From: hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde)
Subject: Re: Egg-shaped antediluvian world
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 19:45:07 GMT

In article <38@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
|> In article <Bv7qHw.Bpt@cs.dal.ca>, hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde) writes:


|> *|> *	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. 

	So I was not "putting words in your mouth" and your complaint
	was a simple waste of bandwidth.



 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.

	The earlier pangaea was discovered by *exactly* the same methods
	(uniformitarian or otherwise) as used to detect the pangaea
	you are so proud of.  To accept one and reject the other
	is inconsistent.


|> Uniformity is an axiomatic system.  You cannot prove uniformity,

	Uniformity is *not* an axiom.  It is an assumption which is
	held as the default hypothesis, to be rejected when the evidence
	goes against it.  Uniformity can be tested for.  For example,
	in the ice cores you are so proud of ingnoring, a catastrophe would
	show up as a dislocation in the astronomical signal.  Since no
	such dislocation exists, we can be sure no catastrophe has
	affected antarctica for about the past 160,000 years.

	Uniformity as an axiom would be unjustifiable, I agree, but
	as a working *hypothesis* it is useful, and testable.




|> *|> 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.

	So in other words either you *didn't* read my response to
	Bales, or you *can't* deal with the arguments presented
	therein.  As I suspected.


|> 
|> 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,

	Wrong again.  Timescales have changed by an order of maginitude
	over the past 100 years.  A century ago Kelvin was giving
	a maximum age for the earth of about 20 million years. So
	things have changed by a factor of twenty. Fifty years ago
	nobody had a good idea of the timing of the last glacial maximum
	(which was recently revised by about 20%).

	The last 100 years have been a *continual* process of revision
	in the accepted earth chronology, with consensus only arising
	in the last 30 or so years, while even now revisions continue,
	albeit no longer order of magnitude revisions.

	You really enjoy being wrong, don't you?


 thus become reinforced by everything which ever
|> gets published afterwards.

	Wrong.  Both the Bruhnes-matuyama boundary and the last glacial
	maximum dates have been revised in the past three years.
	There was no screaming and shouting from those who established
	the original dates.  They could see that a better experimental
	technique would lead to better results.

	To question an established date is an excellent way to
	get published, and hence get promoted. Thus the motivation for
	this kind of work is strong.

|> *
|> * 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.

	No answer to this question, Ted?


|> *|> 
|> *|> *	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. 

	So "logically" if you throw eight coins, they will *never* all
	wind up heads? 

 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.

	All of this is based on your premise starting "logically",
	which is simple assertion.

|> 
|> 
|> 
|> *|> 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.


	This argument fails in several ways.  Among the most trivial,
	is that all the continents wind up in *a* hemisphere, not a
	*particular* hemisphere.  If we consider that they could
	all be in the nothern hemisphere, the southern, the eastern, or
	the western, that gives us *four* hemispheres to play with, which
	would reduce the odds to 1/16.

	As it is, pangaea doesn't fall into *any* of those hemispheres.
	It appears to stretch from 80 north to 80 south (not very
	compact, is it?) and extends over 220 degrees of latitude
	(farthest west point to farthest east point).  Pangaea, as I
	said earlier, is not in "one place" at all. 

	But even if we ignore the above two paragraphs, your argument
	is amazingly incorrect.  As I explained in my first post, the
	odds you give apply to *one toss* of eight coins, not to
	the drifting of continents over long periods of time (or even the
	shorter periods you are prepared to allow).  By the way, I note
	that you did not reply to my bet in which we could test the
	validity of your probability argument.  Perhaps you actually
	know what nonsense it is.

|> 
|> *|> *	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.

	The same methods were used, Ted.  You cannot run from this
	one.  If you accept the more recent pangaea you cannot reject
	the older, unless you can find an error in the reasoning
	somewhere.  This actually requires *reading* the papers in
	question.


  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.

	What you see on the map is due to the recent breakup of Gondwanaland,
	not Pangaea.  The breakup of Pangaea, occuring much earlier, is
	no longer so obvious from the map and was deduced by analysis
	of rock types, paleomagnetism, fossils, etc - exactly the methods
	used for the earlier Pangaea.  That the continental outline
	argument is far from convincing is shown by the delayed
	acceptance of the continental drift idea.

	Which brings us to an interesting question.  How does Gondwanaland
	and the breakup of Gondwanaland fit into your scheme?  Seems to
	me it contradicts your "force" hypothesis completely.

|> 
|> 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.

	If you wish to remain willfully ignorant, and not read the
	literature, I cannot help you.  But your failures of industry
	and imagination have no impact on reality.  If your theory cannot
	explain the earlier pangaea, it is a failure.
	

|> 
|> 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?

	Not all dividing lines between old continents lie at land-sea
	boundaries, though for obvious reasons those are the easiest
	to see.  For example, the Gondwanaland-Laurentia boundary runs
	through Texas.  It is detectable by the methods given above.

|> 
|> 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.

	I think you should whine more about this.  You haven't
	any intention of examining the evidence, so your only recourse
	is to hope to distract people by repeated bitching.  Go for it.


|> 
|> 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.

	Raves from unattributed sources.  Yeah.


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


	So you cannot answer my points about Tethys?  I thought
	not.  You didn't understand about *relative* dating when
	you made your original reply, and now you've no response.


						Bill Hyde
Department of Oceanography
Dalhousie University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia
hyde@Ice.ATM.Dal.Ca or hyde@dalac

Newsgroups: talk.origins