[net.origins] cataclysmic evolution and Black history

ted@imsvax.UUCP (07/05/84)

              I believe that the truth regarding man's origins
          and the origins of our world lie between what is being
          proposed by creationists and what is taught in our
          schools.  The "scientific" version, with its emphasis
          on uniformatarianism and natural selection over huge
          expanses of time as the driving mechanism of evolution,
          can be demolished by the average Baptist minister as
          Evolutionists learned to their shame at Roanoke.  Some
          of the arguments against natural selection are as
          follows:

          1.  The "plan" for many animal species must exist from
              day one e.g. the archer-fish and the giraffe;  how
              did these animals survive whilst their necks and
              water spitting proclivities were evolving
              (presumably over millions of years) to a state at
              which they could earn their livings in the manner
              in which they do now?

          2.  The second law of thermodynamics, a scientific
              rendering of the ordinary maxim that sh__ rolls
              downhill, not uphill, is a perfectly good argument
              against the notion of chance mutations as a
              mechanism for driving evolution.  Almost all
              mutations are for the worse, not for the better.
              Human mutations invariably take forms such as
              Down's syndrome or Tay-Sachs disease or hemophilia.
              Mutations other than these occur so rarely as to
              render impossible the chances of like mutants
              mating and forming a new species.  And lastly, many
              animal species will kill mutants;  among humans
              until just recently, this took the familiar form of
              the witch-craft trial.

          3.  Geological evidence of entire ages opening and
              closing suddenly contradict the notion of vast
              expanses of time being needed for evolutionary
              processes, especially as regards the extinction of
              entire animal species over large land areas.  Why
              did the horse and camel become extinct in the
              Americas a few thousand years ago while prospering
              in Asia and Europe?  Surely nobody can argue that
              they were inferior adaptations in the Americas.
              Likewise, the mammoths and mastodons which vanished
              in recent ages were at least as well adapted as our
              present elephants.  At no time in recorded history
              has disease or natural disaster ever wiped out an
              entire animal species over an entire continent.
              Only the machinations of man cause large scale
              extinctions in our times and, in ancient times, man
              was not capable of such doings;  indeed, he lost a
              great deal of sleep worrying about other animals
              making HIM extinct.







              In 1955, Imanuel Velikovsky proposed a theory of
          cataclysmic evolution in which disaster and large scale
          mutation caused by radiation and the unleashing of
          large amounts of energy at the times of global cosmic
          catastrophies replaces natural selection as the driving
          mechanism of evolution.  This theory may be read in
          "Earth in Upheavel" which is still in print today.  It
          explains a great many things which Darwinism fails to
          explain e.g. extinction; once you accept the notion of
          global catastrophies, it is not difficult to understand
          how whole species could be extirpated root and branch
          from entire land masses simply by being at the wrong
          place at the wrong time, particularly the largest
          animals which had the hardest time trying to get to
          high ground or other safety at such times.
              To understand the possabilities of radiation and
          energies being unleashed at the times of global
          disasters, the following consideration should suffice:
          twice in the story of Noah, in Genesis, the seven days
          just prior to the flood are mentioned; from the King
          James, Gen 7-4 'for yet seven days and I will cause it
          to rain forty days and forty nights' and Gen 7-10 'and
          it came to pass, after seven days, that the waters of
          the flood were upon the earth'.  Seven days of what?
          Again, from the King James, Isiah 30-26 'Moreover, the
          light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and
          the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light
          of the seven days'.  In the typical laconic style of
          the old testament, Isiah is mentioning the common
          notion amongst the ancient world that a stellar blow-
          out within the solar system immediately preceeded the
          flood and, probably, was the causal agent of the flood.
          The seven days prior to the deluge, during which this
          event was visible on earth is, apparently, the basis of
          the seven day light festivals of the ancient world,
          including Hannukah with its seven candals.  A deeper
          reading of ancient lore would reveal that this nova
          involved Saturn and not our present sun.  Hesiod, in
          "Works and Days" and Ovid in "The Metamorphoses" use
          almost identical language in describing the universal
          ancient belief that there had been "a golden age when
          Saturn (Kronos) was the king of heaven, followed by a
          silver age when Jupiter(Zeus) was the king of heaven,
          followed by the deluge and the present ages".  In the
          same language, the sun is the "king of heaven" now.
              A huge amount of radiation was unleashed upon the
          earth at the time of the flood; Noah and his family
          survived in the great ship and handfuls of people and
          beasts survived on mountaintops in various parts of the
          world.  Many of the children of men and animals were
          looking less like their parents than might have been
          expected.  Ovid, in "The Metamorphoses" wrote 'When,






