Ray Comfort asks why interbreeding doesn’t work

No interbreeding jokes about Ray Comfort? Damn, that’s the only reason I clicked on this. How about Inbreeding jokes? That’s not interbreeding. I could get away with that, right?

Did he graduate from High School?

I don’t like to be mean to people because of their opinions, either, but I come close with Ray almost every time I think of him. He’s so slippery, ignorant, and hard-headed it makes me crazy. He’s repeatedly shown himself to be clueless about basic biology, yet he is adored by many Christians who find his arguments against evolution convincing. It’s very frustrating.

Ray Comfort’s blog is the theist version of Fox News. Stupid and biased with a pretense of being serious and honest.

@VorJack

I don’t want to even look at the picture of him now.

I don’t like to be mean to people because of their opinions

I have no problem with it. I have absolutely no compassion for Ray and his ilk. They’re perfectly willing to see billions of their human siblings suffer unimaginably for all of eternity. I’m convinced that many (perhaps most) of them actually anticipate it, eagerly; it’s a power fantasy, with a fair amount of sadomasochism thrown in.

I know they’re broken individuals. I accept all of the various methods of explaining their psychosis – addiction, authoritarianism, etc. – I’m sure they’re all valid. There’s a body of evidence now for a neurological basis for fundamentalism; they actually may be programmed for it. But compassion? I just can’t do it. They’ve burned it out of me. Salvific excluvism is the line of demarcation, and they’ve crossed it.

BTW, I think you meant, “Plus the fact that “species” is defined as organisms that don’t naturally interbreed” – unless I misunderstand you. That was the definition when I was in school – but, of course, some species can interbreed, with mixed results. Interbreeding equine species results in sterile offspring; however, there are bird species that are genetically similar, with overlapping ranges, that have been known to interbreed naturally and to produce fertile hybrid offspring.

Hector, you’re assuming he ever STARTED high school…

Then of course, there are the spider goats:

Biosteel

True, they were engineered in a lab, and I don’t know how successful this was. I remember it totally grossed me out (and creeped me out) when I first heard about it.

“Kind” as the bible means is what Ray was talking about when he quotes, “It says that every animal brings forth after its own kind.” He obviously misspoke or is confused when he used the word species. His taxonomy is incorrect but the argument stands.

I don’t think anyone here can argue that a dog and cat can’t breed with one another. As for genetic modification, this must be done in an artificial setting and is not organic therefore it does not apply to the argument.

@Daniel, just to avoid the odd troll who might ding you for an incomplete explanation, it’s important to point out that not only genetic drift powers speciation. Rather, it’s the combined effects of genetic drift, natural selection, mutation, and isolation (in at least one of several ways: geographically, behaviorally, morphologically, etc.). But, yeah, Ray is talking out of his ass, as usual.

On his blog, Ray Comfort asked, “Does evolution have an explanation for this? The Bible certainly does. It says that every animal brings forth after its own kind”.

I like the first commenter on Ray’s site who points out that this Bible passage is actually not an explanation. It’s merely a restatement of the question. I’m no biblical scholar, but I don’t recall any passage in the Bible that explains “why” this is the case.

Of course, it only goes to illustrate Ray’s willful ignorance that there are plenty of examples of cross-breeding species as well as understood mechanisms that constitute barriers to interbreeding. The only sign that he’s even studied this field at all is when he hints that he has heard that there are different definitions of the word “species”, and settles upon the most common one (the Biological Species Concept developed by Ernst Mayr). But, from this brief and entirely token acknowledgement of the vast body of knowledge behind speciation, he makes a trivial observation that is accounted for by all the theories he is attempting to show have problems, and seems to think this illustrates that his infantile word games have some sort of weight.

@Hector, Ray isn’t just some poor schmuck whose opinions about who the prom queen should be is a matter of no consequence and, therefore, it shouldn’t be used to bash them over the head.

Ray is an “authority” to millions who trust his opinions to be factual and, furthermore, use that false knowledge to make decisions that affect their lives and the lives of others (not the least of which is political actions predicated upon his lies). He is not simply mistaken, but is willfully ignorant and intentionally misleads his flock, ignoring explanations given that adequately explain his concerns to create the perception that he is unanswered.

