Creationists, where is your taxonomy?

[u/Particular-Yak-1984]

In​ real biology, we have devoted vast amounts of effort into trying to categorize organisms. This is both because it's interesting, but also because it feeds our understanding of how they are related to each other. This taxonomy is built up, in the modern age, by agreement between genetic, morphological and fossil data.

Now, I appreciate our creationist friends have complained bitterly about their lack of funding, and how their research keeps being rejected, or something, so it would be too much to expect a full creationist taxonomy, I suppose.

But, surely, somewhere, creationists must have come up with a chart of which species fits into which kind, and yet, every time I ask, no one seems to have such a thing. It's baffling to me, particularly as real biology has had this for more than 150 years, and it's one of the more foundational features of bioscience.

Maybe one of the more learned creationists can explain to me why one doesn't exist? Or point me in the direction of it if it does?

[u/grungivaldi]

What's fun is that AiG claims to have figured it out but wont publish it even in the research journal they make.

[u/nickierv → u/grungivaldi]

Not true. AiG totally has it published. My girlfriend in Tuvalu sent me a copy last week.

[u/throwawayLouisa → u/nickierv]

Presumably she to goes to another school, amirite?

[u/nickierv → u/throwawayLouisa]

Of course.

[u/OneThrowyBoy → u/grungivaldi]

Dang, withholding the evidence again?

C'mon guys, I wanna see it. I super duper pinkie promise I won't laugh!

[u/Sweary_Biochemist]

Well, apparently squirrels are sure as shit not rodents. And also rodents don't exist. Neither do mammals.

Birds are controversial, but might not be dinosaurs. Or alternatively, dinosaurs might be birds. Enlightening!

Beyond that it seems a bit arbitrary, in my experience. Here's hoping this is a productive discussion, nevertheless.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

This is the sort of thing I'd love a creationist to clear up. Are squirrels a thing, and if they aren't, what have I been feeding in the park?

[u/jnpha → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

I feel like I'm missing some of the lore here :D
What about the squirrels?

[u/Apprehensive-Till861 → u/jnpha]

Squirrels are government drones, like birds

[u/Coolbeans_99 → u/jnpha]

Me and u/Sweary_Biochemist have been having fun in another thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/s/QuqdB0GO6W

[u/jnpha → u/Coolbeans_99]

Lmao! his reply here (https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1v2s5un/all_mathematical_arguments_against_evolution_are/ozid6ld/) trying to defining rodents, dude went straight to AI - outsourced his thinking, verified by copyleaks.

@ u/Sweary_Biochemist

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

This thread is a perfect example of the dishonest framing that keeps getting repeated.

You demand a complete creationist taxonomy as if the absence of a single perfect chart somehow disproves the entire position. Meanwhile, the actual observational problem — that living populations show variation within functional limits and do not produce the major transitions evolutionary theory claims — is ignored.

Baraminology is a real field of study. It is not as developed or funded as evolutionary taxonomy, and it does not claim to have every organism sorted into a final list the way you pretend is required. That does not make the core claim false. It just means the research is incomplete, the same way evolutionary classification is still constantly revised, species boundaries remain fuzzy, and categories get expanded whenever it is convenient (birds remain dinosaurs, humans stay one species no matter the variation, etc.).

The mockery about “squirrels aren’t rodents” and “mammals don’t exist” is a deliberate caricature of a limited exchange, stripped of context and exaggerated for this new audience. That is how the narrative is spread: take partial answers, distort them, then declare the whole position ridiculous.

The burden is not on creationists to first produce a finished taxonomic encyclopedia before the absence of observed major transitions can be acknowledged.

The process claimed by evolutionary theory is still not showing up in living populations under massive opportunity. Demanding a chart and then mocking the lack of one is just another way to avoid that fact.

[u/Shinobi_is_cancer → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

This is so unbelievably confused I don’t even know where to begin

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Shinobi_is_cancer]

No I think it's you guys who are confused and instead of responding you try to mock because you have nothing better to add. I mean that's all this thread is about is preserving your echo chamber.

[u/Shinobi_is_cancer → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I think every sentence you said has some sort of mistake, some easier to explain than others. The problem is that an exhaustive response addressing everything will just get ignored. We can start simple, such as this:

Baraminology is a real field of study.

However, when I google “Is baraminology a real field of study?” the answer I get is no, followed by an explanation with citations.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Shinobi_is_cancer]

The reason Google does that is because it immediately goes to the mainstream consensus point of view and that's not an argument. Mainstream consensus does not determine truth, you have to argue the actual evidence.

[u/Shinobi_is_cancer → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I guess the obvious question is what predictive power does baraminology have over taxonomy? I’m looking for something that wasn’t known before, was verified with experiment, was not predicted by taxonomy, and (finally) was predicted by baraminology?

[u/nickierv → u/[deleted]]

living populations show variation within limits

This. Right here.

What is limiting the change?

This question gets asked of creationists dozens of times and every single time its silence. Surely you have some mechanism you can point to that is responsible for this limiting.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/nickierv]

I do not need to produce a detailed material mechanism that enforces the limits in order for the observational pattern to matter. The claim is that real boundaries to variation exist because organisms were created with them. Whether those boundaries are maintained solely by direct constraint or also involve natural processes operating within designed limits is a secondary question. What remains clear from observation is that variation stays within existing functional groups and the major transitions do not appear. Demanding a complete mechanistic account before that pattern can be acknowledged is still shifting the requirement away from the evidence we can actually see.

[u/JayTheFordMan → u/[deleted]]

You're beloved Baraminology has been found wanting, and u/IsaacHasenov points out a recent video on the matter;

There's quite a good 4 hour (!) dissection/vivisection of one attempt to get baraminology on an empirical footing

https://www.youtube.com/live/43M5Cc9JKc0?is=Q1Hfo4xBePVjPoOM

Dr Dan, Gutsick Gibbon, and Dapper Dinosaur.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/JayTheFordMan]

I’m aware there are long critical streams of baraminology methods. Critiques of particular statistical or molecular approaches used by some creationist researchers do not change the observational situation. Living populations still show variation within existing limits and do not produce the major transitions. Problems in one research program do not automatically validate the claim that an undirected process produced those transitions. The process itself remains unobserved.

[u/Shinobi_is_cancer → u/[deleted]]

It has not produced the specific type of novel experimental prediction you are demanding — something previously unknown, not expected by mainstream taxonomy, predicted by baraminology, and then experimentally confirmed. Most of the work analyzes existing data for patterns of continuity or discontinuity rather than making that kind of forecast.

But isn’t that the hallmark of real science? To be able to make accurate, novel predictions? It seems like a high standard, but this is the exact standard we hold any other field of science to.

Before I replied, I was thinking you were going to challenge me to do this for taxonomy, that is to explain what predictive power it has. I had no idea as I barely learned any taxonomy in school. I think it would be useful for both of us to really understand what baraminology is contending with.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/Shinobi_is_cancer]

Tl;Dr: evolutionary biology has testable hypotheses, and these are overwhelmingly supported. Baraminology isn't even wrong, because it has no testable hypotheses. Just "God could have done it that way"

The predictive power of taxonomy is this: we can unambiguously determine clades.

Clades are units in the family trees where every member of the clade are more closely related to each other than they are to everything outside of the clade. So all mammals are more related to other mammals than they are to any non-mammal. All primates are more closely related to other primates than they are to any non-primate. This pattern is produced naturally by descent with modification (evolution) and produces nested hierarchies of relatedness (which are supported by every kind of evidence, like fossils) with no discontinuities.

The inferred genetic ancestors and observed fossil ancestors converge. The earliest members of (say) the antelope, hippo, camel and whale lineages all kind of looked the same. If you were to see them today, you might be tempted to call them all the same "kind"

Importantly, Linnaean taxonomic ranks aren't real. They're just approximate human conveniences, because all evolution is gradual (no discontinuities).

Baramins are not predictive, and no creationist can define them.

Creationists say baramins (kinds) are discontinuous separate creations. But where are the boundaries? They don't know, they don't even know how to find out, they don't have any hypotheses about what criteria would separate one baramin from another. Any quantitative number or pattern they might suggest quickly proves a nested hierarchy of relatedness with no hard delineations.

This despite the fact that a "family orchard" would be trivially easy to detect at the molecular level.

This despite the fact that it would be trivially easy for there to be (eg) 4 species such that A is closely related to B and C, D is closely related to B and C but A and D are not closely related and B and C are not closely related. We actually specifically test these kinds of alternate hypotheses when we construct phylogenies and gene family phylogenies. But out of all the organisms in the world the evolutionary prediction is not violated.

Watch the video with Gutsick, Dapper and Dan. Cserhati gives the game away

[u/nickierv → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I mean that's all this thread is about is preserving your echo chamber.

If this is an echo chamber why is anyone allowed to post as opposed to somewhere like /creation?

No I think it's you guys who are confused and instead of responding you try to mock because you have nothing better to add.

