Baraminology
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| − | '''Baraminology''' is a branch of <s>biology</s> [[pseudoscience]] that attempts to provide a [[creationism|creationist]] alternative to [[Linnaean taxonomy]] based on a [[Biblical literalism|biblically literal]] [[Young Earth | + | '''Baraminology''' is a branch of <s>biology</s> [[pseudoscience]] that attempts to provide a [[creationism|creationist]] alternative to [[Linnaean taxonomy]] based on a [[Biblical literalism|biblically literal]] [[Young Earth creationism|young earth]] world view. |
Baraminology, like most [[Creation science|creation 'science']], did not arrive from any observable evidence, but as an attempt to deal with one of the many problems that have plagued the story of the [[global flood]]. It was obvious even to creationists that every single species could not fit on [[Noah's Ark]] so they attempted to redefine the meaning of the word "kind" found in [[Genesis]] as a much more inclusive group which would lower the number of animals Noah had to bring on his ship. Thus was born baraminology. | Baraminology, like most [[Creation science|creation 'science']], did not arrive from any observable evidence, but as an attempt to deal with one of the many problems that have plagued the story of the [[global flood]]. It was obvious even to creationists that every single species could not fit on [[Noah's Ark]] so they attempted to redefine the meaning of the word "kind" found in [[Genesis]] as a much more inclusive group which would lower the number of animals Noah had to bring on his ship. Thus was born baraminology. | ||
Revision as of 05:16, 10 October 2009
This topic is a pseudoscience, and is not accepted by the scientific community as a valid discipline.
Although it may use scientific terminology, it does not use scientific methodology.
Remember: just because it sounds right doesn't mean it's actually right.
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For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Baramin. |
Baraminology is a branch of biology pseudoscience that attempts to provide a creationist alternative to Linnaean taxonomy based on a biblically literal young earth world view.
Baraminology, like most creation 'science', did not arrive from any observable evidence, but as an attempt to deal with one of the many problems that have plagued the story of the global flood. It was obvious even to creationists that every single species could not fit on Noah's Ark so they attempted to redefine the meaning of the word "kind" found in Genesis as a much more inclusive group which would lower the number of animals Noah had to bring on his ship. Thus was born baraminology.
Contents |
Definition of a baramin
Baraminology has come under much criticism for its inability to provide a definition of what a baramin actually is. Creationists have been repeatedly grilled for a clear explanation of how to tell if two creatures are part of the same "kind", but have been unable to formulate a satisfactory answer. It is evident that the only thing that defines a group as a baramin is whether or not creationists claim a group to be such.[1]
It is often put forward that a baramin is a group composed of creatures that can interbreed. Creationists will point to examples of tiger-lion and horse-zebra offspring to show that species can interbreed, but this is a defective strategy. The vast majority of organisms are incapable of hybridization.[2] This means that claiming that a baramin is defined by the ability of its members to interbreed means that there would have to be most likely over 50,000 of these "baramins" which defeats the only purpose of baraminology: to trim down the number of animals Noah would have had to bring on his ark during the global flood.
Ultimately, the only accurate definition of a baramin is a set of creatures whose common ancestry is so mind-blowingly obvious that even creationists have trouble denying it.
Etymology of the word
The word "baramin" was coined by taking two words out of a Hebrew glossary and tacking them together with no regard for the Hebrew language. Min is typically given the meaning kind in elementary glossaries. The citation form for the Hebrew verb is the 3rd person singular masculine perfect active, so bara means he created, as it is used, for example, in the opening words of the Hebrew Bible: B'reshith bara elohim ... = In beginning God created. If one replaces elohim, the subject of that verb, with another noun (min), and tries to make some sort of sense out of it, it would be saying that a kind, rather than God did the creating. (The subject in Ancient Hebrew typically follows the verb.) Those who use the word baramin of course would be averse to ascribing the act of creation to something other than God. [3] It seems to be that they were attempting at something like "created kind". If that's what they were after, they would have done better to write something like min baru - baru is the perfect passive participle, and typically it would follow the noun it modifies.
What is a Biblical "kind"?
In the appeal to the Bible in support of the idea, one critical point is whether there is any Biblical support for entities called "kinds". This is not beyond question. The word min, usually translated a kind, occurs in the Bible only in a very special construction: the preposition l'+min+possessive pronoun (even evident in translation: the repeated phrases according to its/their/his kind). A fixed phrase is consistent with it being an idiom with a non-transparent (not literal) meaning. With the caution that analogies between languages are to be used with reserve, think of the idiomatic English expression kind of, as in he was kind of happy - in this there is clearly no intended referent for the word kind. At least a bit of justification is needed to maintain that the Biblical expression "according to their kind" is meant to refer to a "kind". Moreover, that this supposed referent is something which is (1) the thing that is created (rather than it being individuals which are created, for example, or processes, or who-knows-what-else) and (2) unchanging for all time. That seems to be a rather large supposition for such slim support to bear.
