What is a Biblical Kind?

Author:
Christopher J. E. Johnson
Published: May, 2012
[creationliberty.com]

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God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
-Genesis 1:25

God makes it very clear that He created plants, animals, insects, and man to produce after his own kind. Though I have heard many creationists say, "If they can mate and bring forth, they are the same kind," I do not think this is an accurate definition. If you read Genesis carefully, you will see that God never says mating makes the same kind, but he says specifically if they can "bring forth."

Sometimes we get some wild and bizarre variations within the different kinds of animals, but never do they become something other than their own kind. Sometimes these variations can be limited mechanical breeding capability [e.g. chihuahua and great dane would have physical limitations to mate together], but if you use artificial insemination they could still produce offspring. As an experiment to test the Biblical hypothesis, we could use cat sperm and apply it to a female dog, or dog sperm and apply it to a female cat, and nothing will happen because they are not the same kind.

According to Biblical predictions, each kind of animal would have been given a unique code that allows for it to reproduce specifically with its own kind, and nothing else. If this is the case, we should find genetic limits or boundaries between major kinds of animals.

For example, according to Biblical prediction, horses will always produce the horse kind. Horses, zebras, and mules are all varieties within the horse kind. All of them can be bred together. The important point to note is that horses cannot breed with giraffes, dogs, or deer because they are not the same kind of animal, and no amount of selective or natural breeding will change them into anything else but a horse.

If someone wants to BELIEVE that long ago, and far away, horses came from something that was not a horse, they are welcome to believe that, but that is not part of science. That's a religious worldview that someone chooses to believe in, and that should not be labeled as science.

A recent example of the Biblical kinds being discovered can be found in the whale and dolphin hybrid that been cross bred to produce what has been labeled a wholphin. These two similar-looking creatures happened to be two varieties of the same kind of animal. Not all similar-looking animals will bring forth as the same kind, but we can continue to do scientific breeding experiments to label the original basic kinds of animals God created in the book of Genesis.

-"Whale-dolphin hybrid has baby wholphin: Calf jumbo-sized compared to purebred dolphins," Associated Press, April 15, 2005; Image from MSNBC.com - [www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7508288/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/whale-dolphin-hybrid-has-baby-wholphin]

For Biblical creationists, it is important to understand that we do not know all the lines between the kinds, but just because we are not sure in every case, does not prove that we all came from a hot bowl of soup three billion years ago. I challenge biologists to start doing research to discover the boundaries between different kinds of animals, and some have already begun:

"[R]esearchers are looking more closely at the question, 'What animals constitute a kind?' The first in a series, this paper explains how the different kinds will be displayed in the Ark Encounter and the reasons behind the groupings. The majority of the 'original kinds' classifications will be determined from known examples of hybridization,"
-Answers Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 2, April-June, 2012; See also Jean K. Lightner & Tom Hennigan, "Determining the Ark Kinds," Answers Research Journal, Vol. 4, 2011, p. 195-201, [www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v4/n1/ark-kinds-flood-baraminology-cognitum]