HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: smullins@cidmac.ecn.purdue.edu (Scott H Mullins)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Egg-shaped antediluvian world
Date: 28 Sep 92 15:54:29 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

In article <38@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
>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:
[deletions]
>*|> *, 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...

Get off it. Your wording was ambiguous. (Notice I did not say "bullshit")

[deletions]
>*	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.

Translation: I can not answer the question so I will change the subject.

[deletions]
>I see nothing worth responding to in the remainder of your article, and
>will call it quits here.
>-- 
>Ted Holden
>HTE

ditto

Scott
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
Subject: Re: Question for Creationists
Reply-To: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
Organization: The Aurora Group
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 19:23:55 GMT

In article <1454@esl.ESL.COM> markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen) writes:
>But you do have faith in scientist who base new discoveries and
>theories on concepts you have found out for yourself are true.

No, I don't, at least not in the sense of religious faith.

>Get an understanding and knowledge of basic concepts.  If a religious
>leader says something that is in line with this understanding, then
>you can probably continue on, . . .

Except that the most basic concept of spirituality is that it is personal.
What other people say about it is irrelevant to my understanding of it.

>Scientific research is conducted in the same way,

Scientific research deals with things that are objectively observable; it
has very, very little in common with religion.

>and in fact James 1:5 applies to any topic

I can't even begin to count the number of unwarrented assumptions in this
one phrase.

>since the Universe was created by God.

Which god?
-- 
Mark Isaak           "Every generation thinks it has the answers, and every
isaak@aurora.com      generation is humbled by nature." - Philip Lubin
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode)
Subject: Re: Friesen on elastics and sauropod necks
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 92 06:15:56 GMT

In article <1174@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <42@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
>|In article <1150@tdat.teradata.COM>, swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>|
>|*On what evidence do you base this conclusion?
>|
>|Several varieties of evidence:
>|
>|1.  We no longer have such creatures, and there must be a reason for that.
>
>The *most* one can conclude from this is that *something* has changed.
>It gives *no* indication of *what* that something is.  It certainly fails
>to rule ourt ecological shifts, or the possibility that mammalian anatomy
>predisposed them to a diffrent size range.

Ah, but if it were possible for land mammals to be that large, they would
be--so obviously the felt effect of gravity must have been different back
then.  

Now, consider the trilobites--they were around a whole lot longer than the
dinosaurs and had much more time to evolve into forms not unlike the 
ultrasaurus, seizmosaurus, and superhumungoreallybigosaurus.  Yet, for
some reason, they didn't--indeed, not only didn't they evolve long necks,
trilobites didn't have *any* necks at all!  But that's not all--despite
their much smaller size, trilobites were forced to live under water,
and were unable to carry their comparatively tiny bulk on land.  

Well, the conclusion is obvious--the ONLY way to explain the trilobites
is that the effective gravitational field of the earth (what I call the
crushed velvet effect of gravity) was vastly greater in the past--hundreds
or even thousands of times as strong as it is now.

Indeed, all other evidence literally forces us to conclude that the crushed
velvet effect of gravity has been declining steadilly throughout the 
existence of the earth--look back further in time, and no life forms
had even attained sizes larger than a single cell, proof positive that
gravity was literally millions of times stronger then than it is now.

It is only through a conspiracy of lying, brain-dead scientists dedicated
to suppressing the true theories of the crushed velvet effect of gravity
that the poor, benighted readers of talk.origins manage to go on living
without knowing the true story of gravity in the past.

Trygve   (Aww, Mom, do I have to put in a smiley?)
From: m23364@mwunix (James Meritt)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Holden
Date: 29 Sep 92 18:43:33 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: MITRE Corporation, McLean VA

In article <n0adct@ofa123.fidonet.org> David.Rice@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
}Well, Ted, now that the secret is out, we can tell you: I'm
}-IN CHARGE- of the Satanic conspiracy! Mr. Merrit is one of my
}evil minions. Sue Bishop is Satan's "Public Relations Officer"
}(what a, er, ah, HELL of a job THAT is!). Chris Colby we keep
}for his pretty face. Roger Squires is our kitchen help. Bruce
}Salem takes out the trash and mops up. We wanted YOU to be Court
}Jester, but we'd have to pay you the wages that go with the job,
}while you do the job of Newsgroup Jester for free.