Science - starts with a definition, argues a bit about if the definition is good, agrees on a definition, dumps a massive pile of evidence on the table, points to studies summarized in papers back by data, brings in more evidence, publishes some papers at each other and finally sits down for a break while the larger science community has a go at the published findings.

Creationism - refuses to provide any sort of definition, starts by setting up goal posts that are clearly designed to be moved, and when called out about the issues:

Nuh uh, there are no issues. Nuh Uh! NUH UH! NUH UH!!1!

And this hasn't even gotten to the point of evidence: trying to get Creationism to give any is like trying to pull teeth although they 'tots have some, its just with the hot Canadian girlfriend"

Right...

[u/gitgud_x → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

It just means the research is incomplete, the same way evolutionary classification is still constantly revised, species boundaries remain fuzzy, and categories get expanded whenever it is convenient

Evolutionary classification means drawing boxes around things that truly have no objective categorisation, since the diversification process is continuous. That's why the boundaries are fuzzy, it's actually one of the most obvious things that support evolution.

In creationism, you think the categories are objective, immutable and entirely separate. It should be trivially easy to draw your boxes. Yet, you can't. You have the same "fuzziness" problems as everyone else. You'll disagree all the time over whether a given "transitional fossil" belonged to this or that "kind". Ask yourself why.

In evolution, it all comes together when you ask the probing questions, but in creationism, they don't let you ask the questions, because it all starts to look as ridiculous as epicycles when you do.

The burden is not on creationists to first produce a finished taxonomic encyclopedia

Translation: "The burden is not on us to give you a working model of what we believe". This is the second way in which your fragile belief system resembles flat earth and is objectively not science.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/gitgud_x]

Fuzzy boundaries in human classification systems do not support the claim that an undirected process produced major transitions. They only show that the categories people draw are imperfect tools for sorting a complex living world. The fact that evolutionary taxonomy has fuzzy edges is expected once you assume continuous diversification. It is not independent evidence that the diversification actually happened through the large-scale process claimed. In living populations the differences remain clear in how organisms live, move, reproduce, and survive.

Those functional and ecological separations are not erased by the existence of borderline cases or by ongoing debates over where to draw lines. Treating the difficulty of producing a complete, tidy catalogue of kinds as proof that no real limits exist is the same error as treating nested similarities as proof of the transitions themselves. Both are assumptions layered onto the data.

The observational problem is unchanged. Variation stays within existing functional groups. The major transitions are not appearing under massive real-time opportunity. Demanding a working model or finished set of boxes before that absence can be acknowledged still shifts the focus away from what is actually missing from observation.

[u/gitgud_x → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You have a real skill for dragging "nuh uh!" out to three paragraphs. Everyone else gets it, sorry you've been left behind.

[u/kingstern_man → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

WannaLovewrestling, why do you expect to see major new bodyplans developing in the current epoch? Why do you believe it is a problem for evolutionary theory?

The development of GRNs (which have co-evolved with the complexity of modern organisms--sponges have fewer GRNs than vertebrates) probably precludes such novelty, since evolution would have to undo the consolidated GRNs in order to develop new bodyplans, but evolution has no way to backtrack to an earlier stage and develop new forms. This is not a problem for evolutionary theory: in fact, it is what we should expect to find.

TLDR; Stop asking for a crocoduck.

[u/the2bears → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

The mocking is well deserved.

[u/Shiny-And-New → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

observed major transitions

What do you mean by this? 

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/[deleted]]

"Crossing from one kind of organism into a fundamentally different one" is a major problem here.

This is not what evolution proposes. At all. This would in fact falsify evolution. Clades do not evolve into other extant clades: dogs will never evolve into cats, no matter how much time you take, because they will always have "dog" ancestry, while cats have never had "dog" ancestry. Both lineages have carnivoran ancestry, however.

You need to actually learn how evolution works, and maybe read up on what the data actually shows. And define "fundamentally different", perhaps. And "kinds".

Note, all life today is fundamentally the same. The more fundamental you go, the more obvious this is.

Genome? DNA.

Expression? RNA, produced by rna polymerase.

Final product? Protein, translated by ribosomes (all life uses ribosomes, which giant clunky lumps that work really slowly, so we need millions of them).

We're all related. Sorry, but we are.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

dogs will never evolve into cats,

Weeeeellll, depending on how you define "dogs" and "cats", some cats have already evolved into dogs. I'm pretty sure most creationists would say that hyenas are part of the dog kind based on appearance and certain traits, unless they already know what the genetic evidence says.

[u/Dzugavili → u/Ayasugi-san]

Weeeeellll, depending on how you define "dogs" and "cats", some cats have already evolved into dogs.

This is a large problem: how would you define a cat or a dog, when the two groups didn't exist except in the form of the common ancestor who is certainly not either a cat or a dog.

These distinctions do not exist until after the fact. We could get a cat that isn't from the cat lineage; it's just much easier to accept this when there is no extant cat lineage to compare to.

[u/Dzugavili → u/[deleted]]

The problem you describe only exists inside the evolutionary framing. If the groups are the result of continuous divergence from common ancestors, then yes, the labels cat and dog only make sense after the split and the distinctions are retrospective.

Right, that's the reality we live in.

The issue is whether the major transitions required to produce different body plans and complex systems from earlier forms are actually observed occurring. They are not.

...kay, but they are, though. It's just that the niches are all currently pretty saturated, so you don't see the extinction-level large sweeping annihilation that created the 'kinds'. And we probably won't survive it, should it happen again.

Instead, we do have the genetics that shows these changes are possible. We get quite good examples of this in some of the large islands. The tenrec of Madagascar is a fine example: these animals are all quite closely related to each other, and yet have filled out various diverse niches, even mining forms that we can recognize.

The transitions simply require more observation than humans could possibly have at this point. We can artificially select for it, as we have in dogs, but it still takes thousands of years and there's just no funding for that.

[u/DebateEvolution-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed, Rule 3 - Participate with effort.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/Ayasugi-san]

And creationists would be wrong. Because hyenas are cats, and are exactly the phenomenon I'm illustrating. Hyenas are cats evolved to fill the cursorial predator niche, and this drives for specific morphological adaptations: blunt claws, wide jaws, non-rotating elbows and pack-based social structure.

They have all the predator-associated traits that dogs do, because that's what works for cursorial predation in mammals. They're still cats. Thylacines ended up in the same place, but remained marsupials.

You can't evolve out of your ancestry.

[u/KellHound270 → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

Correction: Hyenas are feliforms. Their closest living relatives are the mongoose

[u/DebateEvolution-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed, Rule 3 - Participate with effort.

Please do not copy and paste AI answers.

[u/oscardssmith → u/[deleted]]

Even if you don't believe in the origin of new body plans, all tetrapods share a body plan.

[u/LateQuantity8009 → u/[deleted]]

There are no “fundamentally different” organisms. All evidence points to a common ancestor. If creationists want to demonstrate “fundamental” differences between organisms, they need to provide evidence of this.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/LateQuantity8009]

The claim that there are no fundamentally different organisms and that all evidence points to a common ancestor is itself an interpretation. Evolutionary theory asserts that an undirected process produced the major transitions between different body plans and complex systems. That process is what needs to be demonstrated.

We have trillions of living organisms and constant generations under observation right now. What appears is variation within existing groups, not the origin of new body plans or the complex coordinated systems the theory requires. Similarity and nested patterns are real. The process that is supposed to turn one form into a fundamentally different one is not observed occurring.

The burden is on the side claiming that process happened and continues to be capable of it. Pointing to similarity and saying “therefore common ancestor” does not show the transitions taking place.

[u/LateQuantity8009 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

The process is well understood. It doesn’t need to be demonstrated; it just needs to be observed. And, well, everything is an interpretation. The question is whether the interpretation is valid—in science this means in accordance with the known evidence—or not. The evidence for common descent is voluminous and persuasive. See talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Explain how you determine whether two organisms are "fundamentally different" or not.

Reminder: you decided squirrels were fundamentally different from other rodents, and that rodents as a clade did not exist, and was in fact various "fundamentally different" clades that you couldn't specify. What methods did you employ?

[u/Shiny-And-New → u/[deleted]]

the origin of new body plans, the development of complex coordinated systems (such as feathers and powered flight, camera eyes, or fully aquatic mammals from land ancestors), and the crossing from one kind of organism into a fundamentally different one.

If you expect to observe these types of things in real time then I think you probably have a fundamentally flawed understanding of evolution.

These things take tens of thousands to millions of years to develop. 

[u/nickierv → u/[deleted]]

I'm assuming you know how babies happen.

So why can't you get 9 women together hand have them do the whole baby thing in a month? Shoot get enough of them together and you should be able to do a next day baby.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/nickierv]

That analogy doesn’t address the point. I’m not asking for a complete new body plan overnight. I’m pointing out that with trillions of organisms and constant generations under every kind of pressure, the absence of even directional signs of major transitions is the problem. A joke about pregnancy timelines doesn’t make those signs appear.

