Talk:Baraminology

Does part of the scientific community accept baraminology?

 * Baraminology is not accepted by most of the scientific community

Juan777Olivier's addition of two words to alter the meaning of the lead sentence has been reverted by several different contributors now.

The dismissal of baraminology is widespread at the very least. There surely would exist some professional scientists who personally subscribe to baraminology, but even so, I'm not aware of any cases where baraminology is being published in mainstream (particularly top impact factor) scientific journals, nor of baraminology being treated as a plausible alternate hypothesis in current expert reviews of biological classification and phylogeny. It seems to get much less mention than panspermia, for example, in papers on topics relating to abiogenesis or the questions of LUCA. (In fact, there has been some legitimate scientific exploration of the possibility life may have originated from independent rather than common ancestors, and it might be useful for this article to for example highlight the differences between that and baraminology.) Cesiumfrog (talk) 08:21, 14 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm not disagreeing with what you say or with the reverts - but none of this addresses J7O's point. The point is that there is certainly some serious scientist somewhere, possibly called Steve, who believes in baraminology, therefore it is wrong to suggest that all scientists, or the whole scientific community, reject baraminology. I'm not really sure what can be done to counter such "logic" except to ignore them until they go away. Perhaps it's a misunderstanding of what is meant by "the scientific community" (and perhaps your comment does therefore address J70's point), but since that's a nebulously social and non-scientific construct, it's not a debate I'd ever recommend anyone getting into. GDallimore (Talk) 11:52, 14 August 2014 (UTC)


 * On reflection, I've realised what the problem is: saying something is rejected by the scientific community is as meaningless as saying someone called Steve doesn't reject it. People's opinions do not matter and we're not being direct enough in the article in putting it in it's place. GDallimore (Talk) 12:02, 14 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I've removed the offending phrase to get to the point more quickly. Sadly noticed that the rest of that section is original research. I doubt there's any way to salvage it. GDallimore (Talk) 12:09, 14 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I have restored the original valid statement. If any so-called scientists disagree with the overwhelming scientific consensus their WP:FRINGE views do not need to be included per WP:DUE.Charles (talk) 14:05, 14 August 2014 (UTC)


 * You've just totally missed the point of removing it. Read my comments above first and don't assume bad faith as you have. GDallimore (Talk) 00:02, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * PS, it was also unsourced. GDallimore (Talk) 00:04, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It is very well sourced in the lede. My edit summary did not accuse or imply bad faith. The arbitration committee has ruled that pseudoscience should be clearly identified as such. This statement helps to do that. Without it there will be material in the lede which is not in the body of the article. There is no consensus to just remove it while discussion is ongoing.Charles (talk) 09:08, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note that none of the sources in the lead mention baramingology at all. I wrote the current wording of the lead which is the closest I could get to something which is actually supported by the sources but is still technically original research. There are almost no reliable sources on the topic, which is the problem. And how does the current wording of the section, which includes only well-verified facts, apart from the bits of OR I have explicitly tagged, not make clear that baraminology is rubbish. The statement "the scientific community rejects it" is opinionated and causes flame wars whereas simple, well-referenced facts saying specifically why it is rubbish are not only better arguments, but are also not open to debate. GDallimore (Talk) 12:23, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, and when it comes to removing it, the balance of argument is on MY SIDE, not yours, unless you can find a specific source. GDallimore (Talk) 12:24, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Where the Bible speaks of "kinds"
What is one to do with this? The Bible does not speak of "kinds". It only uses the word "kind" in a set phrase, "according to his/their kind". Never uses the plural "kinds", never says anything about a kind, such as that a kind is created or is fixed. But is it "original research" to point that out? I am not aware of any scholarship which has bothered to deal with it. On the other hand, is it OK to use language such as where the Bible speaks of "kinds"? TomS TDotO (talk) 12:57, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

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Removal of unsourced sentence
I'm removing an unsourced sentence in the "criticism" section. Aside from not having a source, I'm pretty sure this sentence is incorrect, because the exchange between Phil Senter and Todd Wood was published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, which is a peer-reviewed journal.

I suppose it's debatable whether Senter's original paper qualifies as a baraminology paper, because he was using the methods of baraminology without accepting the field's premises. However, Todd Wood's reply definitely does qualify as a baraminology paper. This paper is a re-analysis of Senter's results using a different baraminology method, written by a creationist who regards baraminology as valid.

As an aside, I think this article has a WP:SYNTH problem. A lot of the sources that it cites just discuss evolution and creationism in general, without saying anything about baraminology in particular. This is a problem because baraminology has an unusual status in creationism--it's used by some creationists who care about internal consistency, but the major creationist organizations generally reject it, and thus it's never been a central part of creationism in the same way as something like Flood geology. (For example see this article, which basically argues that baraminology is too similar to the methods used by evolutionary science.) Thus, I don't think we can always assume that what a source says about creationism in general would apply to baraminology in particular. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:42, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

"Created kind" redirect
I think it was the wrong decision to redirect Created kind to this article. These terms refer to two different concepts: a created kind is a hypothetical biological division that's a basic part of modern creationism, whereas baraminology is a specific set of methods creationists have invented to try and identify those divisions. Virtually all creationists today accept the existence of created kinds, but (as I linked to in the section above) not all of them accept the methods of baraminology.

As it is at present, around half of the article is taken up by explaining what creationists actually mean by "created kind", and very little space is given to describing the actual methods used by baraminologists, such as BDISTMDS and ANOPA. Those methods are what I think this article should be focused on, and the meaning of "created kind" should be explained in a different article.

Even though the decision to create this redirect was made a decade ago, I'd rather not undo it unilaterally, so I'll ask the editor who proposed the merge whether he agrees with my reasoning. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:21, 8 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I actually think that the merge should go the other way. "Baraminology" should be part of a larger created kind article. I would not object to switching the roles, but I would object to two different articles. As for the rest of your contentions, is there much WP:FRIND literature that documents the methods of believers in baraminology that you are describing? If not, I'm afraid we cannot really go into such WP:FRINGE depth per Wikipedia rules. But, maybe there are non-creationist sources which discuss these "methods" as object lessons? I would be curious to learn about them. Please indicate what sources you would use. jps (talk) 13:22, 8 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I hadn't been familiar with the WP:FRIND guideline, so I suppose that limits how much detail we can include from creationist sources. Aside from the sources already in the article, I'm one of the authors of a (non-creationist) book that discusses some of these methods, but I'd like to avoid adding citations to my own book per WP:COI. You might find my book useful as a source, though. Baraminology is discussed in its fourth and fifth chapters.


 * I approve of your suggestion to switch the roles, and have baraminology be part of a larger "created kind" article. Let's plan on doing that. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:17, 8 June 2017 (UTC)


 * It would be nice to put this topic into a more religious context if at all possible. Since baraminology and created kinds are essentially ignored by the scientific community, I see a good article on the subject couched as a kind of interrogation of the mindset of some of the more adamant YECs. These concepts are really just a way to explain the Noah's Ark story along with the extremely rapid macroevolution(!) they believe happened since the global flood. jps (talk) 14:29, 9 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I also don't think that your book quite rises to the level of WP:RS as it is published by a private publisher. From the looks of it, it is an excellent private publisher, but per WP:RS/SPS, I think the only way we could even entertain using such a source would be to attribute the work as the opinions of the authors. I, frankly, don't see a good argument for doing that as the authors don't seem to be particular known in the field of comparative religion or related fields. jps (talk) 14:51, 9 June 2017 (UTC)