One of the most common religious challenges to evolutionary biology is framed as a simple demand:
“Show me where a new kind was created.”
It is often presented as a scientific objection. It is not.
The argument depends on a term that has no standing in biology, no agreed definition, and no measurable boundary. “Kind” is not a biological category. It is a theological inheritance, repurposed to resist conclusions that unsettle long-standing beliefs about humanity, creation, and divine action.
This article is not aimed at theology as such, nor at religious traditions that accept evolution and read Genesis as theological narrative rather than biological description. That position is well represented in contemporary scholarship.
Instead, this article addresses a narrower but more problematic move: the attempt to retain theological authority while denying scientific conclusions, by importing “kinds” into biology as if it were an empirical category.
That move fails scientifically. More importantly, it fails theologically.
What Is Meant by “Kind”?
Despite its frequent use, “kind” is almost never defined with precision.
In practice, it gestures toward familiar groupings: dogs, cats, birds, humans. The suggestion is that variation can occur within these groups, but that there are divinely imposed limits beyond which change cannot go.
The term is typically justified by appeal to Genesis, particularly phrases describing organisms reproducing “according to their kinds” (Genesis 1). This language reflects an ancient Near Eastern worldview, long predating genetics, evolutionary theory, or the concept of deep time.
As biblical scholars have repeatedly noted, Genesis is not attempting biological taxonomy. John Walton, for example, argues that Genesis is concerned with functional order and meaning, not material origins or mechanisms (Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One).
The attempt to convert “kind” into a biological constraint is therefore not a faithful reading of the text. It is a post-biblical innovation driven by modern anxieties.
“Kind” Is Not a Scientific Category
Biology classifies life using a hierarchical system grounded in evidence:
Species
Genus
Family
Order
Class
Phylum
These categories are imperfect and occasionally debated, but they are defined, testable, and revisable. They reflect evolutionary relationships inferred from genetics, morphology, development, and reproductive isolation (Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species).
There is no rank called “kind”.
It does not appear in biology textbooks. It does not appear in peer-reviewed evolutionary literature. It does not appear in phylogenetic modelling.
This absence is not ideological. It is methodological. “Kind” lacks the properties required of a scientific concept.
As Karl Popper famously argued, a scientific claim must be falsifiable. A category that cannot, even in principle, be shown wrong does not function scientifically (Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery).
“Kind” is unfalsifiable by design.
Common Objection 1: “Microevolution Is Real, Macroevolution Is Not”
This is a standard retreat.
The claim is that small changes occur within kinds, but large changes across kinds do not.
The difficulty is elementary: macroevolution is accumulated microevolution. There is no separate mechanism. No new biological process suddenly appears.
As Theodosius Dobzhansky put it, “Macroevolution is the cumulative result of microevolutionary processes” (Genetics and the Origin of Species).
If mutations occur, heritability exists, populations diverge, and reproductive isolation arises, then large-scale divergence is inevitable given sufficient time.
Accepting microevolution while denying macroevolution is accepting the steps while denying the staircase.
The Moving Boundary Problem
The most revealing feature of the “kind” argument is its elasticity.
When speciation is demonstrated, it is dismissed as “still the same kind”.
When genetics reveals deep common ancestry, it becomes “variation within a kind”.
When transitional fossils are presented, they are “different forms of the same kind”.
At no point is the boundary defined in advance.
This is the hallmark of a non-scientific claim. As philosopher Imre Lakatos observed, theories that retreat from evidence without generating new predictions are degenerative, not progressive.
“Kinds” retreat endlessly.
Evolution Does Not Predict Sudden Category Jumps
The demand to “show a new kind” rests on a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.
Evolution does not predict abrupt transformations or sharp categorical breaks. It predicts gradual change, population divergence, and lineage splitting over long timescales.
Ernst Mayr emphasised that species boundaries are historical outcomes, not fixed essences (What Evolution Is).
The expectation of fixed biological boundaries is theological, not biological.
Common Objection 2: “We Never See One Kind Turn Into Another”
This objection demands what the theory does not claim.
No serious biologist expects to observe millions of years of change within a human lifetime. For the same reason, geologists do not deny plate tectonics because continents do not visibly move on a daily basis.
What we do observe are:
• speciation events
• genetic divergence
• transitional fossils
• nested genetic hierarchies
These observations align precisely with evolutionary predictions (Futuyma, Evolution).
Rejecting evolution because deep time cannot be watched in real time is a category error.
Speciation Is Observed
Speciation has been documented repeatedly, particularly in plants, insects, and microorganisms.
Ring species, polyploid speciation in plants, and laboratory-observed reproductive isolation provide direct evidence that populations can diverge into reproductively isolated lineages (Coyne and Orr, Speciation).