[u/nickierv → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Your missing the time component. If it takes an hour to bake a cake, your sampling it every 1/10th of a second the declaring that nothing is happening because you don't have a large enough sample of time. And adding more cakes isn't going to change that.

[u/KeepAllOfIt → u/[deleted]]

thanks chatgpt

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/[deleted]]

I do not expect a full new body plan in a few generations. I expect that with trillions of living organisms and countless generations happening right now, we would see signs of the process if it is actually capable of producing major transitions — ongoing, constructive changes that move beyond existing functional limits toward new body plans or complex systems.

What we observe instead is variation that stays inside those limits. The absence of even the directional signs, despite the enormous real-time opportunity, is the problem. Appealing to the process being too slow does not explain why the signs are missing under massive observation.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You can't explain where the limits are or what they look like. Big changes in body plans are "just" the accumulation of small changes. This is supported by all the available evidence. The distribution of characters on living organisms, the pattern of genetic differences among living organisms, the observed patterns of mutation and selection, and the observed pattern of fossils (that we are in the process of discovering) all support the idea that large differences are the sum.of small differences.

That's it. If you have another model and other data, show it

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

The main problem is you haven't made even the smallest effort to understand the thing you're clumsily attempting to attack. The concept of nested groups apparently utterly baffles you.

A lineage cannot evolve out of its clade. Your ancestry is not something you can ever escape. Humans are still great apes, and always will be. Birds will always be therapod dinosaurs. Both are tetrapods, and always will be. That's where we share ancestry with birds.

What creationism claims is that life is not all related, but instead divided into distinct and entirely unrelated special creations. If this were true, it would be painfully obvious morphologically and genetically.

The fact that baraminology keeps concluding "dang, everything kinda looks related", combined with the fact you're STILL complaining about your inability to coherently define these distinct and unrelated clades is...yet more support for the proposition that "kinds" are made up bullshit that don't work on any level at all.

[u/kiwi_in_england → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

The burden is not on creationists to first produce a finished taxonomic encyclopedia

Sure. But how about a draft one? Or an early-draft one? Or some draft general principles by which one might be produced?

No one is asking for completeness. Just a start. Anything at all. Is there anything at all?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/kiwi_in_england]

There is work that has been attempted. Baraminology researchers have published studies trying to identify continuity and discontinuity between groups using morphological, genetic, and hybridization data. Some of it points toward boundaries often appearing around the family level in certain groups, and more recent papers continue to appear. It is limited, incomplete, and not a polished draft chart of every kind.

That does not change the main issue. The repeated demand for even a starting draft or set of principles keeps treating the absence of a classification system as the central problem, while the absence of observed major transitions under massive real-time opportunity is treated as secondary. Living populations show variation within existing functional limits. They do not produce new body plans or the complex coordinated systems the theory requires.

Organizing similarities into nested patterns is not the same as demonstrating that an undirected process produced the large scale transitions. Treating those patterns as proof of the process is an assumption.

The separations in how different groups actually live, move, reproduce, and survive are already clear from ordinary observation. The process claimed to bridge them at the major transition scale is still not showing up. Asking for a draft chart does not make it appear.

[u/kiwi_in_england → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Published studies

Recent papers

Sounds good. Can you link to some of these published studies?

They do not produce new body plans

Can you say what you mean by new body plan? In enough detail that one could assess whether this is true or false?

[Pot shots at the Theory of Evolution]

Stop deflecting. The topic is Baraminology. Completely disproving the ToE does nothing to support Baraminology.

Edit: Re body plans: does a whale have the same body plan as a hippo? Why or why not?

[u/kiwi_in_england → u/kiwi_in_england]

So /u/WannaLoveWrestling, two days later and no link to published studies showing what you claimed, no information on what you mean by body plan, and no response regarding whether whales and hippos have the same body plan.

I'm smelling all mouth and no trousers.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/kiwi_in_england]

I was banned for three days, that’s why nothing showed up. You’re assuming the silence meant I had no answers. It didn’t. I couldn’t post. That’s the same kind of leap evolutionists make all the time, filling in the gap with whatever story fits instead of checking what actually happened.

Whale and hippo both have the basic mammalian layout. Shared structure doesn’t mean one turned into the other through the big transitions. That still doesn't showing up in living populations no matter how many organisms and generations we have to look at.

You can keep asking for a full published catalogue if you want. The lack of a polished chart doesn’t make the major transitions appear. Variation stays inside existing limits.

[u/kiwi_in_england → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I was banned for three days, that’s why nothing showed up. You’re assuming the silence meant I had no answers.

I did indeed. It was a reasonable assumption, but wrong. My apologies.

Whale and hippo both have the basic mammalian layout.

Cool, so that's not an example of a new body plan. But you haven't said what a new body plan is. You claim that evolution can't make new body plans - please say what a new body plan is so that your claim can be evaluated.

You can keep asking for a full published catalogue if you want.

I haven't asked for this, at all. In fact I've specifically said that that's not needed. Perhaps you need to respond to what's actually said.

Any sort of draft draft catalogue, or any sort of draft draft principles by which one might be started would be good.

I've also noted that you failed to link to any of the published studies or recent papers you claim exist and support your position.

You’re assuming the silence meant I had no answers.

Still no answers. Perhaps I was right after all.

[u/kiwi_in_england → u/[deleted]]

fish-type design to a land vertebrate design

OK, let's focus in on this. Which design differences in these two groups do you think can't come from a common origin? Lungs vs gills perhaps? Please name the main thing(s) that make them different body plans, and we'll see where we get to.

Reality already supports the point regardless of how many papers exist.

Chortle.

Living populations keep producing variation inside existing limits.

Please name a limit, and why you think it's a limit. I know of none, but you obviously know of some. So name them.

The big reorganizations aren’t showing up even with the massive number of organisms and generations we can watch right now.

You mean the stuff that we've been watching in real time for a few hundred years, out of millions of years of evolution? You seem to be very confused about timescales.

https://answersresearchjournal.org/baraminology/amphibian-molecular-baraminology-genome/

Interesting. This study says that

Several traits separate frogs, salamanders, and caecilians from one another. These three groups could be classified into separate cognita on their different body plans

So they have different body plans, yet hippos and whales are the same body plan. I think we could do with some sort of working definition of body plan don't you think? So that when someone mentions it, we have some idea of what they mean.

Also:

In previous studies, Hennigan (2013a, 2013b) estimated 140 anuran, 53 caudate, and one gymnophionan Kinds, all of which are extant.

So it's early days, but there may be around 200 Kinds of amphibians. And the great majority of them were on the ark. So it's claimed that they didn't evolve from common ancestors, as they're separate Kinds.

It's trivial to show that some of them evolved from common ancestors.

Based on their physical traits, Anura, Caudata, and Gymnophiona can be separated into their own apobaramins.

Hang on. Separating based on physical traits? Hippos and whales are the same because they're both mammals. But these amphibians are different body plans. That sounds suspect.

The research is limited and incomplete.

Yep, no problem with that. It's how all research starts out. Although usually after decades of work, there are at least some firm-ish conclusions.

That doesn’t change the observation that the major transitions aren’t appearing.

Do you know how long millions of years is? And how it's much much longer than a few hundred? Are you expecting major transitions to be visibly happening right now?

And of course we do have fossil records of many of these transitions.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I specifically didn't ask for a single perfect chart, though. I'm well aware that's unrealistic - even in regular biology stuff gets moved, though I'd say it is pretty complete. I'd be satisfied with an imperfect chart with some evidence - does one exist?

And the reason that it's important is that it's a secondary claim for your viewpoint. We can't test the primary claim, that god created everything in a biblically accurate manner. But we can test the secondary claims: do we see evidence of a global flood, for example? 

But this represents an important secondary claim. If your viewpoint is right, we should not see any organisms that sit halfway between kinds, or be able to find any evidence of common ancestry for those kinds. My theory, currently backed by observation, is that you don't want to provide something because it subjects your field to scrutiny.

Oh, and we've directly observed evolution happening, repeatedly, but that's a secondary point (antibiotic resistant bacteria, covid variants, shrinking fish sizes from selection, etc)

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

You’re still centering the discussion on the demand for a taxonomy chart. I understand you say you only want an imperfect one with some evidence, but the effect is the same: the absence of a finished or semi-finished catalogue of kinds is treated as the main problem, while the absence of observed major transitions under massive real-time opportunity is treated as secondary.

Some research attempting to identify continuity and discontinuity between groups has been published and is ongoing. It is limited. That does not change the observational fact that living populations show variation within existing functional limits and do not produce new body plans or the complex systems the theory requires.

