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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: The Rock of Ages and the Ages of Rocks
Message-ID: <801@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Oct-85 16:26:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.801
Posted: Mon Oct 21 16:26:58 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 07:34:44 EDT
References: <430@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 241

In article <430@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
>
>               This  article  deals  with  the  major  point  on which most
>          Velikovskian catastrophists like myself concur with creationists:
>          the question  of "how  old is  the earth,  it's life forms and so
>          forth".  I have been accused of "helping" the creationists before
>          by  other  net.origins  contributors.   I am no creationist.  The
>          creationists, like  traditional  scientists,  are  SURE  of their
>          position.  I  regard the question of creation versus evolution as
>          one of life's unknowables. 

	First error, no scientist worhty of the name is ever *sure* of
anything, except perhaps the raw observations. Evolutionary theory is,
however, the best available explanation of the observations.

>	   I  am certain  that traditional (slow
>          and  imperceptible)  evolution  could  account for the difference
>          between, say, a wolf and a collie, but for no changes larger than
>          that.
>
	For someone who claims that the answers are unknowable you are
awfully certain of something that has no basis in observation.

>	   I  am  certain that Velikovskian (catastrophic) evolution
>          could explain the transmutation of species, ONCE YOU ALREADY HAVE
>          COMPLICATED  LIFE  FORMS  ON  OUR  PLANET  TO  BEGIN  WITH.  I am
>          uncertain as to whether even catastrophic evolution could explain
>          the rise of our present complicated life forms from single-celled
>          animals.  
>
	Interesting, but what mechanism would produce speciation at
the rate required? None is known, and all but the most extreme
Punctuationalists believe that a speciation event *requires* at least
a few thousand years to occur. Velikovskian catastrophes might cause
mass extinctions, but are far rapid to permit speciation by any
plausible mechanism.

>          And, from what  little  I  have  seen  of  the emerging
>          science of  creationism as evidenced by the articles of Kukuk and
>          Brown on the net, I am convinced that it is a bad  mistake on the
>          part of  scientists not  to take  them seriously.  These guys are
>          essentially  correct  in  challenging  the  notion  which  modern
>          science has of the age of the earth.

	When they provide real evidence, properly reproducible by
other researchers, we will at least listen. Until then they are no
more scientists than Astrologers.
>
>               The funny thing about the creation/evolution debate is that,
>          on  this  one  critical  and  all  important  point,  it  is  the
>          scientists  who  are  dealing  from a position of AXIOMATICS, and
>          therefore dogma.

	What axioms? The only axioms I am really aware of are the
axioms of the scientific method. If you eliminate those you no longer
have *science*, you have religion, or philosophy, or even
superstition.
>
>                                  The Ages of Rocks
>
>               There is no reason  to  doubt  the  measurements  of stellar
>          distances which  modern scientists work with.  There is likewise,
>          no reason to doubt that they  are at  least in  the ballpark with
>          their  ages  FOR  THE  UNIVERSE  AS  A  WHOLE, which are based on
>          knowledge of stellar distances and properties of light.   But the
>          ages which  traditional scientists give for our own solar system,
>          for this planet, for  the various  geological epochs  this planet
>          has  undergone,  and,  generally,  for  every  kind of an ORIGENS
>          related timeframe, are not based on any such solid ground.  There
>          are good reasons for doubting these schemes.
>
	Why are astronomical measurements so much more reliable than
geological? Astronomical measurements are based largely upon
*extrapolation*, a nototiously unreliable method. They are also based
on a very strict form of Uniformitarianism.

>               Beginning  around  1800  or  so, Lamarck and Lyell and other
>          scientists developed  what came  to be  known as  the doctrine of
>          uniformity, upon which nearly all of our present natural sciences
>          are based.  This doctrine states that  the conditions  we observe
>          in the present can be assumed to have prevailed in all past ages,
>          that all changes which ever occurred in geological and biological
>          forms occured in slow and minute, nearly inperceptable steps, the
>          way they  do now.   This amounts  to an  axiom, or  an article of
>          faith;   it is  not something  which anyone  has ever proved, yet
>          this basic assumption stands squarely at the bottom  of virtually
>          every  scheme  by  which  scientists try to estimate ancient time
>          frames.

	And also every scheme by which scientist try to estimate the
distances and ages of stars and galaxies! You have really mis-stated
the axiom. It is more correctly stated as: The *laws* and *processes*
in effect are the same everywhere and in every time throughout the
universe. Catastrophic event are allowed, *if* they are observable as
occuring today somewhere in the universe. This axiom is one of the
central axioms of the scientific method. Without it there would be no
way to study events remote in time and space, since there would be no
locally accessible method of verifying interpretations.  If I cannot
assume that the laws of physics are the same in the vicinity of a
distant star I cannot rely on any comparison of observations of it
with observation of events in Earth laboratories. This invalidates
spectroscopy, orbital mass calculations, and much much more. Similar
considerations apply to the study of past events.
 
