From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Meritt Velikovsky FAQ:  best the t.o crew can manage?
Date: 3 Oct 92 02:06:55 GMT
Organization: HTE







I wouldn't bother to reply to Meritt's diatribes, other than for refusing to
be defined by such a character.  Meritt appears to be on good behavior over at
Mitre...  the only real insult I see in his recent version of the
Velikovsky FAQ is the following:

>I would like to thank the various members of the INTERNET and BITNET
>community of assisted me in proofing the document, providing numerous
>suggestions along the way.

in which he accuses members of the INTERNET and BITNET community of
basic illiteracy (the "assisted me in proofing" part).  For instance:

   "I really miss where I am so uninformed..."

or

    "Not something to hold against him, but it does give a readily verifiable
    example that what he thinks that is demonstrated not to be correct."

If Meritt were to accuse ME of having proofed the above, I'd have to
consider myself insulted.

The first few lines of Meritt's long post include the sentence:

"I have been involved in the Latin Mythology."  For Meritt, that's better
than average, at least on grammer.  Logically, however, it means he used
to be a centaur, or a satyr, or he thinks he used to be a centaur, or he
USED to think he was a centaur (possibly before going on the wagon)...

Normally I wouldn't harp on such failings.  I've got a friend
who teaches English at NOVA, and she often comes in with two or three
standout themes or papers (remember, half of these kids are 20-year-old
by-products of Audrey Moore's efforts to relocate South East DC into Reston).
These often describe drive-by shootings, dissin-related mayhem etc. etc.
first hand, and Meritt's stuff is, on average, no WORSE than these
stylistically.

The difference is that none of these kids have ever, to my knowledge,
publically claimed to be renaissance men.  Meritt has.  In one article
which I wish I'd managed to save, Meritt actually claimed to be that
which Velikovsky tried to be and failed, i.e. a renaissance man and a
polymath.

English was about an eighth or ninth language to Velikovsky, and his use
of it was impeccable at all times.  I have to assume English is a first
language to Meritt, or WILL be once he learns it.

Meritt appears to be on good behavior over at Mitre.  He used to be a
sort of a miscriant on t.o.

Richard S D'Ippolito once posted a collection of quotes from the t.o crew
and his section on Meritt read:

Jim Merritt:

        You are a duplicious liar.
        Enough, child.
        You are a fool...
        If you think like you write I doubt if you could make it down the
          block without breaking your leg.
        Widdle Bobby, go look at the fishies.
        Are you ever going to answer those 21 questions you have been asked
          over and over and over, you liar?
        The person is a liar and a fraud.
        I consider him a personal affront to thinking humanity.
        Everyone archive his stupidity for the next go-around when he asks
         exactly the same things?
        So much for your contentions.  What a fool..
        Answer them, you evasive bastard.
        He is a habitual ignorant liar.
        Evasive bastard, isn't he?
        Not an honest bone in his body.
        Evasive child, isn't he?
        You are an evasive liar.
        ...you are making yourself look like a bigger fool - if that
         is possible.
        Nah, you're like a tick.  Irritating but useless at best.
        Whatta twit..
        Nobody else is going to buy your ignorant statements, either.
        What a fool.
        Life MADE the oxygen, dimwit.



The word "liar" appears frequently in Meritt's posts, or at least it
used to.  Until very recently, he has begun each of these long
posts with a challenge to me:

>   This appears to be a deliberate misstatement of fact on your part.
>   The common term for this kind of statement is a "lie", and the one who makes
>   it a "liar".

i.e. I am a liar.


About half the time, Meritt's anti-Velikovsky FAQ includs a section on the
so-called Babylonian Venus Tablets of King Ammizaduga:

> [first sighting of venus from earth]
> [page 158]
>
>Untrue.  Venus was known as the morning and evening star certainly by 1900BC,
>and clearly discussed in connection with the rising and setting sun at 3000BC.
>According to sixteenth century BC records (-1580 to -1560) the observed motion
>of venus was almost identical with todays orbit.  Cuneiform writings of
>the Babylonian astronomers were quite clear.  There were even pre-
>babylonian indications from Sumerian and Mesopotamian writings.  I guess
>"ancient" writings are only used if they support Velikovsky.
>
>For instance:
>The sumerian version of "Inanna's descent to the neither world" that is
>in copies made in the second millennium BC has "I am Inanna of the place
>where the sun rises." (i.e. the morning star).  One that refers to King
>Iddindagan of Isin (ca. -1909 to -1889) identified her as both the
>evening star and the morning star, which is an orbit INSIDE of earths.
>The lowest known written documents on earth are excavated from
>Uruk (Mesopotamia).  The tablets at level III (next to lowest) refer
>to Inanna associating her with the star of both the rising and setting
>sun.  This is around 3000 BC.
>During the reign of Ammizxaduga, king of Babylon (between -1701 and
>-1581) there were a series of observations of venus appearing and
>disappearing with the rising and setting of the sun (it is either the
>morning star or the evening star, but both never appear at the same
>time.  They apparently recognized this fact.)  The text covered 21
>consecutive years.  It included periods of inferior and superior conjunction.
>>From this data, we can determine that the orbital data from this period
>is compatible with modern orbital elements within the limits of
>Babylonian observational accuracy.
>The Venus Table in the Dresden Codex comes from twelfth-century AD
>Yucatan.  They not only observed the orbit, but had its period
>and a close approximation to the complete cycle.  There were five
>iterations of ephemeris data, bringing the orbit of venus as indicated
>to within two hours of the place/time modern orbital calculations would
>have it.


