What Makes us Human?

[Calypsis4]

What astonishes me is that some people can present a far-fetched interpretation of the text like this and still insist it is a literal reading and not an interpretation.

I know this particular poster has not made that claim, so I am not trying to put words into her mouth. But I do ask those who claim to adhere to a literal hermeneutic to really look at what they present. If it looks like this, it is NOT a literal reading.

I believe in the literal interpretation because Jesus taught it: "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female." Mark 10:6

Paul taught it too: "For Adam was first formed, then Eve." I Timothy 2:13.

There isn't even a hint about evolution in scripture. Would one think that the All Knowing Holy Spirit would have revealed clearly how the world began if evolution were involved. Oh, He was clear all right, but many of those who profess to know Jesus simply don't believe what He told Moses to write in the Genesis account..

 

[Mallon]

There isn't even a hint about evolution in scripture.

Well... God did tell the earth to bring forth life...

Would one think that the All Knowing Holy Spirit would have revealed clearly how the world began if evolution were involved.

Why? There is much about the workings of the world that God left out of Scripture (atomic theory, heliocentrism, germ theory, etc.).

 

[sawdust]

Well... God did tell the earth to bring forth life...

You might want to finish the verse....

" ..... according to their kinds". Gen.1:24&25

This might allow various adaptions within "kinds" but it cannot mean one kind evolving into another kind.

peace

 

[Mallon]

You might want to finish the verse....

" ..... according to their kinds". Gen.1:24&25

This might allow various adaptions within "kinds" but it cannot mean one kind evolving into another kind.

peace

A "kind" is not an objective biological unit because there are no criteria by which to distinguish one "kind" from another. "Kinds" don't exist in nature. They are a human fabrication, like "genus" or "family" (I would even argue "species").

 

[sawdust]

A "kind" is not an objective biological unit because there are no criteria by which to distinguish one "kind" from another. "Kinds" don't exist in nature. They are a human fabrication, like "genus" or "family" (I would even argue "species").

Get real. It's the word of God. The Hebrew word used is "meen". It is translated "kind" because that is what it means.

The criteria is in the kind it is. A parrot is not a horse.

peace

 

[gluadys]

Get real. It's the word of God. The Hebrew word used is "meen". It is translated "kind" because that is what it means.

peace

And when St. Jerome translated 'meen' into Latin, he translated it as 'species'. English borrowed the Latin word and it was considered a synonym of 'kind' until 1940. It was not until then that creationists began to give separate meanings to 'kind' and 'species'.

And actually, they have not given any meaning to 'kind' except to say it is not a taxonomic 'species'.

 

[gluadys]

There is nothing far fetched about what I said. It is based upon teaching received from those who know the original languages. Unless one knows the original language, one cannot determine what it literally means.

peace

I don't know that much Hebrew--just learning--but I know enough that nothing in Gen. 1:26-27 suggests the 'ha-adam' created there is any less material than the 'ha-adam' created in Gen. 2:7.

One has to depart significantly from the literal meaning of 'ha-adam' to come up with your interpretation. From where I sit, it is very far-fetched indeed. I don't know why I should consider such nonsense.

 

[Mallon]

Get real. It's the word of God. The Hebrew word used is "meen". It is translated "kind" because that is what it means.

The criteria is in the kind it is. A parrot is not a horse.

peace

You didn't actually address the concerns I brought up. How does one go about defining a "kind"? If such a thing really exists in nature, it should be easy to objectify. Simply saying "it's obvious" doesn't help at all.
Does Eohippus belong to the same kind as Equus? How do you know?
Does Ambulocetus belong to the same kind the blue whale? How do you know?
Does Tiktaalik belong in the same kind as Panderichthys? How do you know?
Does Homo erectus belong in the same kind as Homo sapiens? How do you know?
To answer any of these questions, you first have to impose some limits on the morphological or genetic variation that defines a kind. Yet when we look in the fossil record, we see that those limits disappear as one species fades to another.
I think it's evident that the use of "kind" in Genesis in a phenomenological description, like the description of the movement of the sun through the sky in the Psalms. The term doesn't actually have any biological significance beyond "species" (which we know are not static).

