According to YECism, the Flood of Noah occurred approximately 4,500 years ago. Upon landing on the mountains of Ararat, the cargo of pairs (or 7 pairs, depending on whether they were "clean" or not) of all air-breathing animals disembarked, and miraculously spread out around the world, leaving no traces of this grand migration.
YEC scientists and advocates tell us that all extant taxa did not have to be on the ark. Most YECists will indicate that for the most part, a "Kind"-pair brought onto the ark was something like what we might consider to be at the "Family" level in science-based taxonomy/systematics, which is to say, they claim that the Ark "Kinds" gave rise to numerous Genera and even more numerous Species, all within a horribly narrow time-frame of some 4,500 years. And it is actually worse than that, seeing as how many modern animals (e.g., horses, camels, etc.) are describe even in the New Testament, written somewhere in the region of less than 2000 years ago, meaning that at least some terminal 'Intra/Infra-kind' creatures has arrived on the scene in less than 2500 years.
I am unaware of any creationist attempt to document the patterns of Intra/Infra-Kind descent (not relationships). The closest I am aware of are the works to the Baraminologists, such as can be seen in this paper, starting on page 4 of the PDF:
Evidence for a Holobaraminic Origin of the Cats
Of note, the authors came to the same conclusions as have evolutionary systematists regarding the 'internal' affinities of the species of cat they employed, they simply assume that the cats are not related to other carnivores (relying primarily on 2 older articles that apparently cited a lack of specific fossils to justify their position).
But nowhere do they attempt to explain the manner in which this Intra/Infra-Kind variation came about, though some bold creationists have suggested that mutations and selection can explain it (i.e., evolution).
Many creationists have explained away such questions by positing that the 'original' Kinds possessed genomes that were front-loaded with all of the alleles that all of their descendant taxa would need, when they needed it, and that these alleles segregated just-so to produce the extant taxa we see today. For this front-loaded genome, they have only assertions. How the multiple alleles per locus remained intact and apparently un-expressed until they were 'needed', they do not say. How no longer needed alleles were lost from the genomes of the more current taxa, they do not say.
This scheme implies that some kind of macromutation-style mechanism was afoot - that, say, the 'Family-Kind' on the ark gave birth to a number of non-'Family-Kinds' post-flood. Or, perhaps that the 'Family-Kind' breeding pair on the ark gave birth/laid eggs for a first round of new Intra/Infra-Kinds, which then gave birth/laid eggs that were different Intra/Infra-Kinds, etc. But that cannot be, for creationists of all stripes argue vehemently AGAINST such mechanisms (not that any mainstream biologists still entertain such concepts, anyway) - plus this would create an immense amount of inbreeding which we all understand to be bad.
I am unaware of any other explanations proffered by any creationists - if anyone knows of any, please post.
Regardless of the explanations they do or might provide, the bottom line is that a great deal of diversification had to have occurred in a VERY short time - if, for example, we only consider microbats, we would have needed to see a new species of bat every other year post-flood through the time of Jesus, with nobody noticing.
This all leads to a couple of questions -
1. What are all those fossils, then?
Are they Kinds that didn't make it, post-flood? Kinds not allowed on the ark for some reason? Might they be 'intermediate' kinds, a sort of 'son-of-Ark-Kind', that were mere vehicles for the alleles needed for later new Kinds?
and 2:
Where is all the soft tissue in these fossils?
We are told that the discovery of "soft tissue"*, to include intact osteocytes as described by a creationist, really destroys evolution, because nobody thought soft tissue would last for millions of years. The real conclusion, they say, is that this soft tissue is found because the fossils are NOT millions of years old, but only a few thousand, as the bible tells them.
If this is the case, then should not nearly ALL fossils have soft tissue? And not just ambiguous stuff that sort of maybe looks like soft tissue, but real live soft tissue with intact cellular remains and everything? And since they do not, do creationists really think that this line of argumentation is a winner for them? It is one thing to discover something unexpected, it is another to not be able to find that which is not only expected, but should be found in abundance, given one's assumptions (e.g., the world is less than 6000 years old).