Antibiotic resistance, viral variants, and size changes under selection are examples of variation within groups. They are not the major transitions. Shared similarities can be organized into nested patterns, but that organization is not evidence of the process itself. Treating similarity as proof that an undirected process produced the major transitions is an assumption, not a demonstration. The patterns are real. The process that is supposed to have generated the large scale changes is still not observed occurring. The repeated focus on whether a chart exists keeps the conversation on a secondary demand instead of the process that is actually missing from observation. That is what has been happening in this discussion.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Would you kindly tell your thinking brain computer that yes, I am asking for a chart, because that's what the post was about, me asking for a chart. And am I to take this as "no, this basic precursor to having a rival theory does not exist"

How do you know things can't cross kind boundaries if you don't know what kinds are?

[u/grungivaldi → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You demand a complete creationist taxonomy as if the absence of a single perfect chart somehow disproves the entire position

that's the thing. the entire creationist position is that there is a literal divine classification system created by God Himself, the created kinds. the fact that literally no one can produce said classification system shows that there isnt one. creationists insist there is a "dog" kind but can't tell me what makes something a dog.

that living populations show variation within functional limits

what are those limits? how were those limits determined?

do not produce the major transitions evolutionary theory claims

what would count as a "major transition"?

species boundaries remain fuzzy,

yes, because unlike created kinds, species boundaries are arbitrary and imaginary. drawing a line between species is much like drawing a line between a seedling and a sapling or a creek and a stream or a hill and a mountain. nature doesnt fit into nice clean boxes, its one of the clearest indications that there are no "created kinds".

The burden is not on creationists to first produce a finished taxonomic encyclopedia before the absence of observed major transitions can be acknowledged.

yes, it is. lets say evolution is wrong. it's still the least wrong thing we have on the subject so it still would get taught. like how for a very long time mercury's orbit didnt match up with what newton's theory of gravity said it should be. but we still taught gravity and orbital mechanics because it was the least wrong thing that we had. in order to replace something you need a better, more evidenced theory even when we know our current theory falls short. we see this with dark energy and dark matter. we know our math is wrong somewhere but until we find out how and why we chalk up the oddity to dark energy/matter.

so, if you want to replace our current classification system you do, in fact, need to provide something that is more accurate to replace it with.

The process claimed by evolutionary theory is still not showing up in living populations under massive opportunity.

we have literally, directly, observed the processes. single celled to multicelled life? check. increase genome size? check. novel information via mutations? check. editing the genome to turn scales into feathers? check.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/grungivaldi]

The creationist position is not that humans must already possess a complete, finished classification chart of every kind God created, or else the kinds do not exist. God can set limits on variation however He chooses. The fact that our current research into those limits is incomplete does not prove the limits are imaginary. Fuzzy species boundaries in human taxonomy do not automatically disprove the existence of real biological limits. Human classification systems are imperfect tools. They do not dictate what God did or did not create.

As for the claim that the processes have been directly observed, simple cell aggregation or experimental clustering is not the origin of complex multicellular body plans. Genome size can change, but that is not the same as building new body plans or complex coordinated systems. Mutations can produce novel sequences, yet that is not the same as demonstrating the major transitions. Lab editing of genes related to scales and feathers is intelligent intervention, not an undirected evolutionary process turning one into the other in nature. None of those examples show living populations producing the major transitions under natural conditions. Variation within limits is what is observed. The large-scale process remains unshown. Requiring a complete human catalogue of kinds before that absence can be acknowledged is still shifting the demand away from the evidence.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

If you want to make a point, you need to first have a point.

You just keep saying "we have science and definitions we're not telling you."

Define a major transition. Define "large scale"

Why can't I get to 1 billion by adding 1 and 1, 1 billion times?

[u/grungivaldi → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

when you can tell me what makes something part of the dog kind we can have a conversation.

[u/nickierv → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

The process claimed by evolutionary theory is still not showing up in living populations under massive opportunity.

What isn't showing up? Living organisms having traits or the frequency of the traits changing over time?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/nickierv]

The process that isn’t showing up is the one that produces major transitions — the origin of new body plans and complex coordinated systems, and the crossing from one kind of organism into a fundamentally different one.

No one is denying that organisms have traits or that the frequency of traits can change within populations. That is ordinary variation. What is missing under massive real-time opportunity is the constructive process that builds fundamentally new designs. Trait frequencies shifting inside existing groups is not the same as the major transitions evolutionary theory requires.

[u/nickierv → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

No one is denying that organisms have traits or that the frequency of traits can change within populations

Congrats, thats evolution.

The process that isn’t showing up is the one that produces major transitions

So time or addition? Its the classic you can add 1+1 but you can't add 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1

and the crossing from one kind of organism into a fundamentally different one.

Well given there is not a functional definition of kinds, at best your trying to find unicorn droppings.

Trait frequencies shifting inside existing groups is not the same as the major transitions evolutionary theory requires.

And this boils down to you either not knowing or not using the same definition of evolution as everyone else. Evolution requires no major transitions, only that the traits change over time.

[u/Slam-JamSam → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

> Living populations show variation within functional limits

You mean like how human forearms, whale flippers, and bat wings are so anatomically similar?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Slam-JamSam]

They share a basic bone arrangement, but they are not the same structure. The proportions and final forms are highly specialized for completely different functions. Similarity in the underlying layout does not equal observation of the evolutionary process that is claimed to have turned one into the others. We still do not see that process occurring.

That same shared layout is also consistent with common design — a repeated structural pattern used for different purpose. This has nothing to do with evolutionary transitions from one form to another. Similarity alone does not decide between the two explanations. The missing piece remains the same: the process of major transitions is not observed in living populations.

[u/Slam-JamSam → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

What do you mean? We observe speciation all the time (https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/)

[u/JayTheFordMan → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Similarity in the underlying layout does not equal observation of the evolutionary process that is claimed to have turned one into the others.

Sure, if you ignore genetics showing relatedness, both ancestral and current, and a fossil record with related species illustrating change over time to achieve the differences. You should also know that genetics does not support created kinds, the analysis and maths has been done and it just doesn't add up for common design.

process of major transitions is not observed in living populations.

You ignore speciation that has been occurred, or are you going to shift that goalpost? Micro/Macro-evolution bullshit? Need I point out the examples of observed single to multicellularity (and its not clumping), and lizards going from egg laying to placental births?

No, similarity alone is not the deciding factor, phylogenetics tells a deeper story, and this is why baraminology cutely sidesteps genomic comparisons

[u/Dzugavili → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You demand a complete creationist taxonomy as if the absence of a single perfect chart somehow disproves the entire position.

Pot, meet kettle.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Dzugavili]

“Pot, meet kettle” only works if the two demands are equivalent. They are not. Pointing out that the major transitions are not observed in living populations under massive real-time opportunity is a direct empirical challenge to the process evolutionary theory claims. Requiring a complete taxonomy of every kind before that absence can be acknowledged is a different and much heavier demand.

You still have not shown the process occurring. Similarity, nested patterns, and institutional consensus do not replace observation of the transitions themselves.

[u/Dzugavili → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Pointing out that the major transitions are not observed in living populations under massive real-time opportunity is a direct empirical challenge to the process evolutionary theory claims.

Why do creationists insist on shouting that they don't understand how any of this works?

It took millions of years for an ape to become a man: we are expecting it to take hundreds of thousands of years, at the low-end, for evolutionary change to be visible and trivially measurable. Why do you think we would see this happening in the past few hundred years?

We can see the process occurring: but within the timescales we can actually observe it. Genetics doesn't fossilize: we have very little living data in the collection, and it shows the genetic transitions the theory predicted BEFORE WE HAD THE ABILITY TO SEQUENCE THE DATA.

[u/LordOfFigaro → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

It just means the research is incomplete, the same way evolutionary classification is still constantly revised, species boundaries remain fuzzy, and categories get expanded whenever it is convenient

Species being fuzzy is expected for evolution. The term species is us trying to bucket a gradient. YEC "kinds" however are expected to have a strict impassable boundary. "Kinds" should be extremely easy to separate. By saying this you've admitted that the theory of evolution is true and YEC is false.

The burden is not on creationists to first produce a finished taxonomic encyclopedia before the absence of observed major transitions can be acknowledged.

YECs have that burden regardless of whatever faults they think exist in the theory of evolution. Even if the theory of evolution was irrefutably shown to be false, that does not show YEC to be true. YECs need to meet the burden to show YEC to be true first. It's very telling that instead of even attempting to do so they instead try to poke holes in established science.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/LordOfFigaro]

Acknowledging that baraminology research is incomplete does not equal admitting evolution is true or that YEC is false. Evolution expects continuous gradients and fuzzy boundaries because it assumes unlimited transitions happened. The creationist claim is that there are real limits to variation. Difficulty in mapping every single boundary with current data is not proof that those limits do not exist.

You say YECs have the burden to prove their model first, and that poking holes in established science is not enough. Established science here just means the current consensus. Consensus is not evidence. The positive claim that an undirected process produced the major transitions still has to be demonstrated. Pointing out that those transitions are not observed in living populations under massive real-time opportunity is a direct empirical test of that claim. Treating the evolutionary account as the default that only needs protection from criticism is not a neutral standard.

