From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Egg-shaped antediluvian world
Date: 26 Sep 92 16:29:38 GMT
Organization: HTE

In article <Bv3F7o.EE5@cs.dal.ca>, hyde@cs.dal.ca (Bill Hyde) writes:

*	Peter Lamb has done a good job of refuting Rose's geological
*	imbecilities, but there are a few points I'd like to add.

Several of Rose's points are logically irrefutable;  the fact that a 
number of posters on t.o claim to have refuted them indicates a lack of
comprehension on their part.

There is also the fact that there is only one of me and fifty or so of
the regular crew of t.o.  I don't have time in life to debate every point
and/or every so-called refutation of stuff that I post.  That should be
obvious, as also should be obvious the self-serving and essentially
dishonest nature of these claims to have "successfully" refuted something
because I haven't replied to a particular post.

*|> 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.

This is putting words in my mouth:

Again, I have to tell you that most people will regard your claim to have
slept with Queen Elizabeth as bullshit.


*       Most of the current crust was formed by about
*	2.5 billion years ago (conservative estimate) so continents have
*	been drifting for at least ten times as long as you quoted.
*
Bridgette Bardot too?
*
*, 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.

As always, I was quoting standard time scales, which are wrong.  All such
dating schemes are totally based upon uniformitarian assumptions.  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.

*|> 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.
*
*|> 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.  This would not ever happen by chance.
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...


*
*	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?

Against you being correct on your near-billion-year figure?  100%.
Against your notion that this violation of logical principles has occurred
numerous times and not just once?                            100%.
Against your notion that such a thing could occur even once? 100%.

  
*|> 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.  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.

*
*	(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.
*
*	(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.

The split between Africa and Arabia also defies conventional logic.*

The fits between the sides of the Red Sea are very good, as is the fit between
the sides of the Gulf of Aden.  You could fit either together, but not
both at the same time;  there would be a 20 degree open on one side or
the other.  You basically have a 90 degree angle inside a 110 degree
angle.  Such a splitting cannot be explained within the context of the
standard uniformitarian belief system.

Given Rose's hypothesis, there is no such problem.  Simply imagine the
half grapefruit atop the basketball (the egg-shaped world), and imagine
the surface of this world collapsing after the breakup of the old, 
electro-magnetic solar system (collapsing back into spherical form that 
is).  This is entirely like imagining pressing the skin of the half
grapefruit down onto the basketball, forcing it to lie atop the surface
of less curvature.  The surface of the grapefruit will split.  If it
splits in one place, we have the Tethys Sea.  If it splits in two places,
we have the RedSea/Gulf-of-Aden split.

Rose assumes/suggests that there were two such splittings at least, and that
the egg-shaped world thus collapsed in at least two stages;  one being the
splitting of the original conformation of Pangaea, and the other being 
most likely at the time of the flood or shortly thereafter, and involving
the Red-Sea/Gulf-of-Aden split.
*
* The sea of Tethys is an anomaly, which clearly does not belong in
*|> the picture.
*
*	"Clearly" only if your (unnamed) force exists.

Then very clearly indeed.  The force is not unnamed;  it arose from the
gravitational pull between Earth and the small star which we formerly
orbitted.
*
*
*	Rose's hypothesis is easily refuted.
*
*	(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.  I don't buy them, and future generations
will wonder how you could have ever bought them.


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.

Perhaps my "never existed" requires slight modification.  After the 
splitting of Pangaea, the Tethys Sea might have existed for a few
hours, or a few days, or even a few hundred years...  who knows.  But the
standard view that the Tethys Sea was always part of pangaea, or was
for any extended time period,is assuredly wrong.*


*	(2) Also dating to this time are marine fossils, fossils of
*	seacost dwelling species, etc., all from the "nonexistant"
*	Tethys sea.

See above.



-- 
Ted Holden
HTE