât surprise me is if we find articles at the RTB website that propose a very narrow window for created kinds, but I am willing to see if there is change afoot.
I think they are running into the problem of finding a post hoc scientific justification for a religious apologetic argument. I donât envy them.
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I figure Iâll just bump this thread once a month or so, just so it doesnât disappear entirely while we wait for some kind of reaction from RTB or other interested parties.
This is my monthly bump, while waiting for any response from those responsible.
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I look forward to your monthly bump being a running gag here for the foreseeable future. Kind of like the joke on the original Saturday Night Live about Gen. Francisco Franco still being dead .
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I think of it as Paul Nelson Day on a shorter timescale.
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What?!!? Creationism is still going to be brain-dead nonsense for the foreseeable future? And here I was thinking that after a hundred and fifty years of mind-numbing imbecility, creationism was on the verge of ingenious insights.
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Not all creationists are Young Earth Creationists (YECs) - there are many creationists who accept that life has evolved since the Cambrian.
The biblical âkindsâ simply refers to the creatures the author of Genesis observed about him. Its literary use doesnât imply those âkindsâ were present in the beginning of lifeâs history, as the process of divine creation evidently involved some form of evolution (change over time).
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No all creationists/progressive creationists refer to the biblical âkindsâ. For example, the folks at evolutionnews.org (Discovery Institute) never ever speak of âkindsâ in their publications. Itâs seen as totally irrelevant as a scientific term because the Genesis account of creation is not meant to be a scientific description of history.
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Sorry to disappoint you, but belief in creation will exist for as long as the evidence that supports it - ie, for ever.
As Romans 1 says, the existence of God has always been plain to see in his creation, so unbelievers are without excuse.
Thatâs because the DI is not necessarily creationist or progressive creationist. Theyâre a big tent organization, and the various sorts of creationists there tend to downplay or even hide their actual beliefs. Most of them wonât say. But how about you? If youâre a creationist of any sort, you must believe in separately created âkindsâ, whether biblical or otherwise and regardless of what term you use to refer to them. And, letâs face it, the impetus for all those beliefs is biblical.
RTB, on the other hand, takes Genesis as history, though they fudge it here and there in order to fit it to some bits of reality.
Of course they donât. Thatâd ruin their pretence that ID isnât creationism.
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And here we are at the first of another month. As is my custom, I commemorate the day by wondering where RTBâs response is.
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Another month goes by like nothing. Still no response from RTB or anyone associated with it. See you in December.
Maybe theyâre saving it for a Christmas gift?
For Christmas 2030? 
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