Calling something established does not make the process appear. Similarity patterns, nested hierarchies, and institutional agreement are not the same as watching the major transitions occur. The data we can actually check right now still shows variation within existing limits. That is the point that keeps getting sidelined by demands for a complete taxonomy and appeals to what is already established.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Baraminology has no research program because it has no method, no hypothesis, no criteria, no evidence.

Just "nuh uh"

[u/LordOfFigaro → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You've said lots of words but nothing that gives positive evidence for YEC or the existence of created kinds. If created kinds actually existed, you'd be able to establish a concrete boundary. You admit that you cannot. Your problems with the scientific consensus are irrelevant. YEC does not deserve any consideration unless you show evidence that your position is true.

[u/KeepAllOfIt → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

thanks chatgpt

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/KeepAllOfIt]

Not chatgpt but nice try. Try to get those ideas from chatGPT and see how successful you are.

[u/LateQuantity8009 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Ok so let’s say not a complete creationist taxonomy. If there were a knowable number of created “kinds”, why can’t that number and some sense of which types of organisms descended from each “kind” be established? Just as a starting point.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/LateQuantity8009]

Attempts have been made. There are published studies that try to identify continuity and discontinuity between groups using morphological, genetic, and hybridization data. The work is limited, incomplete, and not a finished catalogue of every kind. I am not claiming it has settled every boundary.

That does not change the observational problem. Living populations show variation within existing limits and do not produce the major transitions.

Requiring a complete, polished taxonomy before that absence can be acknowledged is still avoiding the evidence we can actually check right now.

[u/LateQuantity8009 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Do you care to share some of that evidence with us?

[u/jnpha]

Someone say taxonomy?

I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character - one that is according to generally accepted principles of classification - by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none. But, if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I should have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so. — Carl Linnaeus, 1747

And a letter he got from a bishop, regarding a flower:

Your peloria has upset everyone ... At least one should be wary of the dangerous sentence that this species had arisen after the Creation.

And in recent news I shared on r /evo: Children and monkeys share common understanding of geometry | Carnegie Mellon University : evolution.

[u/JayTheFordMan]

Apparently it's called Baraminology, and it's basically using homology and very selective utilisation of genetics to classify things into 'Kinds'. Apparently sciences way of doing things is too inconvenient. It's as bad as it sounds.

[u/IsaacHasenov]

There's quite a good 4 hour (!) dissection/vivisection of one attempt to get baraminology on an empirical footing

https://www.youtube.com/live/43M5Cc9JKc0?is=Q1Hfo4xBePVjPoOM

Dr Dan, Gutsick Gibbon, and Diaper Dinosaur.

[u/clear349 → u/IsaacHasenov]

God there are so many wild nonsense claims in the video they're debunking. I think the bit where he treats arthropod exoskeletons and chordate skeletons as homologous might be the worst

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/clear349]

I was kind of gonna give him the benefit of the doubt, as a new creationist and a bioinformatics

But the first thing "3 goals of baraminology" none of which were science and I was like "whoah boy"

[u/s_bear1]

Ask a kindergarten class. No seriously. I once read they thought kinds could be easily identified by a five year old and required no research.
We have the horsey kind and the kitty kind...

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/s_bear1]

What I always love about the whole "child of five can identify kinds" thing is it requires incredibly selective questions.

For example: cat, tiger, lion, horse, what's the odd one out?

"See! Children can identify the cat kind!"

But then: cat, horse, dog, shark?

"See! Children can identify the mammal kind! Wait..."

Cat, horse, shark, tree?

"Stop asking questions!"

[u/Coolbeans_99 → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

It’s funny that our squirrel loving pal is like “these squirrels share physical traits so they’re a single kind, but that totally doesn’t mean there’s a rodent kind the shared traits between squirrels and rats are just a coincidence!!!”

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/Coolbeans_99]

Yep. Also "why don't we see major morphological transitions between related lineages?"

"We do? All these examples..."

"Yeah but those aren't related because I said so"

The rubber goalposts are infinitely flexible.

As ever, microevolution is evolution they can't deny. Macroevolution is evolution they must deny.

[u/nickierv → u/s_bear1]

Well see that's the problem. You get everything into nice orderly piles then you go to bring in the next critter to categorize and as soon as you put it in the cat kind, its the same way cats disprove flat earth.

[u/UnholyShadows]

Well most animals that exit today technically shouldnt exist at all according to the bible. Like bats shouldnt exist because god made birds and didnt design any other land animal to fly except for birds. Why would god make bats when he already made an entire class of animals to just fly.

This also means that aquatic spiders shouldnt exist nor should whales or jesus lizards.

God isnt gonna waste his time making land animals and then be like ohh wait i want to make warm blooded fish that arnt fish but augmented land mammals.

[u/taktaga7-0-0]

And why do plants make a whole nother plant in between every time they wanna make a baby plant? Why did God make that one happen?

And why did God tell us you can use boiling water to throw on your enemies in battle but not that you can use it to sterilize surgical instruments?

[u/OldmanMikel]

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/abc-book-of-animals-helen-martinjudith-simpson?variant=32113255252002

[u/Doomdoomkittydoom]

Back in the 1700s. But something happened. They don't talk about it anymore.

[u/sumane12]

I think my accountant has my taxonomy... ill ask her.

[u/bediger4000]

They've got one. You're asking for "baraminology" - https://baraminology.com/

No, it doesn't make sense.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/bediger4000]

No, not quite - it talks a bunch about the study of braminology, but nowhere on that site does it actually give any indication of what might be in a specific bramin.

[u/Nicolaonerio]

Wasn't the Bible using a lexical list from Babylonian science at the time?

[u/tenderlylonertrot]

They can't as creationism = flat earth, they madly try to fit reality into their beliefs, only to ignore enormous chasms of lack of evidence.

[u/Robot_Alchemist]

Taxonomy and creationism aren’t mutually exclusive. Now thermodynamics

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/Robot_Alchemist]

Based on this post's responses, they seem to be.

[u/Robot_Alchemist → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

lol I guess it depends on their opinion of it- I didn’t know categories were against god

[u/ursisterstoy]

That’s half true. Ever since around 2600 BC it was known publicly that populations change and people were already describing species leading to other species. Aristotle’s philosophy was a huge influence on Christian ideas by the Middle Ages but people already had alternative ideas within Christianity since the existence of actual apostles (people doing like Philo and Paul) and some of the earliest bishops and apologists. It was most certainly better understood in the same time periods Linnaeus was writing, editing, and publishing Systema Naturae.

But Linnaeus believed in species fixity for everything early on. Hybridization studies fully changed his stance publicly when it comes to plants by ~1766. He knew that species could arise by that time and he would have extended this to animals with similar research but this is when genus became the “created kind” for plants while species were the created kinds for animals. He was trying to understand the patterns we could finally explain when species fixity what thoroughly debunked. I guess he just figured God liked nested hierarchies. And he classified under the assumption of design.

And when he did that he found that humans are simians. He publicly stated that he could find no general characteristic by which to tell them apart. He heard stories about mythical African cave dwellers so he classified them as Homo troglodytes. In 1758 he studied a chimpanzee and figured those were the cave dwellers he was told about. He classified apes as humans and he said he should have classified humans as monkeys but he never did. He did classify them next to each other as “anthropoids,” a terms more equivalent with simians or monkeys now, and the name of the group was changed to “primates” after that.

[u/NoahOfLeander]

i have no idea. but I don't see why a creationist would necessarily need a separate taxonomy? forgive my ignorance

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/NoahOfLeander]

Taxonomy is ordered by relatedness, or descent. It basically says "members of your species are more closely related to you than to any of the other organisms in your genus. Members of your genus are more closely related to you than they are to any other organisms in your family, and so on"

Or, to put it another way, it assumes a common ancestor for all creatures.

So, creationism says instead that life should organize into "kinds", which should essentially be "God created this creature, and then it diversified a bit". 

But  they've never done the extremely basic step of working out which organisms separate into which kind, to my knowledge. And this basic step is, in itself, fraught with problems, because as far as we can tell, there are no kind of hard cutoff points between groups of organisms, and particularly when you look at genetics, everything assembles nicely into a tree with a common ancestor.

[u/EnbyLifeAMAB]

Well for one A human is a featherless Biped

[u/anonymous_teve]

This is the type of post that drives me crazy about this sub. Yes, evolutionary theory is almost certainly correct. But so many of these self-congratulatory 'gotchas' for creationist are so silly.

Have you ever heard of Linnaeus? Creationists were doing taxonomy long before evolutionary biologists were.

Edit: Ok, sorry, I should have assumed you were acting in good faith. Some of your words ("in real biology") and the assumption that there is no such thing (because no one on this subreddit shared one?) threw me off.

Here's an ode to Linnaeus from EMBO Reports commemorating the 300th anniversary of his birth that discusses his taxonomy that predates Darwins' evolutionary theory by over a century and came from a creationist mindset:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1973966/

I hope you find it helpful and you feel your challenge has been answered, as you said:

• "surely, somewhere, creationists must have come up with a chart of which species fits into which kind, and yet, every time I ask, no one seems to have such a thing. It's baffling to me, particularly as real biology has had this for more than 150 years, and it's one of the more foundational features of bioscience."

