Created kind
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In creation biology, created kinds are believed to be the original forms of life as they were created by God. They are also referred to as "kinds," "original kinds," "Genesis kinds," and "baramin" (from the Hebrew words "bara" [created] and "min" [kind]; the combination does not work syntactically in actual Hebrew). The idea is promulgated by Young Earth Creationists to support their view of Creation according to Genesis and also that the descendants of all land-based life on Earth were housed on Noah's ark before the great flood.
In contrast to the scientific theory of common descent, these creationists argue that all life on Earth is not related, but that life was created by God in a finite number of discrete forms. Those making more sophisticated arguments often acknowledge that these discrete forms subsequently underwent speciation and microevolution of the original created kinds. However, creationists assert that the created kinds constitute definite boundaries beyond which evolutionary processes cannot occur.
Mainstream scientists, however, reject the idealization of "created kinds" and creation science in general as a pseudoscience. This is mainly because the scientific evidence for common ancestry and the relationships of lifeforms in the biosphere is believed to correspond more closely to evolutionary biology and the modern synthesis.
The study of created kinds is known as Baraminology.
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[edit] Definitions
The concept of the "kind" originates from a literal reading of Genesis 1:12-24:
- And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind … And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind … And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so.
In 1941, creationist writer Frank Lewis Marsh proposed that the Biblical created kind could be defined in terms of reproduction. He argued that as long as two modern creatures can hybridize with true fertilization, the two creatures are descended from the same kind. This idea has been adopted to support the practice of baraminology, the attempt to classify created kinds. Creation scientists posit that kinds are a form of clade, in that a posited kind displays evidence for common lines of ancestry among its member organisms.
Microbiologist and creationist Siegfried Scherer refined the criterion to state that if two creatures can hybridize with the same third creature, they are all members of the same "basic type". Thus all members of a ring species would be members of the same basic type. Scherer also updated Marsh's explanation of true fertilization:
- Two individuals belong to the same basic type if embryogenesis of a hybrid continues beyond the maternal phase, including subsequent co-ordinated expression of both maternal and paternal morphogenetic genes.
There is some uncertainty about what exactly the Bible means when it talks of "kinds". The original Hebrew word used is min, which is used to describe a variety of organisms. Russell Mixter, another creationist writer, comments that
- One should not insist that "kind" means species. The word "kind" as used in the Bible may apply to any animal which may be distinguished in any way from another, or it may be applied to a large group of species distinguishable from another group ... there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on what are the kinds of Genesis. [1]
"Creation science" proponents posit that the defining element of kinds is creationist-approved evidence for common lines of ancestry among the organisms in the posited kind. The few creationists who work to make the classifications have not so far come up with a consistent set of rules for establishing when this criterion is met. As such, kinds do not coincide with any particular level of taxon. In some cases, such as humanity, kinds coincide with species or genus. In other cases, such as Felidae, they may be equivalent to the family level of taxonic classification.
[edit] Kinds in the Tree of Life
The creationist "kind" is assumed to be based upon an idea that life in the past exhibited greater genetic diversity and heterozygosity than life today, in the form of "kinds" analogous to the liger. Thus, the kinds were created with the innate ability to vary a great deal, and subsequent evolutionary processes are merely the means by which that innate ability to vary is expressed.
The definition of created kinds is therefore similar in form and function to the phylogenetic tree of evolutionary biology, but bears two important differences.
- First, while the phylogenetic tree traces life back to a single cell or population of single-celled organisms, creation biology traces life back to a large number of unrelated populations of life-forms which roughly resembled the forms of life today, effectively stating that there are no biological connections beyond the very tips of the phylogenetic tree.
- Second, while the pylogenetic tree credits evolutionary change to a diversification and specification of lifeforms through processes such as natural selection, creationists credit microevolutionary change to the rearrangement and expression of genetic variation that was "built in" to the original kinds.
Change in created kinds is said to take place through an unspecified process that is said to be "degradation of the genome", as natural selection and reproductive isolation, inbreeding, and genetic drift caused lifeforms to adapt to their environment by the loss of capacity to adapt to other environments. Speciation is held to be a side-effect of a degrading genome, and most is said by creationists to have occurred during and after the miraculously rapid dispersion from Mount Ararat immediately after the global flood that is reported to have occurred in Genesis. This event is said to have caused an extreme population bottleneck which caused the major speciation events taking place within the space of 1000 to 2000 years after the flood. In effect, this requires an evolutionary process that is many orders of magnitude faster than modern biology's timescales for speciation. This explanation also relies on the assumed fact of a global flood (see flood geology), an event for which neither mainstream biology nor geology has found any evidence.
Many creationists believe that the formation of the races was a result of so-called "degradation of the genome". The population onboard the ark is believed to have repopulated the earth including all races through the sons of Noah. When the population spread over the Earth after the flood, gene pools became isolated resulting in the races. This view is not supported by the genetic evidence surrounding race, which is that there is more genetic variation within the races than between the races.
The differentiation of species from original hybrids is the heart of the concept of created kinds. Hybridization as a genetic concept is technically rejected since creationists believe a hybrid is less, rather than more, degraded, with regard to its parents.[clarify][neutrality disputed]
[edit] See also
- Baraminology
- Creation science
- Flood geology
- Pre-Adamites
- Pseudoscience
- Walter ReMine
- Ex nihilo
- Antediluvian
- Garden of Eden
[edit] External links
- Definition of kinds as it relates to this topic
- "Ligers and wholphins? What next?" by Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization.
- "Variation and natural selection versus evolution" excerpt from Refuting Evolution by Jonathan Sarfati
- "'Species' and 'kind'" excerpt from Creation: Facts of Life by Dr. Gary Parker