The reality of this phenomenon is well known by now.  I've posted the following
a number of times:

..............

     The following is from an article by
     Lynn E. Rose from the Winter 73 issue (#III) of the Pensee Journal,
     the old Student Academic Freedom Forum.  This is a long article
     which I could not quote in its entirety.  The article treated
     mostly with the manner in which the tablets involved have been
     translated in the past.

     The key paragraph of the article read as follows:


          "Unfortunately, nearly all treatments of groups one and three
          on K. 160, and of the genuinely observational material on the
          other Venus tablets that supplement K. 160, have been based on
          what I call the "astronomer's dogma".  The "astronomer's
          dogma" is the uniformatarian attitude that the solar system
          has for untold years been just as it is now, and that Venus
          and Earth in particular have always been on the same orbits
          they are on now, except for certain very minor perturbations
          that are for most purposes entirely negligible.  This means
          that we can look at the present motions of Earth and Venus and
          then judge on that basis how accurate the ancient observations
          were.  If the ancient observations do not conform to what
          would be expected from the present state of affairs, then the
          ancient records were defective, and were either fictions or
          errors, but could not have been accurate observations of what
          was going on in the sky; accordingly, it is up to us to
          rewrite those ancient records so that they WILL conform to
          what we see in the sky today."

          Rose notes the nature of Venus as it appears to us first as
     evening star, disappears for a few days of inferior conjunction,
     reappears as morning star West of the sun for some months and then
     disappears during superior conjunction.  He notes that one of the
     Babylonian tablet fragments (K. 160 from the library of
     Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum) appears to be a record of
     these comings and goings:


       "Let me give some typical passages from the tablet:


          "In the month of Sivan, on the twenty fifth day, Ninsianna
          [that is, Venus] disappeared in the east; she remained absent
          from the sky for two months, six days; in the month Ulul on
          the 24'th day, Ninsianna appeared in the West - the heart of
          the land is happy. In the month Nisan on the 27'th day,
          Ninsianna disappeared in the West; she remained absent from
          the sky for seven days; in the month Ayar on the third day,
          Ninsianna appeared in the east - hostilities occur in the
          land, the harvest of the land is successful.


          "The first invisibility mentioned in these lines involves a
          disappearance in the east, an invisibility of two months, six
          days, and a reappearance in the west.  This seems to be a
          superior conjunction. The second invisibility involves a
          disappearance in the west, an invisibility of seven days, and
          a reappearance in the east.  This seems to be an inferior
          conjunction.  Most of the data in groups one and three on the
          tablet are of this form.  But the lengths and spacings of
          these invisibilities have a certain irregularity about them,
          and they do not conform to the manner in which Venus moves at
          present.

          "The data given in the second group on the tablet do have
          regularity - even too much regularity to be believable, - but
          they do not conform to the present state of affairs
          either.....


          These kinds of things are well-known to scholars who have
     actually studied the tablets.  Rose mentions numerous translators,
     Boseanquet & Sayce, Schiaperelli, Langdon and Fotheringham...  He
     notes [as an example], that:

          "The next major study of the Venus tablets was by Langdon and
          Fotheringham in 1928.  Their book is important for the student
          of the tablets in that they bring together a great deal of
          material that is not available in any one other place;
          unfortunately, however, their book is dominated and severely
          handicapped by the astronomer's dogma, and they find it
          necessary to scoff at much of what the tablets say was
          actually seen, simply because such things are not seen today."


     He cites also the case of Van der Waerden:

          "Further attempts to deal with the tablets along
          uniformitarian lines were made by Ungnad in 1940 and van der
          Waerden in 1946.  Van der Waerden plays the uniformitarian
          game much better than some of his predecessors, but the main
          reason I want to mention him here is that he is the clearest
          example I have found of an unfortunate way of talking and
          thinking that is characteristic of uniformitarians.  He says
          at one point, after either rejecting or radically rewriting
          about three out of four of the recorded observations, that:

             "All I have done is to remove inner contradictions from the
             text."

     .............................................
     ..............................................