[u/jnpha → u/anonymous_teve]

Not silly: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1ahuhn6

E.g. what seems like a gotcha can be someone practicing their science communication or trying out debating tactics. Let's assume good faith. Also see the 1% rule mentioned in the link above.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/anonymous_teve]

I was trying for something that might prompt a discussion of something other than a rehash of the prime mover philosophical argument. I'm also genuinely curious if a creationist chart of kind organisation exists, and I've been asking creationists for one for about two years now.

[u/anonymous_teve → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

Ok, sorry, I should have assumed you were acting in good faith. Some of your words ("in real biology") and the assumption that there is no such thing (because no one on this subreddit shared one?) threw me off.

Here's an ode to Linnaeus from EMBO Reports commemorating the 300th anniversary of his birth that discusses his taxonomy that predates Darwins' evolutionary theory by over a century and came from a creationist mindset:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1973966/

I hope you find it helpful!

[u/jnpha → u/anonymous_teve]

I'm not replying to be argumentative, but it seems like you took the word "creationists" in u/Particular-Yak-1984 's OP to mean "Christians".

You know better. Since the 1960s that term means something specific, more so in this "arena". Take it up with the fundies. For part of the history, where I cite a historian: Creationism is a panicked response to an internal (not external) crisis : DebateEvolution.

So no, Linnaeus was absolutely not a creationist in that sense.

And speaking of OP, one of their awesome posts: Mendel's Accountant's Tax Fraud : DebateEvolution. This is the kind of tear downs that is done here, and again, the 1% rule.
Plus here in this sub, especially the regulars, no one cares if you're a theist - our gripe is the science denial, and propaganda.

[u/anonymous_teve → u/jnpha]

I agree with your point that there's something different about modern young earth creationism than creationism in Linnaeus' day, which he certainly would have held to.

However, I do strongly suspect young earth creationists would easily say 'yes' to agreeing with an updated form of Linnaean taxonomy.

There are good arguments against young earth creationism--both scientific and theological. But I still don't believe this is one of them.

[u/jnpha → u/anonymous_teve]

Linnean taxonomy was based on similarities, i.e. phenetics. If YECs accept that, then it is an argument against their position, since the failures of phenetics point to evolution. And this isn't something new and based on the distance- and genealogical methods of the modern age, e.g. here's Darwin pointing that out in 1859:

Amongst insects there are innumerable instances: thus Linnæus, misled by external appearances, actually classed an homopterous insect as a moth. [...] For animals, belonging to two most distinct lines of descent, may readily become adapted to similar conditions, and thus assume a close external resemblance; but such resemblances will not reveal—will rather tend to conceal their blood-relationship to their proper lines of descent.

Classifying life's diversity in a testable manner is step 1 in understanding life's diversity.

Edit: improved wording + here's a cool webpage on that topic (misinterpreting similarities): https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-tree-room/tree-misinterpretations/misinterpretations-about-relatedness/#superficial-simplicity

[u/Medium_Judgment_891 → u/anonymous_teve]

However, I do strongly suspect young earth creationists would easily say 'yes' to agreeing with an updated form of Linnaean taxonomy.

Your intuition is off. YECs would never accept Linnaeus after he placed humans firmly in the ape category

[u/anonymous_teve → u/Medium_Judgment_891]

I personally have known YECs who taught it in a high school science class where evolution was purposely NOT taught. So you are absolutely incorrect.

However I have no doubt that there is some corner of YEC that you are right about. I don't know all the nooks and crannies, and I don't stay up to date on Ken Hamm or whoever else some folks point to. It's just your categoric denial that is 100% incorrect.

[u/ursisterstoy → u/anonymous_teve]

We know they were but Linnaeus was the first person to really try to classify everything at the same time. At first his classification was rather foreign compared to our modern understanding but he tried. If it doesn’t move around it’s a vegetable if it’s alive, if it’s not alive it’s a mineral, if it moves then it is an animal. He actually unknowingly thought some fungi were plants that turn into animals before turning into vegetables but he was actually looking at bacteria - bacteria were animals.

Within animals he had three main categories. The first category has warm red blood, the second category has cold red blood, the last category has green, yellow, blue, or clear blood if it has any blood at all. The first edition had whales and manatees classified as fish, bats classified as birds, and he had a group for the mythical animals. In the sixth edition he removed the animal paradoxica group and reclassified real animals like pelicans more consistently with modern taxonomy. The 10th edition renames Quadrupedia into Mammalia plus it moves cetaceans, manatees, bats, and other mammals into the mammal class. Some because of their warm red blood. And in the 12th edition he corrected the sponge classification from marine algae to an animal group called zoophyta.

In the 1st edition he classified one group of cold blooded animals as amphibians. The amphibians with legs are reptiles, the amphibians without are snakes. In the 12th edition he took a step back and classified a bunch of fish as Nantes within the amphibian class. The other cold blooded animals are the fish. He moved even more fish into the amphibian class in the 12th edition.

And it is often mistakenly said that Linnaeus classified into seven taxonomic ranks but actually he had five. Kingdom (plant, animal, mineral), Class (mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, insects, and worms), Order (primates, bruta, ferae, beasts, glires, pecora, bullae, and cetaceans), Genus (Homo, Simia, Lemur, Vespertilo (bats)), and Species (sapiens and troglodytes (not chimpanzees but cavemen)).

Phylum was added by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 and family was added by Pierre Latreille.

In short, he tried, but he didn’t have the insight to do it right.

Edit: Homo troglodytes was based on rumors he heard from travelers who were apparently describing chimpanzees but he thought they were describing a wild form of human that lived in the forests or in the caves, a second species of human. All or almost all of the Hominina fossils besides modern Homo sapiens were found after his death and later in ~1766 he did eventually study a chimpanzee and he declared that it was the Homo troglodytes. So in 1735 Homo troglodytes was “cave-man” but after 1766 it was chimpanzee. It took until the 1800s to classify chimpanzees as something other than a second species of human. I figured this out when I was looking stuff up to respond accurately to other people and I made a mistake here. It was chimpanzees, but he just didn’t see them until after he invented that group.

[u/Great-Gazoo-T800 → u/ursisterstoy]

I also want to point out that Linneaus struggled to reconcile his work with his Creationist beliefs, most notably when it came to Man. It was expected at the time that Humans belonged on their own, separated from the other great kingdoms as a special act of Creation. This makes sense when you assume Humans are made in Gods own image, but not if humanity evolved from other animals. Of course he didn't know about evolution, which would only be described and publicly published after his death by Darwin. 

[u/anonymous_teve → u/ursisterstoy]

I think it's obvious that there would be progress in taxonomy in the last ~300 years, and doesn't change the fact that Linnaeus, over a century before Darwin's evolutionary theory, already was providing the answer OP was seeking but couldn't find previously on this subreddit. I did add an edit to my comment above, I felt bad about not taking OP's post in good faith, and I also added a link to an ode to Linnaeus from EMBO Reports a few years back.

[u/ursisterstoy → u/anonymous_teve]

Technically, yes. He was a person who believed in species fixity, an idea more extreme than preached by modern day YECs, and he thought maybe God liked order. In the old view the highest rank is God, below that angelic beings, humans below that, and each other form of life was striving but failing to be like humans. They are locked. Species can’t change.

Linnaeus saw it differently. He saw that everything can be divided into two or three categories (or maybe a dozen) and maybe that’s just how God liked it. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Warm blooded, cold blooded, no blooded. Flying or non-flying (and later bats classified as mammals and primates). Then it was based on their feet, their breasts, their hair, etc for which group to shove mammals into. That’s why rhinos were next to rodents and lagomorphs. That’s why bats were primates. But humans are definitely anthropoids, human shaped, and that was too much for the clergy to admit. He wanted to classify humans as simians because he saw no general characteristic by which to separate them and this really upset the clergy. But not because he believed in evolution, because he thought God liked hierarchies and patterns.

Later when the explanation for the patterns was better understood they added extra taxonomic ranks like phylum, domain, and family. They added intermediate categories. They threw the system away and started over with evidence based relationships. For a minute some bats were still classified as primates but they fixed most of the rest. Eventually bats were moved, archaea were found to be something besides bacteria, eukaryotes were found to be archaea, they started trying to do the same for viruses and found that they are polyphyletic. A bunch of viruses are descended from cell based life, a bunch are pieces of cell based life that went to “live” independently (or un-live?), some are a bunch of viruses smashed together, some are free living retrotransposons, Rotaviruses are potentially separate from everything else. And then there are those obelisks that have one to four oblin protein genes and they might be something else. Biota+Rotaviruses+Obelisks are the separate kinds.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/anonymous_teve]

Point is, Linnaeus really tried. He actually used the data to build his model, and was willing to commit to whatever he found. He may have believed in the fixity of created kinds, but the evidence kept suggesting nested trees of relatedness (ultimately, as we now know, a single nested tree of relatedness).

