Answer by John Mackay
What is a kind? The word is from the old English “kin,” which means a group of creatures that are related to each other, but are not related to any non-kin, or separate group. The concept is seen in English from the creationist eras before Darwin’s time in usage such as Mankind, Kinsmen, or even names like Dawkins, and you are right, daw-kins sure doesn’t like to be reminded of that. Therefore, creatures that have never been related by a common ancestor are non-kin, or from a different Kind.
The usage in Genesis 1 and following shows that in the Biblical sense, the ‘bird kinds’ were originally created separately, and unrelated to the any of the ‘fish kinds’, just as Mankind is descended from one created man and woman no matter where they live today or what colour their skin is. So at the time of creation, the world’s differing life groups all had separate beginnings, with each kind having a unique combination of non-unique structures and functions.
A testable prediction of this is that when we finally have all the data, a classification system based on an evolutionary tree of connected Kingdoms, which contain connected Phyla, etc. will not work. Modern genomic studies are starting to show this, and evolutionists are having to invent common ancestors for which no evidence exists, propose methods of transferring genes across widely separate branches, or invent stories of multiple evolution of features found in organisms on separate branches of the evolutionary tree.
For example, a recent study of the appendix led some researchers to conclude it had evolved 32 times. See our report here. We predict there will prove to be as many separate Kingdoms as God created separate kinds. We first made this prediction in 2004 when a study of bird genes failed to fit into an evolutionary tree. See “Bird Classification Problem” here. A further study of birds has provided more evidence that evolutionary trees do not work, but classifying birds into different kinds will. See “Birds Move Branches” here. So perhaps we should replace the word Kingdom with KINDom.
We should also note that the term kind is not the equivalent of our modern use of the word species. Since the creation of the original kinds, and especially after the offloading, separation and migration of the creatures following Noah’s flood, some sexually reproducing kinds have split up into subgroups as they moved into differing environments, and some of these can no longer interbreed with their other historically related subgroups. That may make it convenient for us to label them as different species, but they have not given rise to different kinds and never will evolve in such a direction.
The word kind is however the Old English equivalent of the Latin/Greek word genus from Genesis 1:11ff (see the Septuagint version of the Old Testament), but our modern definition of the word Genus has ‘evolved’ far from its original use as a separate kind. How does this differ from evolution? The theory has birds being descended from fish via the reptiles so all these groups are kin. In fact, all life is related via common descent from the first life form which in itself was never created.
The word kind finds no usage in evolutionary theory, which has relationship best showed by a family tree with all relatives shown as branching off an original starting point. Since the Bible says 10 times in Genesis 1 that God created each group of organisms to produce ‘each after their own kind’, then it should not surprise us that Darwin set out to show that organisms have not produced their own kinds.
Theologians please take note that Darwin, whose MA was in Theology, concluded after he had established his theory, that if he was right about evolution then the Bible was neither symbolic nor poetic, but totally false, or to put it in modern parlance, absolute rubbish. To quote his own words: “But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. “ Extract from Nora Barlow, ed. The autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: with original omissions restored. New York, W.W. Norton, 1969. pp. 85-96.
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