Creation "Science" and the Genesis "Kinds"
by Lenny Flank
© 1995
Like all of the other parts of creationism, the creationist view of the fossil record is based directly upon Biblical Scripture, and centers around the "type" or "kind", also sometimes called a "baramin" (from the Hebrew words bara, or "created", and min, or
"kind"). This comes from the description of creation given in Genesis, which states, "And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yeilding seed, and the fruit tree yeilding fruit after his kind . . . And God created great whales and every living
creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind . . . And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so." (Genesis 1:12-24)
Thus, the creationists assert:
"By creation we mean the bringing into being by a supernatural
Creator of the basic kinds of plants and animals by the process of
sudden, or fiat, creation." (Gish, 1978, p. 40)
"The creation model, on the other hand, postulates that all basic
animal and plant types (the created kinds) were brought into
existence by acts of a supernatural Creator using special processes
which are not operating today." (Gish, 1978, p. 11)
"During creation the Creator created all of these basic animal
and plant kinds, and since then no new kinds have come into being."
(Gish, 1978, p. 40)
The creationists do not even attempt to make a pretense of science
here, but refer openly to their religious preconceptions that all
organisms are part of these "baramins" which were originally created
by God.
Nevertheless, the creationists also realize that overwhelming
evidence exists in nature for the transformation of organisms, such
as the various breeds of dog that have been produced by breeders, the
well-known example of the British peppered moth, which has been
observed to vary in color according to its environmental conditions,
and the many instances where speciation has actually been observed
and described in the laboratory (as in the case of the production of
new plant species and new species of Drosophila fruit flies). Unlike
the creationists of the 19th century, therefore, who refused to
believe that speciation of any sort was possible, modern creationists
instead assert that some "variation" is possible, but only within the
Divine limits imposed upon the original "created kinds":
"The variation that has occurred since the end of creation has
been limited to changes within kinds." (Gish, 1978, p. 40)
"All present living kinds of animals and plants have remained
fixed since creation, other than extinctions, and genetic variation
in originally created kinds has occurred within narrow limits." (ICR
Impact, May 1981)
"These 'kinds' have never evolved or merged into each other by
crossing over the divinely-established lines of demarcation."
(Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 66)
"According to this view, God created all living creatures 'after
his kind', and whatever changes have come about since creation have
been within the original types, or the 'Genesis kinds'." (Clarke,
1977, p. 8)
And what is the biological mechanism which the creationists propose
for producing all of these "variations" within the original "created
kinds"? Surprisingly enough, it is evolution. As Morris puts it:
"Modern creationists recognize and accept all the observed biological
changes which evolutionists offer as proof of evolution. New
varieties of plants and animals can be developed rather quickly by
selection techniques, but creationists point out that no new basic
kind has ever been developed by such processes." (Morris, The
Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1977, p. 16) Richard Bliss of the ICR
echoes, "We accept change one hundred percent. We accept the same
change that the evolutionist is accepting, only he's calling it micro-
evolution and we're calling it variation." (Conway and Siegelman,
1984, p. 152)
Thus, the basic creationist hypothesis has been, in effect, that
"evolution happens, but only a little bit". In an effort to sound
scientific, they refer to this process as "micro-evolution", and
assert that, while evolutionary mechanisms may produce micro-
evolution, or changes within the basic kinds, evolution cannot
produce "macro-evolution", or changes from one kind to another:
"Creationists generally accept the fact that within the
limitation of the genera and family, sufficient changes may take
place to bring about the vast array of species seen in present plants
and animals. It is the changes postulated in major groups--macro-
evolution--that creationists refuse to believe could ever have been
possible, because there is no evidence to support it." (Clarke, 1977,
p. 204)
"The small variations in organisms which are observed to take
place today . . . are irrelevant to this question, since there is no
way to prove that these changes within present kinds eventually
change the kinds into different, higher kinds. Since small variations
(including mutations) are as much to be expected in the creation
model as in the evolution model, they are of no value in
discriminating between the two models." (Morris, Scientific
Creationism, 1974, p. 5)
According to the modern theory of genetics (which the creationists
say they accept), evolution takes place through the natural selection
of variations brought about by genetic mutations. By postulating that
there are certain limits beyond which mutations cannot proceed, the
creationists are in essence claiming that there is some mechanism,
whether biochemical or biomechanical, which only allows certain
mutations to appear (those within the limits of the "created kind"),
and rigorously excludes certain other mutations (those which would
carry the organism outside these limits). But the creationists have
been quite unable to produce (or even propose) any workable mechanism
which would so effectively weed out some variations and allow others
to exist. There is no known biochemical or genetic mechanism which
would prevent any mutations from proceeding beyond the limits of a
"created kind".