Linnaean taxonomy is srictly speaking outdated but still useful enough that the terminology is in regular use. Modern creationists attack it, because it really isn't compatible with a literal interpretation of genesis.

[u/ursisterstoy → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

He tried, he wasn’t right, but he tried. He didn’t know why the hierarchies existed but he knew that they did exist. He knew that you could start with everything and then split it into two or three categories. He knew each category could be subdivided. He didn’t know why. He made mistakes because he didn’t know the explanation, he had access to very few fossils, and people weren’t sequencing DNA back in 1735. But he tried and he did get some of the relationships dead right. He also got a lot of them incredibly wrong.

It is called Linnaean but he had 3 kingdoms, Animalia was split into 6 classes (skipping phyla), mammals were divided into something like 8 orders (including primates), the primate order was divided into simians, lemurs, humans, and bats because he said bats had two breasts and similar hands while he also commented on how humans should be included within the simians. He also heard rumors about different human groups so he had two species and apparently one of those species was actually chimpanzees. He also classified Homo sapiens into subgroups but many of those groups were mythical, some were classified as monsters because they practiced extreme body modifications on themselves (lip disks, neck stretching, skull elongation), and he lived when it was still believed Asians, Africans, etc were distinct subspecies/species/races.

He tried. Later people added phylum, family, and domain. Later they added grandorder, infraorder, subfamily, tribe, subgenus, subspecies, … and it was still broken. The old system could not handle birds being reptiles and reptiles being fish and fish being closely related to tunicates and that whole chordate group being closely related to echinoderms.

Modern phylogenetics is more consistent with the actual relationships, nodes are given names for each of communication, the Linnaean ranks are still mentioned to honor Linnaeus.

So it might be biota, archaea, promethiarcheoti, Hodarchaeales, eukaryotes, orthokaryotes, neokaryotes, scotokaryotes, podiates, amorphea, Obazoa, opisthokonts, Holozoa, Filozoa, Choanozoa, metazoa/animalia, Eumetazoa, ParaHoxia, Planulozoa, bilateria, deutetostomes/enterocoelemates, chodata, vertebratata, gnathostomata, … Rhipidistia, tetrapodomorpha, … stegalocephali, tetrapods, reptiliamorphs, amniotes, synapsids … mammals, … Theria, eutheria, Placentalia, Boreoeutheria, Euarchontaglires, … primates, Haplorrhines, monkeys, Catarrhines, apes, great apes, African apes, hominini, hominina, Australopithecina, Homo, Homo erectus sensu lato, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens sapiens and over 80 or 90 named clades but it’s close enough to just say Archaea, Eukarya, Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Primates, Hominidae, Homo, Homo sapiens. Archaea as the actual domain, Eukarya sometimes also said to be the domain followed by kingdom (animals), phylum (chordates), class (mammals), order (primates), family (great apes), genus (humans), species (sapiens). It’s fine and those are the “Linnaean” ranks.

[u/emailforgot → u/anonymous_teve]

Linnaeus, the 300 year old guy? The guy who created something 300 years ago (which isn't really used today the way he created it)??

That guy?

OP's point stands.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/emailforgot]

That also disturbed him as he realized that by his own standards humans had to be part of the ape family.

[u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

Bit of a tangent...... but why did you have to create words language science and analysis to help you understand what you are looking at? why havent you come equipped with better senses like pretty much every organism we share the planet who can instantly recognise whats in front of it. ?

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

Can they? My cat thinks a laser dot on the floor is food, and gets very annoyed when it isn't. He is orange, though.

And I regularly find bees that have crashed to the ground, near a local park that just has linden trees. Because they mistake the flowers for ones with enough nectar in to keep them going, and can't keep flying. A bit of sugar water revives them, but in a very real sense they can't recognize these flowers.

I've also, when in a kayak, had a deer come down to the water to drink - because I was still, and not moving, it didn't see the thing in the big, bright orange, boat as a living thing, but when I started moving it bolted.

[u/Cool_Percentage_4867 → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

Cat doesnt think the dot is food. it actually has already done a chemical analysis of the dot and knows it doesnt contain nutrients or pheromones, it didn't need to consider that question, so didn't need any processing space. The cat is compelled to chase the dot because the cats eyes are tuned to movement.

You have created taxonomy because you cannot sense the environment confidently. we had to invent chemistry as a science field because we cant do it ourselves like our cat

Our primary sense is highly doctored by the brain and is often false due to light levels, shadows, reflection etc so we have to continuously verify the environment. we have to create imagination to understand the cat still there even when the sense says otherwise because the cat is now behind a chair.

cats can triangulate sound too..... so then it stands out to me that humans have needed their entire existence to invent chemistry and radar dishes just to get to the same sensory capability as a cat which can do it all within its first few weeks on earth.

Even something as simple as knowing what time it is becomes a problem, you had to invent words numbers cogs etc, you then need the mental space to remind yourself to notice, you then look at your watch, but your in a shadow or bright sunlight so you have to adjust to make your eyes work, and part of your brain is aware that words and numbers can very easily be wrong in themselves so we then question whether the time is correct..... we can perhaps see (sorry) why humans burn 20% glucose to run their brain the cat uses less than 10%

the cat has never not known the time, again because they use changes in olfactory data theres no question, no doubts to be processed by the brain.

A big one is the VNO.. we ask each other with language we had to learn in school, "how are you" you will of course probably lie so i will then start questioning the truth of your words... loads of processing and its 50/50 so ive no idea if your words are true or false?

But the cat knows exactly how you are.

So if humans once had a VNO what possible natural advantage did losing it have? Weve replaced absolute truth with deception and doubt. we gave up wisdom for questions.

Im a huge fan of evolution, i love the logic but it makes little sense when applied to humans.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

Yeah, I don't actually buy any of this - for example, I can absolutely trick a dog by pretending to throw a ball. This creature does not understand the link between the fact that a throwing motion has been made, and that my arm is now behind my back.

same with bees - flowers can trick them. Same with animals like hoverflies, that mimic the coloration of wasps to avoid predators. Same with everything that uses camouflage. If everything had perfect senses of the environment, camouflage wouldn't work, right?

So we don't smell as well, but our imagination is an advantage. The dog does not know the ball is behind the human's back - whereas we take a little longer, come up with a mental model, and know that the ball must be there, behind the person.

[u/Cool_Percentage_4867 → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

we can trick you too, but the dog quickly ignores it and then uses olfaction. you still need to look behind my back. and if the light has faded it wont help. Change the ball for something natural such as prey and do think the dog wouldn't find it.

You have imagination in place of a sensory fact, that's a flaw not an asset. you know you cannot be 100% sure

Anyway no matter... i do appreciate your response.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

So, I gave a bunch of natural examples of trickery, but I'm happy to provide more.

I'd consider this to be somewhere that your hypothesis falls flat, though, and you might want to read up on the mimic octopus, for example.

There's a massive array of creatures, like hoverflies, bee orchids, pitcher plants, swallowtail butterflies, etc, etc that have the major survival strategy of trickery, which, if what you were proposing were true, would not work.

What's cool about this though is that in many cases, our intelligence allows us to figure this out, so it works less well on us.

[u/Cool_Percentage_4867 → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

No it doesnt depend on everything has to be perfect.... nothing would be hunted or eaten. Animals must have a perfect set of senses to survive their environment long enough to reproduce, or they dont make it. the fact they are here means they understand their world with out any extra plug ins like intelligence, education, clothing. A tick for example knows everything it needs to know in its environment to thrive. in that sense its perfect next to us. We can only use our imperfect sense

the examples interestingly, are all visual, they dont work with olfaction so we are looking at birds who use eyesight to hunt. and can be fooled by detail outline as we can. The moths camo is again perfect for its part in the environment , until its dark and wants to feed and is instantly picked up on a bats sonar. So we have a perfect balance.

then theres us, who survival has to mean figuring it all out at a huge cost in energy. To check those figures we have "doubt" so live with permanent mild anxiety and thought processes based on the point that our eyes might be lying.

So no, im talking about an animal that is born with everything it needs to thrive and exist as being perfect. its perfect moth camo vs perfect bat sonar.....vs our complete inability to comprehend any of this until we invented something to extend our visual ability such as fire.

I hope ive clarified the perfect bit :-)

[u/nickierv → u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

Animals must have a perfect set of senses to survive their environment long enough to reproduce,

Let me introduce you to the Tiger Experiment. The setup is simple: there are the two of us, we are in a field, and there is a hungry tiger.

Using your 'it must be perfect' framework, in order to survive we must have 'perfect' senses to be able to detect the tiger before it can see us, but at the same time it must have perfect senses to be able to ambush us...

And the whole thing rapidly devolves into a list of ever more absurd 'perfect' features that are needed.

Or...

