From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Egg-shaped antediluvian world
Date: 28 Sep 92 04:10:06 GMT
Organization: HTE

In article <Bv7qHw.Bpt@cs.dal.ca>, hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde) writes:
*In article <37@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
*|> In article <Bv3F7o.EE5@cs.dal.ca>, hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde) writes:

*|> *|> A recent issue of the Aeon journal, which concerns itself with
*|> *|> the nature of the antedeluvian world, carried my article concerning
*|> *|> sauropod dinosaurs, as well as a somewhat longer and more interesting
*|> *|> article by Lynn Rose involving continental drift theory.  The average
*|> *|> viewer of these groups will be vaguely aware that continents are thought
*|> *|> to have drifted over the last 200 million years or so

*|> *	Incorrect.  Continents have been drifting since crust was
*|> *	first formed.  
 
*|> My statement clearly indicates <from their position/conformation as of
*|> 200,000,000 years ago> and says nothing of possibilities prior to that.

*	So, *do* you agree that the continents drifted for a time
*	prior to Pangaea? 

No.  It is possible that the earth belonged to a system entirely similar in
nature to what I have described since its formation.  IN such case, earth 
will have arrived in its present form via a long series of catastrophic events,
all drifting involving far shorter periods of time than you would have others
believe, with longer intervening periods when formations likely represented
cause/effect relationships with the changing solarsystem.

In reality, it is impossible to say what may or may not have been prior to 
Pangaea, or at least in my view.  All such projections are based on
uniformity.

Uniformity is an axiomatic system.  You cannot prove uniformity, and all
classical literature, as I have noted, weighs heavily against it.  All
physical evidence, properly analyzed, as I have noted, weighs heavily
against it.


*
*|> *, but is probably
*|> *|> unaware of the rather startling configuration which they are thought to
*|> *|> have been in 100 - 200 million years ago.
*|> *
*|> *
*|> *	Again you have problems with numbers.  Pangaea began to break up
*|> *	about 190 million years ago, its final assembly was about
*|> *	280 million years ago.  
*|> 
*|> 
*|> 
*|> You are experiencing problems with numbers and with the English language.
*|> 
*|> 190 is between 100 and 200.  If Pangaea began to break up 190 million years
*|> ago (your version), then my statement that the continents were still in
*|> this conformation 200 million years ago is correct.
*
*	Your statement clearly implies that Pangaea existed during the
*	era 200-100 million years ago.  It did not.  A small point, but
*	indicative of your level of knowledge.

My statement clearly means:  "At a time, which various scholars place
somewhere between 100M and 200M years ago..."

You say you're connected with a university?  They've got an English
department there, yes?  Just walk in the door and tell them you need help...
*
 
*|> As always, I was quoting standard time scales, which are wrong.  All such
*|> dating schemes are totally based upon uniformitarian assumptions. 


*	Good.  Now you can read my response to Bales and tell me how
*	uniformitarian assumptions cause astronomical and radioisotopic
*	dates to yield the same result.

I'll do even better than that.  I'll give you a concrete example from 
another walk of life, in which the same sort of thing takes place and
for essentially the same reasons.  This will allow you to understand
that the sort of human failings which have accumulated in your discipline
and other natural history related disciplines over the last 150 years 
or so are not isolated or unique.


I'm going to have to change the names in this one, but the story is true;
something like 60M of taxpayers' money got thrown away with next to nothing
to show for it.  T corp. had devised an unworkable model for a redundantly
safe network database, roughly 500 nodes over ethernet, in which any database
update replicated itself over around 50 servers.  M Corp, which had an
oversite position on this contract, turned in a report indicating that this
couldn't work, and based on queueing theory;  three of the four names on the
M Corp report were PHD's in math sciences.  T Corp turned in its version
of a study indicating that no problems existed with the design, and the
big brass tossed the M. Corp report.  Later, a test message to the effect:
"We have gone to war." took over 48 hours getting to all nodes due to
database loading.  That, to me at least, indicates that somebody does not
have his priorities in order.

Later, I was told that two of the three people from M Corp. 
had taken their version of the study 
over to T. Corp., and asked the gentleman whose name appeared on the T study
to read their version of the study and tell them what they had done wrong.
The man replied:  "Nothing.  That's what my first version looked like, and
my second, third, fourth....  after around the ninth time this thing got
rejected by management, it was time to get on with my life."

Any reasonable person would have to understand that no establishment
scientist over the last 100 years or so could easily publish anything which
flew in the face of accepted time scales, and that these scales, once
generally agreed upon, thus become reinforced by everything which ever
gets published afterwards.

A lot of work goes into MAKING those sorts of numbers match up..



*
* One
*|> event such as the flood at Noah's time, or the conflagration which Velikovsky
*|> described in WinC, and all such dating schemes go straight out the window.
*
*	How does a flood alter Rb/Sr dating?  Do explain.
*|> 
*|> *|> This picture has been painstakingly peiced together from data involving
*|> *|> the fits of the various continental borders.  The most striking feature
*|> *|> of the entire picture is the Sea of Tethys, a monstrous intrusion into
*|> *|> the very center of the all-continent mass which leads a viewer to see a
*|> *|> missing wedge;  the entire configuration resembles nothing so much as a
*|> *|> pac-man with its mouth agape.
*|> 
*|> *	The supercontinent consists of two large land masses, Gondwanaland
*|> *	in the south and what is essentially Asia in the north.  They are
*|> *	connected by a peninsula made up, I believe, of parts of what is
*|> *	now North America and Europe.  So Pangaea is thicker at each end
*|> *	than in the middle - this produces a large bay.  Big deal.
*|> 
*|> It IS a big deal, and one which doesn't belong, as I've noted.
*
*	But *why* does it not belong?  Just saying it doesn't make it
*	so.  Give us a reason.