In fact, the creationists have all along been unclear and
contradictory about just what a "created kind" is, and have never
given a consistent definition of the term. They cannot even give a
basic estimate of how many "kinds" of organisms exist. When
creationist Wayne Frair of King's College in New York testified at
the Arkansas trial, he was questioned on this point:
"Q: How many original created kinds were there?
FRAIR: Let's say 10,000 plus or minus a few thousand.
Some creationists believe kinds to be synonymous with species,
some with genera, some with family, and some with order, don't they?
FRAIR: The scientists with whom I am working . . . well . . . it
tends more towards the family. But it may go to order in some cases.
You have been studying turtles for many years, haven't you?
FRAIR: Yes.
Is a turtle an originally created kind?
FRAIR: I'm working on that.
Are all turtles within the same created kind?
FRAIR: That's what I'm working on." (Trial transcript, McLean v
Arkansas, 1981, cited in Montagu, 1984, pp 295-296)
It is not surprising that Frair was unable to tell us how many
"kinds" of turtles there are, since no creationist has ever produced
a workable and consistent definition of what constitutes a "kind".
Duane Gish, the creationist's "expert" on the fossil record, writes:
"We must here attempt to define what we mean by a basic kind. A
basic animal or plant kind would include all animals or plants which
were derived from a common stock. In present day terms, it would be
said that they have shared a common gene pool." (Gish, 1978, p. 32)
Gish is here using circular reasoning. The concept of "all animals or
plants which are derived from a common stock" is a good definition of
a biological "clade", which is defined as all organisms sharing
common ancestry. Ultimately, of course, evolutionary theory holds
that all organisms constitute a single clade, since all are derived
from a single common ancestor. The creationists, on the other hand,
argue that certain "kinds" of organisms are not related to each other
by descent. To use the criterion of "common stock" as a definition of
a "kind" is therefore spurious, since it is precisely the question of
"descent from common stock" which is at issue here. The creationists
thus must come up with some criteria for determining exactly which
groups of organisms share a common ancestry (and thus constitute a
"kind") and which do not (and thus constitute separate "kinds"). In
an attempt to clarify this criterion, Gish then cites an example:
"We have defined a basic kind as including all of those variants
which have been derived from a single stock . . . This basic kind
(which we may call the dog kind) includes not only all coyote
species, but also the wolf (Canis lupus), the dog (Canis familiaris)
and the jackals, also of the genus Canis, since they are all
interfertile and produce fertile offspring." (Gish, 1978, p. 34)
This definition--a created "kind" consists of organisms which
interbreed and produce fertile young--seems to be the most commonly
cited among creationists:
"A kind may be defined as a generally interfertile group of
organisms that possesses variant genes for a common set of traits but
does not interbreed with other organisms under normal circumstances."