But the word is suspect for another reason. The word in Biblical Hebrew has something of a mysterious origin. There is no known good relative for the word in closely related languages, supposing that it is a noun. It has been suggested that the word is really not a noun in its own right, but only part of a derivation from a grammatical oddity[4]. This is not universally accepted, but it does at least add a bit of suspicion which ought to be addressed.[5]
And finally, the very concept of fixed species did not occur in the history of thought until the 16th-17th century.[6] It is an anachronism to attribute to the authors of the Bible a concept of some two thousand years later. And once it did occur, it was a concept of fixed species, not any larger biological taxon, such as family, perhaps for the obvious reasons that it is not obvious how and why any larger biological taxon would have any objective reality, or how and why it would remain fixed, and that no one has found any evidence or reason for it. (Not to mention what it means, what it looks like, for a large taxon to be created, and where the smaller taxons come from.) The concept of fixed kinds seem to have arisen, not from any Biblical hermeneutics, but out of the necessities imposed by saving a doctrine of creationism from the undeniable reality of the immense diversity of nature.
Do humans form a "Biblical kind"?
The Hebrew word min is never used in reference to humans in the Bible. Of the other words which could be translated as kind, the only instance in which such a word is applied to humans in general is in the Apocrypha, 2 Maccabees 7:28, the original Greek anthropon genos meaning mankind. Elsewhere where the Greek genos is used in the Septuagint version in reference to humans, it is applied to a subgroup of humans, meaning relatives or clan, as in Exodus 1:9, people of the children of Israel.
Baramins and DNA
The idea of baramins seems rather counter-intuitive to the observed similarities in the DNA of various living organisms. An intuitive definition of a baramin might be "an organism kind whose DNA is completely dissimilar to the DNA of any other organism kind". Of course this definition has no merit due to the observed similarities of DNA of nearly every organism on Earth. For example, the DNA of humans and chimpanzees is more than 98% identical.[7] Creationists should expect human DNA to be completely dissimilar to any other organism if we are truly created in (biasing to the Abrahamic religions) God's image.
Explaining it away with... evolution!
- See also: Microevolution
Creationists hold that the baraminology is the method of explaining the diversity of life observed today, which requires new species to form from different kinds. Creationists are also the same kind of people who hold the idea that new species do not form over time (only microevolution occurs, the horses are still horses). They have yet to fully distinguish such process from macroevolution, which they define as one species descend from another. Whether this is just a malicious use of moving the goalposts or unintentional inconsistency due to a lack of any working brain is unclear.
Extreme rates
Creationists hold that instead of loading some of every species on Noah's Ark during the global flood, only examples of each baramin would have to be brought. This removes, for them, the problem of the idea of biblical inerrancy — how millions of creatures could have fit into a single boat. This claim has the side effect of making creationists supporters of "Super Evolution". The number supported by most modern apologetics groups that Noah would have needed to bring aboard is around 8,000 baramins (this includes extinct animals like dinosaurs), and some have even put the number as low as 2,000. The problem is that evolution just does not happen that fast. If genetic differentiation was accelerated up to the level where 2,000-8,000 creatures change into the many tens of thousands of vertebrate species alone, then it would be easy to submit very thorough "proofs" of evolution that creationists ask for - such as demonstrating it in the lab.
It could, of course, be that God "switched on" the "Super Evolution" briefly, and then switched it off again, as soon as humans were bright enough to spot it. However, the creationists have presented no evidence as to why God is unwilling and/or unable to repeat such a process now or in the future, or indeed any evidence that such a thing has happened in the past. Even the best evidence for rapid evolutionary change (known as punctuated equilibrium) — such as the Lenski experiment or the Cambrian explosion — do not show evolution happening anywhere near fast enough for this to be realistic.
Accumulation of negative mutations
The greatly increased mutation rate that baraminology requires would have caused severe problems in the populations on which the "accelerated" evolution was acting. With genetic change occurring as fast as creationists claim it was, the rate of negative mutations would accrue in the gene pool much faster then they could be removed.
There are an estimated 4 harmful mutations per zygote (embryo),[8] normally this is not a problem because nearly all mutations are recessive so these malignant changes can be weeded over time by natural selection. With baraminology, however, rates of mutation would at times have to be accelerated 250,000 times,[9] and we could expect to see gigantic influx approaching one million detrimental genetic changes per fertilization. Needless to say, this scenario results in the sudden termination of all life on earth.
Cancer
An increased mutation rate would also greatly increase the prevalence of cancer. A sizable portion of cancerous growth is caused by genetic mutations,[10] this means an increase of even a few hundred times, far less then creationism demands, would most likely have tremendous and fatal consequences upon animal life.
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Scientists confront creationism, Laurie R. Godfrey, ISBN-10: 0393301540
- ↑ Wikipedia article on hybrids
- ↑ " Ironically, the word baramin created by the use of English syntax, in Hebrew means created by nature, therefore implies evolution." From the article Baramin in the Polish-language version of Wikipedia Baramin#Etymologia i odniesienia biblijne
- ↑ Think of the English verb burgle made up from the noun burglar. Or, maybe more relevantly, the noun ilk (meaning kind) with an ultimate origin from a pronoun meaning "same". See references to back-formation or folk etymology.
- ↑ entry for min, page 262, volume 5, of The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, David J. A. Clines, editor, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001, ISBN1-84127-217-5. Also: page 392 of Chaim Rabin, "Etymological Miscellanea", pages 384-400, Studies in the Bible, edited by Chaim Rabin, volume 8 of Scripta Hierosolymitana, Jerusalem: Magnes Press of the Hebrew University, 1961
- ↑ pages 232, 95 in John S. Wilkins, Species: A History of the Idea, University of California Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-520-26085-6
- ↑ Ken Miller on Human Evolution - not only very similar, but we can point to the place in the code where the differences merged.
- ↑ The American journal of human genetics
- ↑ The creation museum teaches super evolution
- ↑ Wikipedia article on cancer