From: bseymour@encore.com (Burch Seymour)
Subject: Questions for Ted H.
Organization: Encore Computer Corporation
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 18:45:23 GMT


Hi Ted,

I see you are about to post your stuff... again. In preparation for that,
can you give us some answers to these questions? Please?

1) You seem to have a personaly vindetta against Carl Sagan. Why?
   Your posts are almost hateful of the man. Why is that? Why do
   you feel such a need to call his work cow-doo-doo? If he was
   really as wrong as you claim, don't you think there are hundreds,
   or maybe thousands, of grad students, eager to make a name for 
   themselves, who would have published refutations of his work?

2) You theories about Earth in close orbit to a star, thus producing the
   reduced felt effect, have been shown many time to violate reality.
   The earth would be ripped to bite-sized-planet-bits (tm) by tidal
   effects. Yet you cling to the theory, even though you recently
   admitted you have no idea how it would have worked. Why do you
   feel your intuition is more applicable than the work of scientists
   who *can* explain, in meticulous detail, and with experimentally
   verifiable calculations, how the universe works?

3) You rely heavily on your interpretations of ancient myths. If
   we were in a different place in space, with a different sun, how
   come all the ancient astronomical records show exactly the same
   configuration of constellations?

4) Why do you hold Velokovsy (and co.) in such high regards?

5) You claim that "Establishment Science" is a bunch of crap when
   explaining origins issues. Why? By that I mean, why is their
   ability attenuated on that specific issue? They can build spacecraft
   that fly around the solar system with awesome precision. It would
   seem to me that the same skills would give them the ability to
   describe how the planets can, and cannot, move. What would be
   the purpose for this great conspiracy you seem to see?

6) Why do you feel a need for this rather unusual model of Earth's
   history you propose? The only real physical thing you base your
   arguments on (that I've noticed anyway) is the weight of dinosaurs.
   You then twist everything else around that perceived problem. No-one
   else has a problem with the dinosaurs weight. Why can't you just
   modify your thinking to allow that dinosaurs could have existed
   in our concept of 1G?

7) How have your own views been modified over the last few years?
   The point of science is to continually re-evaluate evidence and
   modify theory to fit fact. How has your theory been modified to
   fit facts presented here? Do you even acknowledge that any of
   your critics have provided you with facts?

8) When science contradicts your theory completly (as with the Roche
   limit problem), and your best answer is "I have no idea", why
   should anyone take you seriously?

To close, a story to illustrate point 6. Possibly apocryphal, but so
what :-) RCA was running a test of an early color TV system. Closed
circuit from, I don't know, say Princeton to New York. As a joke the
techs on the transmit side painted a bannana purple, and put it in the
basket of fruit they were using as the "test pattern". On the other end
after a bit of fiddling, the technicians said, "Well the bannana looks
great! But the rest of it is a mess!"

I'll leave it to the reader to figure out how this applies to Ted's
theory of the universe.

-bs-


Newsgroups: talk.origins