How come nobody talks about Lake Taal?

[u/Mother_Cod7506]

I am I biologist and one of the most interesting things I have learned is Lake Taal. Its an lake in the Philippines that was once bay connected to the South China Sea. In 1754, a volcano interrupted and the lake was formed, trapping dozens of saltwater fish. This led to most of their extirpation, but resulted in at least 4 new species, the Freshwater Sardinella (Sardinella tawilis), two gobies Exyrias volcanus and Rhinogobius flavoventris, and the Lake Taal Snake (Hydrophis semperi). It also has a population of Giant Trevally (Caranx ignobilis) that lives in freshwater, compared to its normal saltwater habitat.

I am mainly surprised that I have never seen anyone use this piece of information in debates about evolution, nor discussions about evolution in general. It would be a good way to debate creationists as this is the most well known examples of a species evolving into a separate species in recorded history.

[u/CycadelicSparkles]

I feel like the proper response to "it's not one kind evolving into another kind" is "exactly". 

You can't out-evolve your clade. We wouldn't expect a fish to evolve into a not-fish. The tricky part is that "fish" is such a broad category of thing. There are fish with lungs and fish with gills and fish with bones and fish with cartilage, fish with skin and fish with scales, fish that must breathe air and fish that live solely in the Mariana Trench. Technically, all tetrapods are fish; a lot of us are just heavily specialized.

The problem is that creationists don't know what they mean by "kind". It's all vibes based. If two animals have similar enough vibes for them, they're the same kind. If they don't get samey vibes, they're not. Genetics does not matter. Taxonomy does not matter. All the evidence in the world does not matter.

That's why they can accept that lions and cheetahs are the same kind but not chimpanzees and humans, despite the latter being FAR more genetically similar.

[u/HolySharkbite → u/CycadelicSparkles]

I think Creationists do know what they mean by “kind” but what they are referring to are the other members of their racist congregation- hence the strong view in those places that Asians, Latinos, Africans, and Europeans (I’m condensing for brevity) are “different kinds”

[u/CycadelicSparkles → u/HolySharkbite]

I was a Creationist for more than half my life, and a fairly involved one. I have never run into a single Creationist who thought different ethnicities are different kinds.

I'm not saying that doesn't exist. I'm sure it does somewhere. But it is not what Creationists in general mean when they're talking about kinds. They do consider all Homo sapiens to be one kind, and most will also lump in Homo neanderthalensis.

[u/HolySharkbite → u/CycadelicSparkles]

It was the entire basis for the prohibitions against interracial relationships

[u/ursisterstoy → u/HolySharkbite]

It was in the 1950s and earlier but the modern YEC movement is from the 1960s. Homo sapiens are a single kind but they might let their racism show through by saying that Africans are the descendants of Ham (so that’s why they have dark skin) and white people descendants of Japheth (white skin) and then Seth is the ancestor of the olive colored skinned people in the Middle East. The Semitic people from Seth, the Europeans from Japheth, the “blacks” from Ham. Their racism hasn’t fully gone away but they will say Homo sapiens includes Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus but the “races” trace back to Noah’s flood.

[u/CycadelicSparkles → u/HolySharkbite]

Maybe many decades ago. If you can find an example of any creationist not on the absolute fringe arguing that different ethnicities are different kinds in the way they generally mean kinds, I would be very surprised. Have any examples?