 

[Calypsis4]

The 'kind' in scripture is revealed in its outworking in the real world by the limitations described in Mendelian genetics. Those that can produce offspring successfully are always within a certain gene pool and never produce successfully outside that genetic pool. For instance; Lions and tigers can reproduce 'ligers' or 'tigons' if you please, but 'ligers' are hybrids. Further, a tiger and a liger can successfully reprodcue but two ligers cannot. It is the same for the horse and the donkey. They can reproduce mules but mules are hybrids and cannot reproduce. That means that they are in the same genetic family (kind) and are governed by those natural limitations that God made upon the various living organisms of the world.

If evolution were true then it should be an easy matter of revealing how organisms can change into other organisms by sexual cross bredding of similar kinds. Alas, man cannot do this with any kind of ape successfully even though evolutionists tell us that apes and man have a common ancestor with them. It's all nonsense. The truth is that they have a common Creator and not a common ancestor.

 

[sawdust]

You didn't actually address the concerns I brought up. How does one go about defining a "kind"? If such a thing really exists in nature, it should be easy to objectify. Simply saying "it's obvious" doesn't help at all.
Does Eohippus belong to the same kind as Equus? How do you know?
Does Ambulocetus belong to the same kind the blue whale? How do you know?
Does Tiktaalik belong in the same kind as Panderichthys? How do you know?
Does Homo erectus belong in the same kind as Homo sapiens? How do you know?
To answer any of these questions, you first have to impose some limits on the morphological or genetic variation that defines a kind. Yet when we look in the fossil record, we see that those limits disappear as one species fades to another.
I think it's evident that the use of "kind" in Genesis in a phenomenological description, like the description of the movement of the sun through the sky in the Psalms. The term doesn't actually have any biological significance beyond "species" (which we know are not static).

You simply missed the point. We don't have to answer any of the questions you asked. We are given enough information in the scripture to recognise there are different kinds and that each of these different kinds were created by God fully formed.

How many kinds there were? What did they look like? What were the differences that separated them? These questions are not answered except at a most basic level ie. there were wild kinds, domesticated kinds and kinds that crept along the ground.

These things are written, not as some biology lesson to tickle your brain, they are written that you might know God is the Creator of each animal that was made. It is written this way because the Lord knew there would be those who would want to try and make it look like He didn't do what His word said He did.

A five year old can read this and realise this is not a "story of evolution".


peace

 

[Mallon]

You simply missed the point. We don't have to answer any of the questions you asked. We are given enough information in the scripture to recognise there are different kinds and that each of these different kinds were created by God fully formed.

I'm not so sure I did miss the point.
As I said, if "kinds" are real, discrete groupings within nature, then distinguishing them from one another should be a trivial matter. And if they are static through time, as you imply, then telling them apart as we progress through the fossil record should likewise be simple.
But it's not. What you call discrete "kinds" today look less and less discrete as we look further back into the fossil record. Humans and chimps may look very different today, but the line gets blurrier and blurrier as we trace our lineages back in the fossil record:

Thus, it seems that "kinds" are not real, discrete groupings, and that the use of the word "kind" in the Bible is in a phenomenological sense, and not a scientific one.

And no, I'm not trying to read evolution into Genesis. That's the whole point of recognizing phenomenological language.

 

[Mallon]

If evolution were true then it should be an easy matter of revealing how organisms can change into other organisms by sexual cross bredding of similar kinds. Alas, man cannot do this with any kind of ape successfully even though evolutionists tell us that apes and man have a common ancestor with them. It's all nonsense.

Have you ever heard of ring species? They completely undermine this point.

The truth is that they have a common Creator and not a common ancestor.

"Common creator" doesn't explain the nested hierarchical pattern into which life is organized. Only common ancestry accounts for that pattern.

 

[juvenissun]

I'm not so sure I did miss the point.
As I said, if "kinds" are real, discrete groupings within nature, then distinguishing them from one another should be a trivial matter. And if they are static through time, as you imply, then telling them apart as we progress through the fossil record should likewise be simple.
But it's not. What you call discrete "kinds" today look less and less discrete as we look further back into the fossil record. Humans and chimps may look very different today, but the line gets blurrier and blurrier as we trace our lineages back in the fossil record:

Thus, it seems that "kinds" are not real, discrete groupings, and that the use of the word "kind" in the Bible is in a phenomenological sense, and not a scientific one.

