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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: numerous responses
Message-ID: <819@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 12:14:29 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.819
Posted: Tue Oct 29 12:14:29 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Nov-85 05:10:11 EST
References: <438@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 207
Summary: 

In article <438@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
>
>     Immanuel Velikovsky  invented  the  "punctuated  equilibria"  notion of
>evolution  (he  called  it  "catastrophic  evolution")  in  1950, and anyone
>interested in this should, by all means, have a copy of "Earth  in Upheaval"
>on his  shelf.

	How do you equate "catatrophic evolution" with "punctuated
equilibria"? The only similarity I see between them is that they both
postulate periods of rapid change alternating with relative stasis.
However, the nature and causes of the rapid change are totally
different in the two "theories". In P.E the change is driven by the
speciatian process itself, and is essentially unrelated to external
events, while Velikovsky's theory is based on periodic global
catastrphes driving the change, with little importance given to
speciation. Under P.E the periods of rapid change are *asynchronous*
between the various lineages, while under Velikovsky's "theory" the
periods of rapid change should be essentially simulataneous among all
life forms.
	Besides which P.E is largely an extension of the ideas of
Ernst Mayr, who started writing in the *40's*, before Velikovsky.

>    Nonetheless,  anyone  who  studies  fossils,
>including  Gould,   has  noticed  the  same  basic  truth  which  Velikovsky
>describes;  that there  simply  ARE  no  intermediate  forms,  and  that the
>changes in  fossil records  going from one geological epoch to another occur
>as if, at each such change,  "a curtain  had been  drawn in  a  play   and a
>complete new cast of characters presented when the curtain was raised again"
>(Velikovsky's words).  
>
	Wrong, this is *not* what Gould, or anyone else, says. There
are many intermediates, but there are often discontinuities in the
chain of intermediates. These discontinuities are *not* restricted to
the epoch boundries, they occur regularly throughout the fossil
record. New forms may appear at almost any point, and old forms my
disappear at almost any point. The epoch boundries are largely
*geological* and represent points of significant climatological or
geophysical change, which are quite naturally associated with an
increased turnover in living species. However these boundries are
*not* by any means sharp, they are usually rather gradual and
indistinct.

>     In like manner, Clube and Napier of the British Royal Observatory, in
>their book "The Cosmic Serpent", report on the  like obvious  fact of global
>catastrophes (obvious  to anyone  who has  read much  in the  way of ancient
>literature) which Velikovsky describes in "Worlds in Collision".

	When was this book published? What are thier backgrounds?

>
>     It  turns  out,  that  some  of  the  major   "punctuation"  marks  are
>discernable,  and  include  the  disaster  which  Louis  and  Walter Alverez
>postulate as  having ended  the age  of dinosaurs,

	Well, actually this is the only one that has any standing that
I know of, and even it is less certain than you seem to imply. In
particular there is considerable evedence for *gradual* change across
the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundry, including a gradual appearence of new
mammalian forms over the last million or so years of the Cretaceous
and the prior extinction of several dinosaurian groups, well before
the Alvarez Event. In addition it is not yet established that the
various anomolous layers around the world are actually synchronous.
All this suggests to me a gradual ecological shift which had already
grealy reduced the number of dinosaurs followed by a series of
meteoric collisions finishing the job. All in all rather similar to
the extinction of Mammoths by the combimed effects of climatic change
and human hunting(where human hunting takes the part of the meteors).

> as well  as the Noachian
>Deluge, which  most scientists still wrongly regard as a fairy-tale.
	Evidence? Ovid was not a scientist, he was a collector of
stories. Even if he were a scientist, science is a dynamic process and
any studies that long ago would have long since been supercede by more
detailed, recent studies. Give me recent(last 20 years) *scientific*
evidence for a world-wide deluge. Remember, we are learning new
things all the time, much of what we thought we knew even 20 years ago
has been found to be inaccurate. This is why *recent* references are
important, to make sure that the best available data are being used.
>
>Next Case,  Matt Crawford's article:
>
>     Sorry Matt, but no thinking person could buy this line of reasoning.   The
>cosmologists have at their disposal, as Archimedes would have said, a lever and
>a place on which  to stand  i.e. something  other than  theories to  work with.
>They  have  measurable  distances,  measurable  properties of light, measurable
>radio emissions  etc.  and  sooner  or  later  would  have  arrived  at correct
>conclusions  regarding  the  universe  as  a  whole, with or without geologists
>around.

	What measurable distances?? I am sorry but we have really only
measured the distances to the planets and to the *very nearest* stars,
everything else is conclusion and deduction! You do not seem to
realize just how indirect most astronomical "measurements" are! So
what if we can measure the properties of light, if uniformitarianism
doesn't hold we cannot assume that these properties are the same out
there among the stars and so cannot make any deductions at all. Since
your arguments against geological dating are based on denying
uniformitarianism you arew attacking the basis of astronomical
measurement just as much as geological measurement!

