ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (08/12/85)
Okay, as Ronald Reagan says, here we go again. Let's examine the points Mr. Jefferys is attempting to make, one by one. 1. Have evolutionists been winning any serious debates against creationists lately? Possibly, if the later have taken to claiming humans are closer to bullfrogs than chimpanzees; crippled science versus crippled religion could break either way on a given afternoon. I'll concede this one. 2. Mr. Jefferys claims that every single one of Ron Kukuk and Walter Brown's 116 points are invalid, because they have not taken the time to defend them on net.origins. This is a logical falicy. In reality, some people take net.origins more seriously than others and I could think of at least five reasons why Kukuk and Brown might not have defended some of these theses. a. They might have died. b. They might have moved to Bolivia. c. Their computer might be on the fritz. d. Same might have been replaced with a non-Unix system. e. They might regard debating Mr. Jefferys as a bad usage of time. 3. This one you have to follow over time to try to judge. I originally wrote: > If Ron's 116 aren't good enough, I've got several more. The >one that really kills Darwinism as far as I'm concerned goes as >follows: chance mutations are mostly harmful or fatal and even >these are rare. The ones which aren't harmful are extremely >rare and are isolated in time and local e.g. a child with six >fingers may be born in Paris in 1725 A.D. and the next such >child in Chicago in 1912 A.D. What are the chances of these two >marrying and having six-fingered children? Further, many >higher animals will simply kill mutants. Amongst humans, in >every century prior to this one, this phenomenon took the form >of the witchcraft trial. Mr. Jefferys replied: >Finally, mutation is probably a minor (though important) >mechanism in evolution. Duplication and rearrangement of genetic >material are thought to be much more important, and they are >experimentally well documented. Here I assumed Mr. Jefferys was talking about something other than mutation, which I take to be any abnormal difference between a child and its parent. At least, that's what it sounds like. I replied: >Duplication and rearrangement by who or what agency? >Dr. Frankenstein? My understanding is that when this occurs >naturally, the clinical term is cancer. Mr. Jefferys now replies: >You are misinformed. This process goes on all the time in the >production of the gametes. Look up "meiosis" in any elementary >biology book. You mean that the gametes are changed so that the children come out looking different from their parents? Isn't that mutation? I mean, why play games with words? I prefer straight talk to semantical games myself. 4. The question of whether humans could have caused the extermination of the mega-fauna of North America or whether catastrophies are needed to explain this phenomenen, I have dealt with in another article which is on the net at this time. As to Mr. Jeffery's claim that pteratorns died out 60 million years ago, I come back to Mr. Reagan's famous quote, "there he goes again". Maybe if this point gets hammered at our present generation of scientists long enough, it will begin to sink in. These huge expanses of time exist only in the imaginations of some scientists. Kukuk and Brown provide ample documentation of the fact that dinosaur and human footprints have been found together, not only in America, but in the Soviet Union as well. There is also the case of "The Doheney Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona, 1925" (1927) by S. Hubbard. There, scenes depicting humans, modern animals, AND DINOSAURS, were found on the walls of caves, the entire walls being covered with the natural 'desert varnish', indicating great age. Sixty million years? Bullshit. Kukuk and Brown give compelling evidence that most of the systems which scientists have used to date past ages are logically circular. The ones which aren't make the tacit assumption of uniformity, that present processes can be extended backwards in time forever. Even one catastrophy of a global nature, and there have been several, ruins all of those assumptions. 5. Mr. Jefferys claims: >Speciation is believed to occur after a breeding population >becomes isolated, and as a result of the cumulative effects of >many genetic changes. Such processes could account for the difference between a wolf and a collie, but not for the differences between a wolf and a kangaroo. Again, my original argument, chance mutations are too few and far between. Despite all chance mutations, (Mr. Jefferys can call it whatever he wants), no new species of mammals has appeared since the ice ages. Serious scientists gave up on this aspect of Darwinism many years ago. V.L. Kellog of Stanford wrote the following in 1907: "The fair truth is that the Darwinian selection theories, considered with regard to their claimed capacity to be an independantly sufficient mechanical explanation of descent, stand today seriously discredited in the biological world." Where have you been since 1907, Mr. Jefferys? 