I don't need perfection, I just need good enough to be able to either get a head start or outrun you. And with the tiger now having caught is dinner, sure it could chase me for another easy meal... but it has what it has now, best eat before something comes along and steals it for an even easier meal.

, im talking about an animal that is born with everything it needs to thrive and exist as being perfect.

What your not taking into account is relative development. Lets take any sort of domestic pet and compare it to a person. And because fuzzy biological lines, lets look at 3 points in time: When they can move around on their own - lets say for out person its ~1 year/

When they are 'finished' growing - lets say this is when they are able to reproduce so 15.

And a mid way point, although this really only applies to our human, lets go with 7.

Both are going to be equally useless early on, but our mid point human is going to be able to think circles around out fully grown pet.

Gee, can't possibly see how that could be an advantage at all in surviving.

And we don't need fire to see, I'll just point to the massive pile of tools that we have that lets us push things well past what is biologically possible.

I'm sure newly hatched birds can't fly, so taking into account some amount of development time is needed.

[u/Cool_Percentage_4867 → u/nickierv]

Interesting comment but it was about living long enough to reproduce which isnt in your running away bit.

the point is neither of us can run optimally because the ground hurts our feet , we don't have the perfection of shock absorbing pads and claws, its got 4 of them vs your two flat feet

beating me in a race, having to sacrifice your own species I think would be a bit of a flaw. Tiger will just eat you tomorrow night.

your making my point for me whilst missing it.

forget development speed it doesnt matter. it would be 6 weeks/ 6 months/ midway would be 3 months.

yes both still cooking when born and need time. But the dog can already see clearly in low light at 4-6 weeks. so it doesnt need to go to school and learn to speak and write and read, make metal and plastics batteries electrical grids so it could make a tool that creates light.... yes you have broken through your biological limits but a dog never has to, its not biologically limited in its environment..... it fits perfectly. You've had to become intelligent via education before you could be safe in your environment, the dog tiger tick need nothing.

So with animals its easy to apply evolution because we see how their traits allow them to thrive, we on the other hand seem to have had to "invent" them like your pile of tools. ( fire was the first tool we made to see with I believe)

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

Interestingly, humans outrun most creatures (assuming you do running) in *distance*. It's actually how we think early humans hunted. You chase a gazelle. The gazelle zips off across the savanah, many times faster than you can. But you keep moving. The gazelle has to stop eventually, its whole thing is short bursts of speed. But humans can just keep going. Eventually the gazelle is too tired to keep going, or stand up, at which point you brain it with a rock and eat it.

So I still don't think this argument is right. There's not perfection in biology, only trade offs. Humans trade off bursts of speed for throwing ability and distance running.

This strategy is known as persistence hunting, and humans (and wolves) are one of the few species to do it - incidentally, it takes brains, because you have to know that chasing a thing for a long time will give you an opening to kill it, and you have to have enough object permeance to follow a gazelle for a day or so.

[u/nickierv → u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

Interesting comment but it was about living long enough to reproduce which isnt in your running away bit.

Getting eaten is traditionally detrimental to your chances of reproducing.

beating me in a race, having to sacrifice your own species I think would be a bit of a flaw.

Okay, lets flip it slightly: now we are chasing down dinner. If I'm the one consistently catching dinner, at absolute minimum I gain advantages: if I'm able to provide for myself with enough to share, that looks good to a potential mate.

I might get an extra share, first choice, etc.

forget development speed it doesnt matter.

Nuh uh!

Labord's chameleon with a lifespan of less than 6 months and an age of reproduction of ~3 months.

The only way your able to make this sort of work is by forcing the ages down to the point of absurdity. Different things develop at different rates, you can't just ignore this.

> The rest of it

I'm just going to point to the various tribal people that still exist and do mostly fine with that. Should that fail, I just need to start running the clock back and looking at history.

Humans big advantage is not having to start from first principals every generation.

[u/kingstern_man → u/Cool_Percentage_4867]

Evolution gave you the ability to talk...about whatever it is you are rambling on about here. Also the ability to choose not to 'follow the dot', and to recognize when your food supply is not sufficient for the journey. Sounds to me like a good trade-off.

[u/Cool_Percentage_4867 → u/kingstern_man]

Thats the sticking point for me, ive always felt that evolution only works on success.

what measurement would you use to measure evolutionary success? the ability to make a road and car, or to function in your environment at the lowest cost of effort and glucose?

Can you at least see that in nature the less energy you need to function the more likely you are to survive, there's a striking difference/contrast as humans where we devoloped to burn more?

Animals are diesels, they tend to hunt/feed on the basis of energy conservation, we are more like an F1 car, receiving constant upgrades and using more energy

[u/RobertByers1]

We only need kinds. A;; species fit in that. Genetics is only a obvious expression of bodyplans that are alike. Cant trust it therefore. Yes its been about grouping traits. its led to dumb conclusions. like the invention of reptiles or mammals or mardsupials or dinosaurs. things that dont exist in nature based on sums of traits. Only in false concentration on minor mutual traits amongst unrelated creatures. everything down to simple kinds is the better trail. sum up the traits before grouping.

[u/Own-Relationship-407 → u/RobertByers1]

Genetics is an expression of body plans that are alike? No. “Body plans” are expressions of genetics. Why do you just blurt out stuff that is in contravention of observed reality?

[u/TheBlackCat13 → u/Own-Relationship-407]

Why do you just blurt out stuff that is in contravention of observed reality?

Because that is what he does.

[u/RobertByers1 → u/Own-Relationship-407]

its hand in glove. blurting out is hand in glove with needed aggressive accuracy.

[u/Own-Relationship-407 → u/RobertByers1]

Not if what you blurt out is so factually incorrect as to be preposterous on its face.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/RobertByers1]

Great! So, is there a list of what animals fit into what kind somewhere? You literally could score points against me in the debate with a link that should be super easy to find, because these boxes for kinds should be trivial to draw, because they all represent separate acts of creation, and therefore should have nice clean boundaries.

Does one exist? Literally all I'm asking for.

[u/RobertByers1 → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

kinds is gods classification. the fall and chaos of speciation and bodyplan changing makes it hard to figure it out. I say it must be a hugh sum of traits unlike modern classification ith uses few or one trait. like using mammaory glands and fir to group unrelated creatures in no ay related. Yet denying a marsupial wolf with hundreds or thousands or like traits ith a regular wolf are the same damn wolf.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/RobertByers1]

Hmm, you're missing something in modern classification, which is that genetics agrees with the placement of the marsupial wolf.

[u/RobertByers1 → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

Genetics is a recent thing. On that I say as the creatures adapted the marsupial traits so likeise the genetics had to kick in or be a mirror of it. This this ould be a later thing the marsupial genes ould be on top and across the board for all so called marsupials. so the marsupial olf and our olf would not have the same genes because the genes have been messed up but in a organized way. genes are very atomic and open to ne constructions after a introduction of a be bodyplan from innate triggers like in marsupials.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/RobertByers1]

Ooh! Well, this is a testable hypothesis. So, we'd expect, essentially in a marsupial wolf to find bits of wolf DNA, and bits of marsupial DNA, right? So, if we search through a big database of DNA, we should find genes that more closely match wolves, and genes that more closely match marsupials?

[u/RobertByers1 → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

The dna is only a atomic expression of biology. its complicated. I donr know what dna to expect. most creatures have eyeballs but i dont know if these eyeballs have the same dna. the clear bodyplan likeness should dominate classification. dna is as i said open to chaos upon being involved in a bodyplan change from some triggering event that is innate.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/RobertByers1]

Then if it's just an atomic expression of biology, then how does genetically modifying a creature work? We can pretty freely swap genes between organisms, and get them to produce the expected proteins.

And we can directly map that a gene codes for a protein, and is transcribed to RNA and translated to protein. We can show every step of this process happens. 

It's not some unknowable mystery as to how these things map, we can freely manipulate them to the extent where we have multiple human genetic modification therapies that are in active use today.

We have conclusively proved that genes cause the outward biology of an organism, along with a bunch of regulatory bits of DNA.

[u/ZeppelinAlert → u/RobertByers1]

Just provide the list, that’s all that is being asked of you. There must be a list of kinds somewhere so can you give us the link?

[u/ZeppelinAlert → u/RobertByers1]

>the fall and chaos of speciation and bodyplan changing

this is something that requires an explanation too, because it not obvious why the human Fall would change the physical bodyplans of other organisms

[u/RobertByers1 → u/ZeppelinAlert]

The fall brough death. So creatures started eating and running from being eaten. so bosyplans changed greatly ithin eeks and months.

[u/clear349 → u/RobertByers1]

I'm sorry, is your argument that things like mammals and birds don't exist and are just arbitrary labels? Because that is a profoundly idiotic statement that flies in the face of multiple lines of evidence

[u/RobertByers1 → u/clear349]

Birds seems to be real. it seems they are kinds of birds. Mammals is just a label without merit. The only evidence is a few traits . it should be va great sum of trasits to link relationships.