> There are many things which argue against the notion of geologists and
>paleontologists having  a "better  understanding" of anything than cosmologists
>do:  their (paleontologists) gullible acceptance of Piltdown creatures (man and
>chicken),  the  obvious  huge  differences  in  the  ages assigned to things by
>geologists and  anthropologists in  instances in  which the  techniques of both
>disciplines are applicable, ...
>
	Can you give any *recent* examples of these sorts of things,
remember our techniques are continually being revised and improved.
Or do you really think that astronomers are immune to gross errors
like the that? How about the Cepheid Yardstick fiasco? The distances
estimated by the astronomers were off by a factor of *two* because
they had used the wrong type of Cepheid to calibrate the principle
medium range estimation method, which was based on the period-
luminosity relationship of Cepheid variables(but the *other* type of
Cepheid variables)
>
>
>     Finally, consider the true gem of the book  of Isaiah,  chapter 14, verses
>12 through 21, more or less:
>
>     "How art  thou fallen  from heaven,  O Lucifer, son of the morning (light-
>     bearer, morning star)!  How art thou cut down to  the ground,  which didst
>     weaken the  nations....  They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee,
>     and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble,
>     that  did  shake  kingdoms;    That  made  the  world  as a wilderness and
>     destroyed the cities thereof.....
>
>     This was a hymn of thanksgiving for Venus's having finally  settled into a
>stable orbit  which no longer threatened the earth.  Isaiah not an eye-witness?
>You'd better think again.
>
	Oh really! Well all I can say is you have a very poor
understanding of the scriptures if you can seriously consider tis
explanation! Isaiah was not even talking about a physical event! He is
furthermore talking of a *past* event, I see no evidence in the text
that he claims to have actually witnessed this happening!
>
>
>                                   ELEPHANTS
>
>From Chris Lewis's recent flame:
>     My understanding of the basic food chain in the far north is that plankton
>live with no need for warmth,  little fish  eat plankton,  big fish  eat little
>fish, penguins,  seals, and eskimos eat big fish, polar bears and killer whales
>eat all of above except plankton.   Elephants  don't figure  into any  of this;
>the finding  of mammoth bodies, perfectly preserved, in places which have never
>thawed from the day they died to this day (and  hence which  could not possibly
>support  mammoths)  indicates  the  occurrence  of  something very strange.

	You seem to have the Polar Ice Cap confused with the Arctic
Tundra. The food chain you are talking about is the Ice Cap food chain,
not the Tundra food chain, which is based on small shrubs, short
grasses, and hardy sedges, all of which would (and still do) provide
adequate food for large herbivores, including Caribou and *Yak*.

> If
>mammoths were so well adapted to cold weather,  they should  still be  found in
>the  arctic;

	Why? Why shouldn't they become extinct like so many other
animals?

>Finally, it should be obvious to anybody that caribou and deer migrate somewhat
>FASTER than  elephants.   A herd  of mammoths  might could survive by migrating
>back and forth between Georgia and Maryland, say, but a herd of mammoths trying
>to  get  to  Novo  Sibirsk  from  anyplace where they could hope to survive the
>winter would not even get there in time to turn back.
>
	But why shoiuld they need to migrate? Yak don't! And Reindeer
stay in the Arctic all year round, beeing more nomadic than migratory.
Bison can eat even in deep snow by "burrowing" for the dried graas
beneath the snow, an elephant-like Mammoth could have done this even
easier with its long snout(trunk) and powerful tusks!

>
>  In other words, the whole thing is somewhat
>more controllable than hot-air ballooning, but not much more so.  This wouldn't
>have helped  the Quetzalcoatlus-Northropi's  children very  much, assuming that
>creature  lived  in  our  gravity  and, thus, perforce functioned entirely as a
>glider.  Their lives would have depended on their parents  getting back  to the
>nest EVERY time, and micro-buses and knock-off wings weren't available.

	PLEASE, noone hase *ever* said they function *entirely* by
gliding. And thier wings were quite capable of withstanding the minor
stresses of the *gentle* flapping necessary to provide full control to
a predominant glider. All you need to do is watch vultures circling
without flapping to realise that they have almost complete control of
where they go. They make very precise *repeated* circles at a
constant altitude, gliding all the while! Pehaps human made fixed-wing
gliders do not have this control, but observation shows that flex-wing
avian gliders *do*.
>
>You seem to have missed the entire section on pterosaurs in my long "ultrasaur"
>article.  Check out Adrian Desmond's  "Hot  Blooded  Dinosaurs",  page  182 and
>thereabouts, for more on the limits of size for flying creatures.    

	And you seem to have missed my discussion on sensationalism in
popular science books to keep the audience interested! Dr Desmond
nowhere *really* claims that these pterosaurs were too large to fly,
he only pretended to do so to catch your eye.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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