And no, I'm not trying to read evolution into Genesis. That's the whole point of recognizing phenomenological language.

Put the flesh on this bones and watch their appearances and behaviors, then a 3-year-old will know what the "kind" means. There may be some mixed-ups over the boundaries, but it does not really matter. The main point is that we do not mix mankind with animal-kind.

I said you are brain-washed by paleontology, you don't believe it. Like the first question I talked to you two years ago, if you give my body hair (fur?) back, then I would probably reconsider the relationship between mankind and ape-kind.

 

[gluadys]

If evolution were true then it should be an easy matter of revealing how organisms can change into other organisms by sexual cross bredding of similar kinds. Alas, man cannot do this with any kind of ape successfully even though evolutionists tell us that apes and man have a common ancestor with them. It's all nonsense. The truth is that they have a common Creator and not a common ancestor.

Problem is that evolutionary theory doesn't say that we get all or even most new species by cross-breeding. It says we get many new species by separating a single species into different lines of descendants.

That is why it speaks of common ancestors.

A tigon or a liger does not have a common ancestor. It has two different ancestors.

Furthermore, that new species come about by splitting a single species is not an untested idea. This is observed in nature and in controlled experiments.

 

[Mallon]

I said you are brain-washed by paleontology, you don't believe it.

Brainwashed people have no intelligent thoughts of their own to offer because they've spent little time thinking critically about the issues, so they resort to attacking others by accusing them of being brainwashed.

Like the first question I talked to you two years ago, if you give my body hair (fur?) back, then I would probably reconsider the relationship between mankind and ape-kind.

Now here come the excuses/backtracking/goalpost-moving!

 

[juvenissun]

Brainwashed people have no intelligent thoughts of their own to offer because they've spent little time thinking critically about the issues, so they resort to attacking others by accusing them of being brainwashed.

Very wrong. Brainwashed people can think perfectly. But the whole thinking is biased and confined.

Now here come the excuses/backtracking/goalpost-moving!

As a geologist, I love and I also hate exception. For this one, I love to know what happened to them. And I hate people who use them for any general argument. It is not math or physics. Three exceptions are nothing while you have millions of samples.

 

[Mallon]

Who called it?

 

[juvenissun]

Now here come the excuses/backtracking/goalpost-moving!

Take this one as an example. When this person stood side by side with a chimp/ape/..., I think a 3-year-old can STILL tell who is human and who is not.
Think: if both were presented as skeletons, then even me WILL have trouble to tell who is who.

You tell me why.

(my idea: when we only compare bones, A LOT of information about the life is missing. That is probably one of the most significant problem with paleontology and anthropology.)

 

[Mallon]

Keep shifting those goalposts, juvie. You're doing a fine job.

 

[sawdust]

I'm not so sure I did miss the point.
As I said, if "kinds" are real, discrete groupings within nature, then distinguishing them from one another should be a trivial matter. And if they are static through time, as you imply, then telling them apart as we progress through the fossil record should likewise be simple.
But it's not. What you call discrete "kinds" today look less and less discrete as we look further back into the fossil record. Humans and chimps may look very different today, but the line gets blurrier and blurrier as we trace our lineages back in the fossil record:

Thus, it seems that "kinds" are not real, discrete groupings, and that the use of the word "kind" in the Bible is in a phenomenological sense, and not a scientific one.

And no, I'm not trying to read evolution into Genesis. That's the whole point of recognizing phenomenological language.

The problem is you're looking at fossils that more than likely have no bearing whatsoever on this current creation.

The scriptures teach past creations as well as future creations. As long as that fact remains unrecognised, science will continue to look at the earth as one long history and continue to make the same old mistakes (of interpretation).

And I didn't imply "kinds" were static except within the particular "kind" because that is what the scriptures teach. How much variation within a kind is possible? I have no idea. I didn't design the specifications.

You say you didn't miss the point and yet you continue to place your "observations" over and above what the word of God teaches. Learn what the word teaches first, then what we observe in the natural order will have a very different understanding.

peace