          Charles Ginenthal (Sagan and Velikovsky) has a great deal to
     say about the Ammizaduga tablets, pp 281 - 284, quoting Livio C.
     Stecchini's "The Velikovsky Affair":

          "The Venus tablets of Ammizaduga is the most striking document
          of early Babylonian astronomy.  These tablets, of which we
          possess several copies of different origin, report the dates
          of the helical rising and setting of the planet Venus during
          a period of 21 years...

          "Since the first effort at explanation of Archibald Henry
          Sayce in 1874, these figures have challenged the wit of a
          score of experts of astronomy and cuneiform philology.
          (Father Franz Xavier) Kugler (1862 - 1929), a recognized major
          authority on Babylonian and biblical astronomy, chronology and
          mythology, opposed the contention of those who claim that
          these documents must be dismissed as nonsense."  [because they
          do not conform to present orbital patterns for Venus]


          Indian and Central American records also show Venus moving on
     an orbit other than its present one.  Ginenthal cites Evan
     Hadingham ("Early Man and the Cosmos):

          "The Venus pages [of the Dresden Codex] bear little
          resemblance to a modern astronomical table."

          Ginenthal goes on to say:

          "Since Hadingham, like the astronomers who dealt with the
          Babylonian tables cannot conceive nor accept this evidence
          that Venus' orbit was different in the past, an analysis is
          created to dispose of this information.  This is so in spite
          of Hadingham's asserting the following regarding Mayan
          astronomy:

          'The precision of the observations documented in the few
          surviving hieroglyphic books is astonishing.  For instance,
          one book contains a scheme for the correction of Venus
          observations [present variety as opposed to the distant past]
          which ensures an accuracy of approximately two hours in five
          hundred years...  How were they able to score such phenomenal
          success in their observations?'"

          Again, Ginenthal:

          "Astronomers, in attempting to deal with this evidence
          respecting Venus, either ignore the data or invent systems to
          explain it away so that it will conform to their
          uniformitarian view.  By employing a sledge hammer, they smash
          the tablets of Ammizaduga to bits and then reassemble the
          fragments to prove that Venus' orbit has never changed.
          Although Velikovsky does not explain the precise cause for the
          circularization of Venus' orbit except to invoke
          electromagnetic forces, the plain evidence of the ancient
          astronomers shows that Venus' orbit was different, and
          therefore, more elliptical than its present, almost circular
          orbit and thus, there must exist a force that circularized it.


          This is a bona-fide example of circular reasoning.  The
     tablets are changed in translation to conform with what everybody
     KNOWS to be reality i.e. uniformitarianism.  Then these same
     mis-translated tablets are used by the typical yuppie "scientist"
     to refute Velikovsky.


     And the funny thing is that, at bottom, all of the evidence which
     Bishop, Hyde, Meritt, and these others keep accusing me of ignoring is
     of this same nature, i.e. falsified evidence, and the act of
     falsification, i.e. of causing all such evidence to conform to
     uniformity, has become as second nature to these "scientists" as using a
     stick shift.  They no longer even realize they're doing it and get
     incensed when accused of doing it.

................


For awhile, Meritt ceased including this item in his long list.

Which was funny, because he still included this line:

I.
   >Tell you what.  EVERY point that you can contest with verifiable arguments
   >with references to the original texts in a physical, biological, chemistry,
   >biology peer-reviewed INFORMED source, I'll change to your explaination.
   >Fair enough?

Meritt went on then to claim he has never had to do this:

II.
   >Of course, since you haven't done that even once, I'm not real worried.

And more recently:

   >Please note that Ted has NEVER debunked any of the hard science
   >presented, in spite of numerous claims to that effect.


The debunking of the astronomical establishment's version of the Venus tablets,
however, is clearly a done deal.  Therefore, when Meritt chooses to
exclude it, II. above is an outright lie and/or deliberate attempt to
deceive readers of t.o.

When Meritt doesn't exclude the Venus tablet stuff, then I. above is a lie.

Or at least by Meritt's own standards.  The funny thing is that he has created
a sort of a catch-22 for himself with this one, and is now torn with
indecision as to which reason people should regard him as a liar, and hence
vacillates, including the Ammizaduga stuff in about half the postings of
his glorious FAQ, and leaving it out the other half.

Having seen what honest scholarship does to one of Meritt's points, one
wonders what to think of the rest of them.

The honest truth is that most if not all of what Meritt cites in the
long FAQ can be shown to be either round pegs pounded into square holes
(i.e. evidence which has been systematically misinterpreted to conform
with the doctrine of uniformity which scientists regard as absolute),as
is the case with the Venus tablets, or circular reasoning, i.e.
uniformity used as a base assumption in proving uniformity.  The later
is always good for a failing grade in higher math courses (it's called
assuming a proof).

 








-- 
Ted Holden
HTE

Newsgroups: talk.origins