6. The nastiest problem which Darwinists face, in my estimation, is explaining the development of ancient animals INTO a condition of size and weight which would totally prohibit their very existence on this planet, at least as this planet exists now. The basic manner in which this problem is now handled by "scientists" like Mr. Jefferys is to hope that it goes away or that nobody notices it. I don't regard that as science. David Talbott, formerly of the Pensee journal, the old Student Academic Freedom Forum, presents a rational picture of the archaic world, including the conditions necessary for pteratorns and brontosaurs to exist. Mr. Jeffery's reply to my short attempt to give net.origins readers a flavor for the thesis of David Talbott's "The Saturn Myth", was another one of Carl Sagan's cutsey comments. Sagan, apparently, is driven by guilt over his own past indulgences in what he would now call crank or pseudo-science; these included published articles on the probability that aliens were using the dark side of the moon as a staging area for an imminent invasion of the earth. ANYBODY FEEL LIKE TALKING ABOUT PSEUDO-SCIENCE? Sagan seeks to atone for all of this by his present crusading against anything even a little bit off the beaten path, or unusual. Readers will notice that I don't use the terms pseudo-science or pseudo-scientist. If I had some reason to insult or degrade someone who I thought was making a bogus claim to being a scientist, I would call him an astronomer. Have human beings ever seen a pteratorn? You wouldn't expect an eye-witness account in the Ninevah Times or anything, and there is no mention of them in the Old Testament. But the Old Testament is laconic; it seems to have been intended largely as a kind of an index to what the Jews call Midrashim, or the full body of rabbinical lore. Consider Louis Ginzberg's seven volumn "Legends of the Jews", 1909, available from the Jewish Publication Society of America. This is the closest thing there is to a translation of any really large body of Midrashim into English. From Volumn I, "The Creation to Jacob": page 4 "Again, in Tishri, at the time of the autumnal equinox, the great bird ziz flaps his wings and utters his cry, so that the birds of prey, the eagles and the vultures, blench, and they fear to swoop down upon the others and annihilate them in their greed." page 28 "As Leviathon(the whale) is the king of fishes, so the ziz is appointed to rule over the birds." I intend shortly to publish an article on the net dealing with the nature of evidence from the realm of mythology. I believe that scientists ignore and ridicule such evidence at their peril.
peter@baylor.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (08/14/85)
Irellevent digression time: > Such processes could account for the difference between > a wolf and a collie, but not for the differences between a wolf A wolf and a collie are the same species genetically. They're differentiated taxonomically, but that doesn't mean anything. There are any number of cases where taxonomy falls down. My favorite is Tursiops Truncatus and Steno Bredanensis. Taxonomically they're different genera, but are capable of mating & producing viable offspring. Actually I'd classify the chiuahuah and great dane as different species, since they can't crossbreed in nature :->. -- Peter da Silva (the mad Australian) UUCP: ...!shell!neuro1!{hyd-ptd,baylor,datafac}!peter MCI: PDASILVA; CIS: 70216,1076
bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (08/14/85)
I don't want to waste my time in a shouting match with Mr. Holden. I stand by what I wrote, and would be happy to debate the points I made with anyone who wants to discuss them on the basis of reason and evidence. Thank you for listening. -- "Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)
dimitrov@csd2.UUCP (Isaac Dimitrovsky) (08/16/85)
[] > Actually I'd classify the chiuahuah and great dane as different species, > since they can't crossbreed in nature :->. As Bette Midler said, "There's no such thing as bad sex - there's just people who don't fit together." Isaac Dimitrovsky allegra!cmcl2!csd2!dimitrov (l in cmcl2 is letter l not number 1) 251 Mercer Street, New York NY 10012 ... Hernandez steps in to face ... Orl ... HERchiiiser ... and it's a liiine driive, deeeeep to the gap in left center ... - Bob Murphy, Voice of the Mets