Don't you read any other newsgroup?!?!?!  Look in talk.religion.misc.
I'm god.  So far I've passed every test that, for instance, Jesus
has.  And every one that I did not deign to participate in, Jesus
is absent, too.  And Colleen is the goddess of alt.atheism.
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Noah's Ark?  Then where did the water come from?
Date: 28 Sep 92 00:26:52 GMT
Followup-To: talk.origins
Organization: Apple

In article <1992Sep24.130128.4330@desire.wright.edu>,
sbishop@desire.wright.edu wrote:
> I noticed that C Allen Roy has rejoined our group, posting about the
> supposed Ark.  Would he care to explain the flood data I have?  Has
> he EVER actually calculated the fantastically enormous amount of additional
> water needed to flood the earth just to the depth of Mount Ararat?

Yeah, and what about the emigrating kangaroos? Gee, I think I will drive
up to Portland for the Ark-athon...

Cheers, Kent
	Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to	investigate. -F.M.
Knowles
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
DISCLAIMER: Private activities on the Net.
From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Creationist CRAPOLA!
Date: 29 Sep 92 11:23:16 GMT
Organization: Wright State University

In article <1992Sep28.121140.24899@city.cs>, lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:
> In article <1992Sep25.154335.4430@aurora.com> isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak) writes:
>>In article <19920924.141504.179@almaden.ibm.com> mannk@fshvmfk1.VNET.IBM.COM writes:
>>>One kind has not changed into another.
>>
>>What's a "kind"?
>>
>>>I ask again for observations of macro-evolution happening.
>>
>>The fossil record (even as assembled by 19th-century
>>Creationists, not to mention the much more extensive work
>>that has been done since then) clearly shows that different
>>forms of life appeared at different times.  Change
>>unquestionably occurred; the only question is how.
> 
> All it shows is that different forms of life appear in the
> fossil record at different _layers_!
> 
> As to the interpretation of that, evo's say its because of
> evo, but an equally if not more valid interpretation is that
> of hydrological sorting in the flood.
> 
> --
> Lionel Tun   (lionel@cs.city.ac.uk)
> Vision Group, City University, London, EC1V 0HB. 071-477 8000 x 3889

Care to read the FAQ on how much flood water is needed to cause your Flood?
Care to explain where all that water came from and where did it go?
Care to explain how the different rock layers have absolutely no correlation
with hydrolic sorting?  (Hint, heavier rocks sink in water, sand settles
on the top, so how come we have different layers with sand in lower levels?)

Sue
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
From: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Subject: Re: Object-oriented creation
Reply-To: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Organization: Rosemount, Inc.
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 02:11:33 GMT

ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) writes:

: |If you want God to be an OO designer, why is He unnecessarily
: |overriding inheritance?  .... Is our Divine Object-Oriented
: |Designer expending effort to simulate a misleading *appearance* of
: |evolution?
: 
: Maybe G*d's manager stuck him with C++?
: 

We all know that all really cool supreme beings use Smalltalk.

--
Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  Mary Tyler Moore's
Rosemount Inc.                                |SEVENTH HUSBAND is wearing my
                                              |DACRON TANK TOP in a cheap
grante@aquarius.rosemount.com                 |hotel in HONOLULU!
From: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: lophophore relationships
Date: 6 Oct 92 22:41:04 GMT
Organization: animal -- coelomate -- deuterostome

In article <91820@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1193@tdat.teradata.COM>, swf@teradata (Stanley Friesen)
writes:

>>the lophophorate phyla (brachiopods, bryozoans, and an obscure group
>>called the phoronids) are generally considered to be more or less
>>intermediate between the protostomes and the deuterostomes.

>I've usually seen them presented as deuterostomes.

I just got a invertebrate biology book recently and they give the
relationship as:

echinoderms	lophophorates hemichordates	chordates
   *                 *              *               *
      *                 *              *         *
           *               *               *
                *                *      *
                    *                *
                         *        *
                             *  *
                               *
                         deuterostomes

This is a cladistic analysis based on morphological data. They give
"Ciliated feeding tentacles derived from mesosome and containing
extensions of the mesocoel" and "Circulatory system derived, at least
in part, from archenteric mesoderm" as two synapomorphies for
lophophores and chordates. (They list loss of tentacles as a character
leading to chordates, so I may have misused the term synapomorphy
because the resulting distribution of that character is paraphyletic
(not shared by all descendents)).(Gee, now I may have used paraphyletic
wrong as I'm not sure characters can be referred to as paraphyletic.) 
    
