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