*ignoring for now the fact that the 'soft tissue' isn't
YEC scientists and advocates tell us that all extant taxa did not have to be on the ark. Most YECists will indicate that for the most part, a "Kind"-pair brought onto the ark was something like what we might consider to be at the "Family" level in science-based taxonomy/systematics, which is to say, they claim that the Ark "Kinds" gave rise to numerous Genera and even more numerous Species, all within a horribly narrow time-frame of some 4,500 years. And it is actually worse than that, seeing as how many modern animals (e.g., horses, camels, etc.) are describe even in the New Testament, written somewhere in the region of less than 2000 years ago, meaning that at least some terminal 'Intra/Infra-kind' creatures has arrived on the scene in less than 2500 years.
I am unaware of any creationist attempt to document the patterns of Intra/Infra-Kind descent (not relationships). The closest I am aware of are the works to the Baraminologists, such as can be seen in this paper, starting on page 4 of the PDF:
Evidence for a Holobaraminic Origin of the Cats
Of note, the authors came to the same conclusions as have evolutionary systematists regarding the 'internal' affinities of the species of cat they employed, they simply assume that the cats are not related to other carnivores (relying primarily on 2 older articles that apparently cited a lack of specific fossils to justify their position).
But nowhere do they attempt to explain the manner in which this Intra/Infra-Kind variation came about, though some bold creationists have suggested that mutations and selection can explain it (i.e., evolution).
Many creationists have explained away such questions by positing that the 'original' Kinds possessed genomes that were front-loaded with all of the alleles that all of their descendant taxa would need, when they needed it, and that these alleles segregated just-so to produce the extant taxa we see today. For this front-loaded genome, they have only assertions. How the multiple alleles per locus remained intact and apparently un-expressed until they were 'needed', they do not say. How no longer needed alleles were lost from the genomes of the more current taxa, they do not say.
This scheme implies that some kind of macromutation-style mechanism was afoot - that, say, the 'Family-Kind' on the ark gave birth to a number of non-'Family-Kinds' post-flood. Or, perhaps that the 'Family-Kind' breeding pair on the ark gave birth/laid eggs for a first round of new Intra/Infra-Kinds, which then gave birth/laid eggs that were different Intra/Infra-Kinds, etc. But that cannot be, for creationists of all stripes argue vehemently AGAINST such mechanisms (not that any mainstream biologists still entertain such concepts, anyway) - plus this would create an immense amount of inbreeding which we all understand to be bad.
I am unaware of any other explanations proffered by any creationists - if anyone knows of any, please post.
Regardless of the explanations they do or might provide, the bottom line is that a great deal of diversification had to have occurred in a VERY short time - if, for example, we only consider microbats, we would have needed to see a new species of bat every other year post-flood through the time of Jesus, with nobody noticing.
This all leads to a couple of questions -
1. What are all those fossils, then?
Are they Kinds that didn't make it, post-flood? Kinds not allowed on the ark for some reason? Might they be 'intermediate' kinds, a sort of 'son-of-Ark-Kind', that were mere vehicles for the alleles needed for later new Kinds?
and 2:
Where is all the soft tissue in these fossils?
We are told that the discovery of "soft tissue"*, to include intact osteocytes as described by a creationist, really destroys evolution, because nobody thought soft tissue would last for millions of years. The real conclusion, they say, is that this soft tissue is found because the fossils are NOT millions of years old, but only a few thousand, as the bible tells them.
If this is the case, then should not nearly ALL fossils have soft tissue? And not just ambiguous stuff that sort of maybe looks like soft tissue, but real live soft tissue with intact cellular remains and everything? And since they do not, do creationists really think that this line of argumentation is a winner for them? It is one thing to discover something unexpected, it is another to not be able to find that which is not only expected, but should be found in abundance, given one's assumptions (e.g., the world is less than 6000 years old).
*ignoring for now the fact that the 'soft tissue' isn't
