[Taxacom] counting the number of species on Earth ... for the Ark

[David Campbell]

Actually, there are at least one or two creation scientists (such as Kurt
Wise) who actually try to tackle the question of where the boundary lies
between supposed within-kind variation and separately created forms.
Unfortunately for their efforts, the question has already been extensively
investigated by conventional biologists, who have found that the evidence
points to all known organisms sharing evolutionary continuity.  The attempt
to turn the flexible and vague use of "kinds" (baramin) in the Bible into
some precise scientific meaning is not very successful.

The more popular versions of creation science are much more ridiculous and
inconsistent than Wise's effort.  Extremely rapid evolution is invoked as a
way to require fewer things on the Ark, such that everything within a
family could evolve from a single ancestor in the past 4000 years.  That
would shorten the passenger list, though not nearly enough.  At the same
time as hyperfast evolution is invoked, all evolution is reviled.  The
assumption that some of the types can be left to survive the flood outside
the ark is also not viable - to have a global flood doing all the things
they claim it did would produce heat and other problems sufficient to kill
everything inside and outside the Ark.  Plate tectonics doesn't speed up to
45 mph without side effects, for example.

It's quite an amazing amount of fantasy concocted in support of an idea
that isn't even well-rooted in the biblical account.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Assistant Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
Box 7270
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017