I’m all for being nice to people who discuss matters in good faith. But, when it comes to folks like Ray Comfort, who have demonstrated that they want nothing like intellectual honesty to enter the conversation, they deserve nothing but mockery and disdain.

@Baka: I absolutely agree. I wasn’t attempting to give a full explanation, but in my mind “genetic drift” also includes natural selection (which perpetrates the drift) and mutation (which creates the drift).

Maybe I should have added isolation, though, because that is a big factor in causing new species to form. I thought about it, but decided to keep it simple. But I agree it contributes to the formation of species.

So, good points as usual!

Wait…wouldn’t a zebra/lion be a Zion? Or maybe a Libra? Either just seems wrong somehow.

What Baka said.

This last December Scientific American Magazine articles review Darwin’s theory and contemporary research regarding evolution. If I read the articles correctly, a species is defined as being unable to interbred with another species. and produce fertile offspring

The articles require some study and do answer several questions, leaving some remaining puzzles.
I must read the magazine again.

Gary Collins

@affiliatehuddle:

“If I read the articles correctly, a species is defined as being unable to interbred with another species. and produce fertile offspring.”

That’s a pretty good approximation of the Biological Species Concept (BSC), which is the one most commonly taught in school. This species definition was developed by Ernst Mayr while working with birds of paradise, and works well only for some organisms … most commonly large, sexually reproducing vertebrates (i.e. the stuff most people like to look at).

There are lots of exceptions to this definition, however. Most notably, it doesn’t work at all for discussing asexual organisms (e.g. the vast majority of species on the planet). But, there are other species definitions that biologists studying those organisms use. The Phylogenetic Species Concept is a popular alternative that tends to work on many of the same organisms as the BSC as well as many the BSC doesn’t cover.

For those interested, Wikipedia has a pretty good overview of the various species concepts here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

I really wish Ray would pick up a real evolutionary science book and actually try to grasp what it really says. He is wilfully ignorant to the highest degree.

Well, let’s see. This assertion could be used to test whether evolution or creation is true, because it sounds like both would make some predictions on the details here.

Creationism – species are clear cut, well defined “kinds”. Either species can interbreed, or they cannot. Therefore, any shades of grey when it comes to interbreeding are strong and clear arguments against this theory.

Evolution – The ability to interbreed is determined by the genetic differences that accumulate between the two species, especially large scale rearrangements of genes and chromosomes (such as has happened comparatively recently between humans and chimps, where it appears that a chromosome has split in two). Furthermore, we’d expect that the further apart species are genetically, the harder it is for them to reproduce, and the more complex things are for the offspring (e.g. infertility).

Confer: Ligers, Tigons – especially the parts where they were “long thought to be infertile, but actually just a lot less fertile than lions or tigers – Mules and Hinnies.

Or, for clearer proof that the ability to interbreed is not because species exist in separate pigeonholes but have just meandered too far away from each other, consider ring species where a string of species – often existing in neighbouring colonies – are each capable of interbreeding with each other until you reach the tips of the chain. This makes perfect sense if the ability to interbreed is caused by the amount of difference between a species, no sense whatsoever if species are different “kinds”. Where does the barrier between one kind and another fall?

Thanks for the correction.

I meant to add that it might have been the other way around – it’s been a while since I studied this kind of thing in detail – but the sentence was already becoming unweildy, and I was being harried out of the door (might have included links about ligers, tigons, mules and hinnies if I’d had time too).

I have no problem with being mean to Ray for his opinion. I only avoid being mean to people for traits that they do not have any control over. But Ray’s flaw is his own fault. He began with a conclusion, and does all his analysis to support his conclusion. That’s a stupid way to approach truth, and Ray IS equipped with a brain big enough to figure that out, but he hasn’t because he doesn’t want to.

He is willfully ignorant and deserves all the mockery he gets.

His “Athiest’s Worst Nightmare” deal with the banana is the most retarded argument ever.

Ray Comfort is a dishonest and corrupt man. His god is green and crinkly.

Yoda?

Its funny, people are against killing the guilty murderers and rapists… but demand the killing of the most innocent who have not even done one act to deserve death. Sad! Same people love the freedoms this Nation is built upon and deny the very source for such freedoms. This is the typical mindset of those who have opinions for a moral standard and say that there are no absolutes and they are absolutely sure of that.