This isn't my field, so I'm just reporting this. Overall, I thought
some of the characters they used in their cladogram (that encompasses
most invert phyla (except pseudocoelomates which they claim are not
a clade but all independently derived)) were sort of suspect. But,
what the hell do I know?

REFERENCE:
Brusca and Brusca, 1990, Invertebrates, Sinaeur, Sunderland, Mass

This is (IMHO) a cool book. The stuff about torted and untorted
gastropods just screams to be included in any list great examples
of "jury-rigged" design. 

>-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)

Chris Colby 	---	 email: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu	---
"'My boy,' he said, 'you are descended from a long line of determined,
resourceful, microscopic tadpoles--champions every one.'"
 	--Kurt Vonnegut from "Galapagos"
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Real issues for Antti
Date: 5 Oct 92 00:30:31 GMT
Followup-To: talk.origins
Organization: Apple

In article <1992Sep28.184330.19054@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi
(Antti Siivonen) wrote:
> isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak) writes:
> >I propose a more basic quiz for Antti:  Accurately state the
> >theory of evolution by natural selection.  Briefly describe
> >at least four independent lines of evidence which support it.
> 	Ha ha ! How can I answer such question, when I claim that there are 
> 	no supporting lines of evidence at all !

Speaking from practical experience, the best critique always originates 
from people that know the other side quite well. If you don't know
how evolution works, you can't critisize it. And this seems to be
the case, looking at your postings.

Kent
	Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to	investigate. -F.M.
Knowles
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
DISCLAIMER: Private activities on the Net.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: Questions for Evolutionists
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 21:26:29 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.130253.202956@uctvax.uct.ac.za>, watkins@uctvax.uct.ac.za
writes:
> absurd:-   General Assumption: The Bible Is Absolutely true;
>            1st Step: I think that the absence of Archaeological evidence for
>                      some of the historical places/people/events means the
>                      Bible is NOT absolutely true.
>            New Theory: I think the Bible is a composite of Tribal stories
>                       (Wellhausen's Redactors hypothesis)

  But this "New Theory" is not based on the first step.  It has been suggested
long before people even really knew what archeology was.  There was no analysis
of the archeological evidence, no assumptions of the trustworthiness or accuracy
of the Bible, and no assumptions about the places/people/events therin.

  The hypothesis was entirely based on the observation that the Penteauch
alternates between 4 distinct writing styles.  Even the most stedfast hebrew
scholars agree there are at least 3.  The only people who argue about it are the
people who never bothered to look at the evidence.

 |  __L__   *******************************
-|-  ___    * Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub   *
 |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
 |/ `---'   * Iowa State University       *
/|   ___    * Math Department             *
 |  |___|   * 400 Carver Hall             *
 |  |___|   * Ames, IA  50011             *
 J  _____   *******************************
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Creationist CRAPOLA!
Date: 29 Sep 92 02:08:09 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <ke0qRB3w165w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
|watson@sce.carleton.ca (Stephen Watson) writes:
|
|Dentition is a bad way to determine whether an animal is "supposed to" eat
|meat or not.  Meat-eating humans often argue that humans are "supposed to"
|eat meat because we have incisors and little canine teeth; but next time you
|get a chance, look at the teeth of a gorilla.

Actually, dentition, combined with body size, is an *excellent* way to
determine diet.  You just have to be careful to use proper comparative
anatomical technique.

For instance, large canines in primates are *poorly* correlated with diet,
but are strongly correlated with strong sexual dimorphism in body size.

Now, when one studies the array of teeth in mammals, the one whose teeth
are *most* similar to ours is the pig!  Pigs teeth are so similar to human
teeth that fossil pig jaw fragments can be confused with human jaw fragments
even by experts.   Now guess what, of all of the animals on the earth today
the one considered by nutritionists to have most nearly the same dietary
requirements to us is, ta da, the pig - it is the standard 'human stand-in'
in dietary experiments.

Now, what is a pig, dietarily speaking?  It is the ultimate omnivore, it
will eat just about *anything*.  Guess what we are?  (Hint, try naming
something even remotely edible that some human culture somewhere does not
eat).
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Friesen on elastics and sauropod necks
Date: 5 Oct 92 07:32:38 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Oct3.014805.20115@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> amorgan@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Crunchy Frog) writes:
|In article <43@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
|
|By "same kind" do you mean vegetable matter or do you have something
|more precise in mind?

