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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: catastrophic evolution - reply to Bill Jefferys
Message-ID: <510@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Aug-85 17:38:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.510
Posted: Thu Aug  8 17:38:15 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Aug-85 06:37:11 EDT
References: <365@imsvax.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 148

I have submitted another article on Pseudoscience, which addresses
parts of Ted Holden's recent submission.  In this article I address
some other specific points he raised.

>>These    days,   debates   between   Creationists   and
>>Evolutionists are regularly won by evolutionists.
>
>     Where?  When?  I mean in a reasonably well attended
>     setting ,  not  Rhetoric 101  at UT.  Like I say, I
>     haven't heard about it.  

For example, at the University of Minnesota last
February 18th, where Duane Gish, Creationism's
most formidable debater (and one has to give him every bit
of respect for his debating skills), was soundly
defeated.  He was challenged publically, as he has been for the
past several years, to give references for his amazing claims 
that proteins in human blood are more similar to those in 
bullfrog blood than they are in chimpanzee blood.  When he 
repeatedly avoided answering this question, the audience gave 
him an well-deserved hard time.

One scientist who has debated Dr. Gish recently, Emanuel Sillman,
reported after his experience (in Creation/Evolution Newsletter
Vol. 4, No. 4), "No scientist *who prepares well* should
overlook the opportunity to debate Gish or Morris.  It may
well be that you don't make any converts, but you certainly can
raise questions in the minds of any group of people...The 
arguments [Gish and Morris] raise are familiar, and easily 
rebutted."  I might mention that in Sillman's debate with Gish, 
the audience was "stacked" against him, because the debate 
was sponsored by four fundamentalist churches and the local 
Teens for Christ.  Sillman, at least, isn't afraid of the big 
bad Creationists!

>>    The probability  that  any  of  Ron's  arguments is
>>valid is precisely 0.  In science, it is not the number
>>of arguments but their correctness that counts. 
>
>     This one speaks for itself.  It obviously tells an
>     impartial   observer  more about  the author  than 
>     about the subject matter.

Ron has not defended a single one of his arguments.  If any 
of them had had any validity, he would certainly have done so, 
but he hasn't.  He doesn't even have the excuse of claiming
that net.origins is a refereed journal, and that the evolutionist
conpiracy would reject his article!  So Ron himself has 
shown us by his eloquent silence that his arguments are not 
credible.

>>Groups of humans with six fingers are known.  The trait
>>breeds true.   There is  one such  group in (I believe)
>>Appalachia.
>
>     Like I  said,  these  people  are  fortunate  to be
>     living in  the 20'th  century.  Being burned at the
>     stake was never much fun.  But  six-fingered humans
>     seems  to  have  been  the  wrong  example  to use.
>     Mr. Jefferys seems to have missed the logical point
>     because the  example.  Six and five-fingered humans
>     could interbreed.  A  change  from  one  species to
>     another with  no possability of interbreeding could
>     only happen if more than  one  of  the  new species
>     appeared   at   one  time  i.e. under  catastrophic
>     circumstances as I described. 

This is a strawman argument.  An incorrect mechanism for 
speciation is proposed as if that is what evolutionists
believe.  Then the strawman is demolished.  No evolutionist
claims that new species arise from a single mutation.  
Speciation is believed to occur after a breeding population 
becomes isolated, and as a result of the cumulative effects 
of many genetic changes.  

It is easy to find examples of this.  For one, there are 
"ring species" of birds, which is a chain of bird populations, 
extending entirely around the globe.  Each population interbreeds 
freely with its neighbors, yet at the two ends of the chain, 
(where they join up) the populations are reproductively isolated, 
and are in fact different species.  This situation probably
arose as members of the population migrated around the globe,
maintaining their interbreeding with neighboring members of the
population; yet when the migrating population eventually met
up with the original population , they were so different that 
they had to be classified as different species.

In general, given time, a reproductively isolated population
will evolve into a new species.  If six-fingered humans were to
be isolated from the general population for long enough, they
would also eventually evolve into a distinct species.

>>Finally,  mutation   is   probably   a   minor  (though
>>important)  mechanism  in  evolution.   Duplication and
>>rearrangement of genetic  material  are  thought  to be
>>much more  important, and  they are experimentally well
>>documented.
>
>     Duplication  and  rearrangement  by   who  or  what
>     agency?   Dr. Frankenstein?   My  understanding  is
>     that when this occurs naturally, the  clinical term
>     is "cancer".

You are misinformed.  This process goes on all the time in the
production of the gametes.  Look up "meiosis" in any elementary
biology book.

>>It  is  well  established  that the first people in the
>>Western hemisphere were responsible  for the extinction
>>of  most  of  the  large  mammals  in  North  and South
>>America.  They had nothing but stone weapons, but their
>>methods were extremely effective.
>
>     I love this one!  The creatures Mr. Jefferys has in
>     mind include several which I wouldn't  want to face
>     with anything  less than  a 50 caliber machine gun.
>     My favorite ancient animal  is  the  pteratorn, not
>     really a  mammal, but  why be strict? ...

How is this relevant?  How can humans cause the extinction 
of a species that died out 60 million years before there 
were any humans? 

Ted later gives a long quotation about ancient legends, but I will
pass on it.  For one thing,I am not competent to discuss ancient 
legends.  For another, I question that such legends can seriously 
be considered in evidence of any kind of astronomical events.  
Carl Sagan remarked that when he discussed *Worlds in Collision* 
with someone who was competent in the area of Semitic Studies, 
the latter remarked that although the Assyriology, Egyptology, 
Biblical scholarship and all of that Talmudic and Midrashic 
*pilpul* was, of course, nonsense, he was impressed by the astronomy. 
Sagan remarked that his view was quite the opposite.

By the way, I would like to know if the more sensible Creationists
on the net, such as Paul Dubois, appreciate this "help" they are
getting from the Velikovskyites.  It seems to me that by making 
the Creationist cause look even more ridiculous, the Velikovkyites 
are doing more harm to the Creationist cause than good.  Am I right?

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
	{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill	(uucp)
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