I already have.  Logically, the land masses will not end up in one place
by sheer chance, just by drifting.  Either some force endemic in the earth
causes them to roll "downhill" into one place, or some titanic force
of attraction of extraterrestrial nature pulls them into one place.  No
evidence of such a terrestrial force exists.  An extraterrestrial force
as I've described would pull the land masses into a circular form;  the
missing wedge, the Tethys Sea, is thus an anomalie.



*|> It amazes me that you, PHD degree and all, cannot comprehend it.  The odds
*|> against all continents ending up in one place are certainly a good deal 
*|> greater than the 64/1 figure I noted. 
*	
*	Probability arguments are fairly straightforward.  I challenge
*	you to prove that the odds are that figure or less.  If it is as
*	simple as you say it shouldn't be much trouble, should it?

None at all.  2^8 = 64, the odds against all continents simply drifting
into one hemisphere, which represents half the earth.  The area occupied
by Pangaea represents considerably less than that, hence the odds against
all land ending up in wuch a confined space may be said to be greater than
64/1.

QED

*|> *	Anyway, Pangaea is not the only time the continents were all in
*|> *	one hemisphere.  From about 900 to 600 million years ago the
*|> *	continents were clumped together into an as yet unnamed
*|> *	supercontinent. Now what are the odds?
*|> 
*
*	Let me rephrase the question, since you seem to have missed it.
*	If Pangaea is the result of some special astronomical
*	configuration, how do you respond to the fact that pangaea existed
*	more than once?  Did the earth enter and leave orbit about
*	Saturn not once but several times?

That Pangaea existed once is certain from the fits of the continents
AT PRESENT.  I can think of no other way of being terribly certain that
Pangaea ever existed once or at all.  Further, it appears obvious to me
that, were it not for this rough fit which can be seen even today between
the continental edges, nobody would today believe that Pangaea had ever
existed.

The concept would have never occurred to anybody.  Given this, I fail to
see by what means you can claim that Pangaea has existed more than once.

How can the continents show the fits from the breakup of Pangaea AND the
fits from some former breakup?  What other kind of evidence might you
have which could not easily be shown to be based upon your false doctrine
of uniformity, or which not otherwise be explained in some other fashion?

It is not obvious to me that you have any notion of what you're talking
about in claiming that pangaea has existed more than once.

*|> *|> 2.  If, as seems overwhelmingly likely, some force drew the continents
*|> *|> into one place, then that force should have drawn them into a circular
*|> *|> mass. 
*|> 
*|> *	Beautiful logic.
*|> *
*|> *	(1) Ted hypothesizes a "force" to draw the continents into
*|> *	"one place" (nevermind that they were not in one place)
*|> 
*|> I'm not really hypothesizing anything.  The force I mention has been well
*|> documented over the last 20 years by Talbott, Cardona, Rose, and a 
*|> number of others. 
*
*	Good.  Now you can tell us what it is, and why it affects
*	continental mass more than mantle material.  This ought to be good.
*
*
* The beginnings of this knowledge appear in journals of
*|> Assyriology around the turn of this century (Jastrow et. al.), before
*|> Velikovsky.  I have adequately shown that such a force was also the only
*|> possible thing which could account for animals having attained the sizes
*|> which they did prior to the flood.  The entire system hangs together
*|> a lot better than yours does.
*
*	Speaking as one who has stayed out of the "size of animals"
*	debate, I don't think *anyone* thinks you've got the better
*	of that debate, or even made a respectable second place finish.
*

Aeon thought enough to publish one such article and informs me that another
(the article on archaic flying creatures) will be published in January.

That's not only *anyone*, but unlike the crew of t.o, that's *the enlightened*.

Beyond that, engineers, computer scientists, and other generally competent and
educated people I've explained this theory to have had nothing like the
problems in dealing with it or comprehending it which I get from the vocal
section of t.o.

*
*|> *	(3) Ted observes that the continents were not in such a mass

*|> *	(4) Ted, instead of rejecting his "force" hypothesis, tries
*|> *	to reconcile it with the data by adding another hypothesis, one
*|> *	for which there is also no supporting evidence.

*|> Again, one of Rose's points is as follows:  evidence in support of this
*|> notion of egg-shaped world is available right on any globe.  You only
*|> have to go to the nearest world map;  it isn't that hard to find.
*
*	Lamb has quite clearly refuted Rose's "reasoning" on this
*	point.  

The point is irrefutable.  In our world as it presently stands, two land
masses could not break away from eachother with clean lines, and not be
rejoinable along those lines.  The only other two possibilities are as
follows:

1.  Africa and Arabia broke apart,  20 degrees worth of one edge of either
the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden eroded away or fell into the sea, and the 
outline remained almost entirely as it had been originally;  the odds against
this are overwhelming.

2.  The inhabitants of one continent or the other dug one shore of either
the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden back with shovels, keeping the lines as
they had been.

To claim that Lamb has refuted any of this is bullshit.
`

I see nothing worth responding to in the remainder of your article, and
will call it quits here.



-- 
Ted Holden
HTE