(ICR Impact, "Summary of Evidence for Creation", May/June 1981)
"Many varieties of dogs have been developed from one ancestral
dog 'kind', yet they are still interfertile and capable of reverting
back to the ancestral form." (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 1974,
p. 180)
"The oft-repeated statement, however, that God's creatures
brought forth progeny 'after their kind' would strongly indicate that
plants and animals which can interbreed and produce offspring would
be of the same 'kind'. A corollary conclusion would then be that
production of offspring from matings between two different kinds
would be impossible." (Hilbert Siegler, CRS Quarterly, Vol. 15, 1978,
cited in Godfrey, 1983, p. 168)
As stated by creationists, this definition of a "kind"--a group of
organisms which interbreeds with each other but does not interbreed
with those outside the group under normal circumstances--is identical
with the biological definition of a species. (Dogs and coyotes are
classified as separate species even though they are physically
capable of breeding and producing viable offspring, since, under
natural conditions, they do not normally interbreed. The biological
species is therefore based on the principle of "reproductive
isolation"--if organisms do not interbreed under natural conditions,
they are considered to be a separate gene pool, a species.)
If this definition of a "kind" were to be accepted ("plants and
animals which interbreed and produce viable offspring"), the
creationists would have to conclude that no species can ever evolve
into another species, since a species itself is a group of organisms
which interbreed and produce viable offspring. But this assertion
presents tremendous problems, since speciation has been directly
observed many times both in nature and in the laboratory.
The definition we have seen of a created "kind" is, moreover,
unworkable in its own terms. A horse and a donkey are universally
held by creationists to be one "kind", but a horse and a donkey
cannot produce fertile offspring. They can breed and produce young,
but this progeny, a mule, is completely sterile and cannot reproduce
after its "kind". By the logic of their definition, the creationists
would seem to be forced to conclude that horses and donkeys are
separate "kinds". But, since horses and donkeys are so obviously
related by evolutionary descent, the creationists cannot have this
either, since it would establish "evolution between kinds", which is
precisely what they are trying to avoid. (Remember that the
creationists accept the existence of evolutionary descent as a
mechanism for producing "variation within a kind".)
Hence, some creationists have now dropped the requirement of
"interfertility", and have asserted that any organisms that can breed
with each other and produce offspring, whether fertile or not,
constitute a "kind":
"Creationists have long felt a need for a classification that
would include in one consistent category all organisms that
interbreed under any conditions." (David Menton, "Species, Speciation
and the Genesis Kind", Missouri Association for Creation, October
1994)
This definition, however, also produces problems. In the northeastern
United States, for example, are found two species of tree frogs, Hyla
versicolor and Hyla chrysoscelis. The two are absolutely identical in
appearence, and the only way to distinguish them in the field is by
their slightly differing mating calls. One of these species is a
"polyploid" of the other, that is, it developed from the other
species when a chromosomal abnormality left some individuals with
twice the normal number of chromosomes. (Polyploidy is a very common
means of plants to produce new species--in fact, most domesticated
food plants like wheat and rye are polyploids--but is comparitively
rare among animals.) There is no doubt that the two frogs share an
ancestor/descendent relationship, and that one evolved from the other
through polyploidy.
For the creationists to consider these two virtually identical frogs
as being of different "kinds" would be absurd on the face of it,
since they are so alike they can be distinguished only in the lab,
and they obviously share evolutionary descent. So naturally, the
creationists would like to lump these two species together as
"variations" within one "created kind". But there is a problem for
the creationists--the two Hyla species do not, and, because of their
chromosomal differences, cannot, interbreed. Not only do they not
produce any fertile offspring--they are incapable of producing any
offspring at all. The same problem arises in connection with plants--
the polyploid descendents of particular plants can no longer produce
viable seeds with the parent stock, and thus cannot produce any
offspring with the parent species. Therefore, the creationist, using
the criterion of "interbreeding", must conclude that the two are
different "kinds", even though one is obviously a descendent of the
other (polyploid plants have been successfully produced and bred in
the laboratory--in fact many of our food crops are polyploid
descendents of corn and wheat plants which can no longer interbreed
with the parent stock).