I would presume that is what he meant.  And, for once he had something
right.  Animals, as food, provide more energy per ounce than ordinary
plant material, unless you are talking fruits.

|>The point I was making was that if elephants need to
|>eat almost all day long as they do and require the volumes of green leaves
|>which we know they do, then there is no way that sauropods could live in
|>the kind of area which Stan was describing.
|
|The stuff elephants eat is not particularly nutritious.  Maybe the
|sauropods had access to slightly more wholesome fair. 

Possible, but not likely.  There is a general rule of ecology that bulk
herbivores consume truly bottom quality fodder, while *selective* herbivores
get the good stuff.  The broad mouths, and spatulate teeth, of sauropods
speak more of bulk feeding than selective feeding.

Also, I doubt a selective feeder could get enough food, even at the higher
quality, to sustain such a large body.

No, the answer is almost certainly at least prtly due to the differences in
physiology between sauropods and elephants.  (See my other post on this
issue).


Oh by the way Ted, I have thoght of one very solid reason why such large
animals have not re-evolved.  The plant ecology of the world has changed.
When sauropods wheree the most common, and the largest, the dominant plants
were 'confers', seed ferns and cycads, *no* flowering plants at all.

After flowering plants appeared (in the mid Early Cretaceous) and, later,
became common (mid-Cretaceous), sauropods become *very* rare; and the ones
that survive are invariably *much* smaller than the Jurassic giants we
are most familiar with.  The last known sauropod, Alamosaurus (which
belonged to the titanosaurid group) was only about 70 ft long and 30 tons.
(As such it was the *largest* of the titanosaurids, most Late Cretaceous
sauropods were between 30 and 50 ft long).

The most common herbivorous dinosaurs after flowering plants became common
all belonged to brand new groups - the horned dinosaurs, the dome-heads,
the 'duck-bills', and so on.

Thus, it may well be that angiosperms (the scientific name for flowering
plants) are not suited to supporting such lrge critters.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: twalters@world.std.com (Tim Walters)
Subject: Uneven felt gravity
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 14:30:09 GMT

Ted's theory of a reduced "felt effect" of gravity requires that the
effective gravitation was uneven: some regions on Earth would have had
lower gravitation, some higher.

Given also Ted's claims about the ancient configuration of Pangaea,
would it be possible to figure out which ancient regions had high
gravity and which ones had low gravity?
-- 
Tim Walters	twalters@world.std.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Subject: Re: Real issues for Antti
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 02:36:53 GMT
Organization: Apple
Followup-To: talk.origins

In article <1992Oct5.173605.4705@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi
(Antti Siivonen) wrote:
> 
> maguire@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Bill Maguire) writes:
> >Visability to who?  Who was there to see it?  Either he made light or
> >he didn't.  Taking a literal interpretation God must of told someone
> >how he made it because no one else was around.  So what did he say?
> 
> 	There were actually, but we can ignore this now. Bible examines things
> 	as they happen in the Earth. 

In other words ignore any scientific statements using the Bible, it's
just a metaphor. Thanks Antti for clearing this out.

Kent
	Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to	investigate. -F.M.
Knowles
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
DISCLAIMER: Private activities on the Net.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Subject: Re: a farewell to Antti
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 02:20:00 GMT
Organization: Apple
Followup-To: talk.origins

In article <Bvpq56.Ew9@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
adpeters@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu (Andy Peters) wrote:
>> Trying to discuss things with Antti is like examining Ross Perot's
> political career.  Every time he runs into difficulty he changes
> the subject, throws a tantrum blaming the other guy, or occasionally 
> drops out for a little while.  Then, when he comes back, he says the 
> same old things, assuming people have forgotten how idiotic they 
> were the first time. His claims about his background are suspect 
> at best ("I'm a biologist!" vs. "I'm not a Washington insider!").  
> He claims to be better than the status quo, but he refuses to 
> say specifically what's wrong with the status quo, as well 
> as refusing to offer any sort of concrete alternative; hell,
> from all evidence, he doesn't even understand the status quo!.  And, he's 
> lost any value he might have had as comic relief or as a source of new 
> ideas.

He actually reminds me of Finnish opportunity politicians that 
always complain about the current system, and tell people that
if they are elected they will change it, and when they are in
power everyone realizes that they actually didn't have any good
ideas. I ment Perot. As for Antti, he's just a stubborn Finnish
person whoe world view is dictated by a religion with narrow
margins.

Cheers,
Kent
	Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to	investigate. -F.M.
Knowles
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
DISCLAIMER: Private activities on the Net.