When this evidence is dismissed as “still the same kind”, the mechanism is conceded while the implication is denied.
Only time separates small divergence from large divergence. The fossil record supplies that time.
Fossils and Transitional Forms
The claim that there are no transitional fossils is demonstrably false.
The fossil record contains well-documented transitional sequences: fish to tetrapods, reptiles to mammals, terrestrial mammals to whales, theropod dinosaurs to birds.
As palaeontologist Donald Prothero notes, every fossil is transitional between what preceded it and what followed (Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters).
The objection survives only by redefining “transitional” to mean something evolution does not predict.
Genetics and Nested Hierarchies
Genetics presents perhaps the most decisive challenge to fixed kinds.
DNA comparisons reveal nested hierarchies of similarity. Humans share more genetic material with chimpanzees than with gorillas, more with gorillas than with monkeys, and so on.
This pattern is exactly what common ancestry predicts. It is not what independent, fixed creation predicts.
As Richard Dawkins notes, nested hierarchy is the signature of descent with modification (The Greatest Show on Earth).
“Kinds” do not explain this pattern. They merely assert boundaries where none are found.
Common Objection 3: “No New Genetic Information Is Added”
This claim collapses under scrutiny.
Gene duplication, mutation, recombination, and regulatory change introduce novel genetic material and novel function. These mechanisms are well documented in molecular biology (Lynch, The Origins of Genome Architecture).
The objection survives only by redefining “information” so narrowly that no biological process could ever satisfy it.
That is not science. It is semantics deployed defensively.
Hybridisation and the Collapse of Boundaries
If kinds were fixed, reproductive barriers should be absolute.
They are not.
Hybridisation occurs across what are supposed to be firm boundaries: canids, felids, bears, and even hominins. Modern humans carry Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA.
These facts are incompatible with rigid biological kinds and entirely compatible with evolutionary history.
Why “Kinds” Are Theologically Necessary
The persistence of “kinds” is not explained by evidence. It is explained by theology.
“Kinds” protect two commitments that evolution destabilises.
Human Exceptionalism
Many religious frameworks require humans to be categorically distinct.
If humans evolved from earlier animals, then biological continuity undermines attempts to ground human uniqueness in nature itself. Theological claims about the soul, moral agency, or divine image must then be interpreted, not biologically enforced.
“Kinds” preserve the boundary by relocating it into biology.
This is why resistance intensifies around human evolution. The threat is not zoological. It is existential.
Fixity of Creation
Genesis presents creation as ordered and purposeful. Some readers interpret this as biological fixity.
Evolution replaces fixity with emergence.
Some theologians accept this and reinterpret Genesis accordingly. Others attempt to preserve fixity by claiming that all meaningful diversity existed from the beginning, merely unfolding over time.
“Kinds” perform this work.
Ironically, this move is not demanded by the text itself, but by a modern anxiety about change.
Common Objection 4: “Genesis Says God Created Kinds”
This is where the argument leaves science entirely.
Genesis is not a genetics textbook. It is an ancient theological narrative addressing order, purpose, and identity.
Treating a poetic phrase as a biological constraint is a category error. It asks scripture to answer questions it was never written to address.
As biblical scholarship widely recognises, forcing modern scientific expectations onto ancient texts distorts both theology and science (Walton; Enns, The Evolution of Adam).
Why This Is Dangerous for Theology
“Kinds” are not merely incorrect. They are corrosive.
They encourage believers to defend undefined concepts, reject converging evidence, and treat inquiry as disloyal. Over time, this produces a brittle faith that collapses under serious examination.
Many leave religion not because of evolution, but because they recognise that they are being asked to protect a word rather than pursue truth.
Conclusion
“Kinds” are not a scientific alternative to evolution. They are not a competing theory. They are not even a coherent concept.
They are a theological defence mechanism, pressed into service where interpretation would suffice.
When someone says, “Show me a new kind being created”, what they are really saying is, “Show me evidence that violates a boundary I refuse to define.”
Science cannot answer that demand, not because evolution is false, but because the demand is empty.
Evolution does not fail because of kinds.
Kinds fail because of evolution.
Selected References
• Dobzhansky, T. Genetics and the Origin of Species
• Mayr, E. What Evolution Is
• Coyne, J. and Orr, H. Speciation
• Futuyma, D. Evolution
• Prothero, D. Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters
• Dawkins, R. The Greatest Show on Earth
• Lynch, M. The Origins of Genome Architecture
• Popper, K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery
• Walton, J. The Lost World of Genesis One
• Enns, P. The Evolution of Adam
Good article. You may be interested in some of my work.
Common ancestry among different “kinds”. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/01/ERV-FAQ.html
Still trying to get more organised, but, https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/02/contents-post-at-230225.html