>	   Darwin based his  theory of  evolution on  this concept,
>          because the notion of CATASTROPHIC evolution, or macro-evolution,
>          had not occured to him.  He  believed that  huge time  spans were
>          needed  for  any  reasonable  theory  of  evolution, and that the
>          standard creationist theories of HIS  time  didn't  give  him any
>          more  than  the  6000  or  7000 years which Bishop Usher and like
>          minded folk believed in.
>
	Garbage! During the time Darwin was first learning about
biology Catastrophism was one of the seriously considered theories
about the history of the Earth. To say that he had not thought about
it would be a grave insult to Darwin's intelligence! By the time he
started serious work on his theory of evolution the catastrophic
theories had largely been rejected as being to unwieldy and contrived.
If he accepted the evidence available to him of the inadequacy of such
theories, that is merely the scientific method!

>               In taking this route, these scientists adopted what amounted
>          to an  AXIOMATIC approach to an emperical science.  When you date
>          geological strata using the assumption that  sedimentation always
>          occurred  at  present  rates,  never  mind  how  quickly a global
>          disaster which  involved  large  scale  flooding  could  put down
>          layers of  sediment,

	Noone has ever made this silly assumption to my knowledge. All
that is assumed is that sedimentation in the past has occured in
generally similar manners to the ways it occurs now. In fact the
nature of the sediment often contains clues as to rates of
sedimentation, so the stricter assumption is unnecessary and
unusable.

>	   when  you use radio-carbon dating and assume
>          that present ratios of radio to ordinary carbon  have always held
>          good, when  you use similar assumptions on every other scheme for
>          dating ancient time-frames,

	These assumptions were only accepted *provisionally*, and
subject to later verification. In the case of radio-carbon dating
recent research has provided independent estimates of past carbon
ratios, allowing the dating method to be adjusted for actual ratios
rather than simply assuming a constant ratio.
(Look at the assumptions about red-shift which are so central to
cosmological distance measurement - they are very similar to these
assumptions)

>             In  real  life,  outside  the ivory
>          tower, when you take a wrong turn at the crossroads, the distance
>          you have  covered since  the wrong  turn is  not called PROGRESS.
>          That distance  is merely  the measure  of how  far you have to go
>          BACK.
>
	Science doesn't work that way, since there are no roads
except those we make ourselves. When scientist find out they are wrong
the new data usually points to a better solution, thus avoiding the
need to go *back*. We usually end up going *sideways* at the *worst*.
>
>               The scientists who developed  the  principal  of uniformity,
>          aside  from  commiting  themselves  and  future  scientists to an
>          axiomatic approach to what should be emperical science,

	Except that even empIrical reasoning requires axioms, there is
no avoiding them! And the principle of uniformitarianism is necessary
for reasoning about remote events on the basis of proximate data.

>
>                                     The Big Lie
>
>          1.   The big  lie:  Man  has been  on this  planet for at least a
>               million years, but only learned to read and write within the
>               last few thousand years.
>
>               The reality,  as stated  by an  Egyptian priest, speaking to
>               the Greek sage, Solon,  in Plato's  dialogue, "The Timaeus":
>
>               "Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be
>               provided with letters and the other  requisites of civilized
>               life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like
>               a pestilence, comes pouring down, and  leaves only  those of
>               you who  are destitute  of letters and education; and so you
>               have to  begin  all  over  again  like  chilodren,  and know
>               nothing of what happened in ancient times, either amongst us
>               or amongst  yourselves.

	THis sounds very like a description of events like our recent
Middle Ages, which did not in the least fool archaeologists into
thinking reading and writing were invented only a few hundred years
ago! Such events have indeed occured quite frequently, and could well
have been known to Egyptian scholars. Ancient Egypt had fallen to
barbarian invassions, as had Mykenean "Greece". The Cretan empire had
been destroyed by a volcanic explosion. The Chaldean, Babylonian, and
Assyrian civilizations in Mesopotamia had been destroyed. What reason
is there to believe that this is *not* what the priest was talking
about?
>
>          2.   The big lie:  The  ancients saw  the world  as a  small flat
>               place, and  typically knew  little of the world beyond their
>               own back yards.
>
	Well, that depends on where you are talking about, and in what
era of history! The ancient Greeks had figured out that the Earth was
a sphere, but they did not have general education, so only a few
scholars ever knew it! When the Greek civilization was absorbed the
knowledge was lost. certainly the average person did *percieve* the
world that way. In fact most people today *still* do! Only here, in a
country with widespread education, and in other similar countries, is
this viewpoint truly minor.
>
>          3.   The big lie:  Stories of global floods and  disasters really
>               amount to  some imaginative primative hyping a story about a
>               flood in his back yard, or  the local  river overflowing its
>               banks,

	This is not quite what is being claimed by archaeologist and
anthropologists. A better example might be Paul Bunyan, or Billy the
Kid as he is popularly believed to have been, or even Robin Hood. Such
stories *grow* with time. It is like the fish that got away!
>
>               Plato and  Ovid were  very definitely  not talking about the
>          woodshed burning down last  Tuesday night.   It is  not Plato and
>          Ovid, but  rather the scientists and scholars who perpetuate this
>          kind of notion who deserve to be treated like idiots.

	If this is what scientist believed, thay *would* be idiots.
How about a *major*, large-scale draught that grew over the years to
be a global disaster.("You think that was someting - well let me tell
you what happened to ME during the gret draught"). Or maybe it was
some other disaster that got exaggerated in a similar manner.
Remember these authors were not talking from first-hand knoeledge,
they were not even basing thier writings on interviews with survivors,
they were relying wholely on hear-say evidence. The scientific method
hadn't been invented yet.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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