From: hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde)
Subject: Re: Egg-shaped antediluvian world
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 01:22:43 GMT

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?  We will leave absolute dates out of this
	since you do not agree with them.  If you don't so agree,
	why complain?

|> *, 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.

|> 
|> 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.


 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.


|> *
|> *|> 1.  That the continents were all clumped into a single mass in the first
|> *|> place.  No force exists at present which might ever draw them all
|> *|> together, and the odds of them all merely drifting together for no
|> *|> reason are greater than 64 - 1, which would be the odds against them
|> *|> ever merely appearing in the same hemisphere for no real reason.
|> *
|> *
|> *	It amazes me that you repeat this unbelievably stupid probability
|> *	argument.  
|> 
|> 
|> 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?

	

|> I think that by most serious mathematicians agree that no number of chimps
|> with tyewriters would ever write even one of the great novels, much
|> less all of them...

	And what has that got to do with having eight continental masses
	in the same hemisphere?  Are you getting a little desperate?



|> 
|> 
|> *
|> *	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?

|>   
|> *|> 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.

|> 
|> *
|> *	(2) Ted deduces that the existance of such a force would
|> *	draw the continents into a circular mass.
|> 
|> Either that's obvious to you or you're stupid.

	Well, since you've already called me stupid several times
	I guess the point is moot. (Actually, I think you said
	"your stupid", but I suspect I guessed your meaning).


|> *
|> *	(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.  Rose simply doesn't know much about continental
	drift.  Now this would be no shame for a philosopher, but Rose
	insists on making his ignorance plain for all to see.  Must
	have been taking lessons in self-satire from Ginenthal.



|> *	(1) There are marine sediments from the area of the Tethys
|> *	sea.  They date to the time of Pangaea
|> 
|> First, your multi-million year dates are all entirely based upon 
|> uniformitarian assumptions.

	No, we do not need absolute dating for this claim.  All that is
	necessary is *relative* dating.  The strata could be ten thousand
	or ten billion years old, all that is necessary to refute Rose
	is that they date to the same time (whatever it might be)
	as Pangeaea.  And so they do, and by methods which have nothing
	to do with "uniformitarianism".


  I don't buy them, and future generations
|> will wonder how you could have ever bought them.

	Well, Ted, since a generation is 25 years, how about
	a bet that in 25 years the scientific community will still
	believe that the earth is billions of years old?  Will say,
	$10,000 do?  After all, if your system is so transparently right...

|> 
|> 
|> Second, Rose's thesis does not at all preclude that after the splitting
|> of Pangaea, the shorelines of what we assume to have been the Tethys Sea
|> could not have existed in various places long enough to accumulate
|> sediments.

	But not sediments with fossils cotemporal with Pangaea.



	A more feeble than average performance, Ted.  You must have
	been rushed.


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