Once again, the creationists must either admit the existence of
evolution between "kinds", or they must change their definition of
what constitutes a "kind". Thus, we are finally led to:
"If two organisms breed, even though it is infrequent, they are of the same kind; if they don't breed but are clearly of the same morphological type, they are of the same kind, by the logic of the axiom which states two things equal to the same thing are equal to each other." (Wysong, cited in Kitcher, 1982, p. 152)
One may dispute just how "logical" Wysong's definition is (on the one hand, organisms which interbreed are of the same "kind"; on the other hand, organisms that don't interbreed are also of the same "kind" if they look enough alike), but there is no disputing that even this loose definition causes problems for the creationists. Now we need to define what constitutes an organism "of the same morphological type". Gish points out, "The division into kinds is easier the more the divergence observed." (Gish, 1978, p. 35)
"It is obvious, for example, that among the invertebrates the protozoa, sponges, jellyfish, worms, snails, trilobites, lobsters and bees are all different kinds. Among the vertebrates, the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are obviously different basic kinds. Among the reptiles, the turtles, crocodiles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), and icthyosaurs (aquatic reptiles) would be placed in different kinds. Each one of these major groups of reptiles could be further subdivided into the basic kinds within
each. Within the mammalian class, duckbilled platypuses, opposums, bats, hedgehogs, rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, lemurs, monkeys, apes and men are easily assignable to different basic kinds. Among the apes, the gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas would each be included in a different basic kind." (Gish, 1978, p 35.)
But now Gish has confused the issue even further. On the one hand, Gish lists "mammals" as constituting one basic kind. Since most mammals cannot interbreed with each other, it must be assumed that this is based on morphological criteria--i.e., all of the mammals are
sufficiently alike in their basic body structures that they must all be descended from each other (variation within the "created kind"). But in the very next paragraph, we are told that the chimpanzees and gorillas, both mammals, must also be separate "kinds". How can the mammals be assumed to have body structures that are similar enough to form a "basic kind", yet two of the members of that group, the chimps and the gorillas, are sufficiently different in basic body plans to constitute separate kinds? Even more confusingly, Gish classifies "dinosaurs", a huge group of reptiles which differed profoundly from each other (they ranged from the chicken-sized predator Compsognathus
to the fifty-ton plant eater Seismosaurus; some dinosaurs walked on two legs, some on four; some, such as Stegosaurus, had absurdly small brains, while some, like Troodon, had relatively large brains for their body size), as one "kind", but separates chimps and gorillas (who look almost identical and who share over 95% of their genetic codes) as being "different kinds".
The reason for Gish's arbitrary classification is obvious. If dinosaurs are all related through evolution, that is not a big deal to the creationists, since it is "only variation within a kind" and not "real evolution". But if the anthropoid apes are related by
evolutionary descent, that strikes a bit too close to home for the creationists; after all, if chimps and gorillas are one "kind" and share over 95% of their DNA, what then are we to make of human beings, who share over 98% of their genetic code with chimps? The conclusion that apes and humans would then constitute (on the basis of morphological similarity) a single "created kind", and that therefore apes and humans would be evolutionary variations of each other, is flatly unacceptable to the reationists. After all, the very core of their opposition to evolution is the supposed divine origin of human beings. Rather than admit that humans are just an evolutionary variant of the ape "kind", the creationists instead carefully draw their boundaries to avoid that possibility.
In effect, then, creationists define a "kind" as (1) a group of organisms which do interbreed, or (2) a group of organisms which don't interbreed but which are similar in basic body plans--and then they leave the guidelines extremely fuzzy about what constitutes
"similarity in basic body plans". This loophole leaves so much room for manipulation that it is essentially useless. Fish as different from each other as hagfish and lungfish and rainbow trout can all be classified as one "kind", while animals as similar to each other as gorillas and chimpanzees are classified as separate "kinds". A created kind, under this definition, is nothing more than whatever the defining creationist wants it to be.