          therefore, the earth, covered with mud from the recent
          flood became heated up by the hot and genial rays of
          the sun, she brought forth innumerable forms of life,
          in part of ancient shapes, and in part creatures new
          and strange'.  Noah's grandson, Canaan, looked quite a
          bit less like his parents than most of the children of
          that time.  Again, from the King James, Gen 9-25
          'Cursed be Canaan;  a servant of servants shall he be
          unto his brethren'.
              The old testament is laconic;  it is meant only as
          an index of sorts to the full body of rabbinical lore
          called Midrashim.  It is not meant to be terribly
          readable in and of itself.  To further complicate
          matters, its authors lived in a world in which our
          notion of objectivity or of things happening by chance
          were inconcievable.  To them, nothing just happened;
          rather, the Lord caused something to happen for a
          reason.  The notion that two cities luck might just run
          out one night as they lay in the path of a meteorite
          storm was, again, inconcievable.  Rather, Sodom and
          Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone from
          heaven as punishment for their sins.  The story of
          Canaan was assumed to be widely known by the authors of
          the old testament and hence drew only a one line
          reference.  A modern person reading it might not
          understand what was meant.
              The only really large body of Midrashim which has
          ever been translated into English is Louis Ginzberg's
          seven volumn "Legends of the Jews", copyright 1907,
          1937 available from the Jewish Publication Society of
          America in Philadelphia.  Volumn 1, pages 168-169
          describe the curse of Canaan in more detail, again in
          language indicating that the original authors had no
          comprehension of random events or genetic mutation etc.
          " the descendants of Ham through Canaan therefore have
          red eyes, because Ham looked upon the nakedness of his
          father; they have twisted curly hair because Ham turned
          and twisted his head around to see the nakedness of his
          father; and they go about naked, because Ham did not
          cover the nakedness of his father".
              Prior to the flood, conditions had been such that
          man had no need for either technology or the
          institution of slavery.  There had been no seasons,
          food grew unaided, and the force of gravity itself had
          been significantly less, allowing animals to grow to
          sizes at which they couldn't function in todays world,
          also allowing work which seems heavy to us to be done
          easily by the people of the time.  In those days, even
          as in the middle ages four or five hundred years ago, a
          genetic mutant like Canaan would have been burnt at the
          stake.  After the flood, however, there weren't enough
          people of any variety around for anyone to feel good
          about killing someone for being different and, since






          life in general had just become much more difficult,
          and the idea of owning slaves was just starting to
          occur to people, who better to make slaves out of than
          someone who had just been punished by the lord,
          obviously for some grandiose sin.  Thus did the black
          race, rather than originating in Africa as is commonly
          taught, escape to various parts of the world, only to
          survive in Africa and India and a few places in which
          they were better adapted than and were left unmolested
          by other groups.  Again, from the King James Gen 10-18
          'and afterwards were the families of the Canaanites
          spread abroad'.
              Arguments from the realm of radio-carbon dating
          purporting to show that Africa was inhabited tens of
          thousands or millions of years ago are simply invalid;
          they are based on the assumption that our present
          ratios of carbon types held good in all ages, an
          assumption that goes out the window with catastrophism.
          Likewise the notion that Neanderthals and other
          primitive types disappeared tens of thousands of years
          ago rather than just recently.




sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (07/09/84)

Doesn't this belong in net.jokes?  Or at least in net.religion?
(Apologies in advance to the readers of both other groups.)
-- 
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA

dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (07/10/84)

>[Steve Dyer]
>Doesn't this belong in net.jokes?  Or at least in net.religion?
>(Apologies in advance to the readers of both other groups.)

Perhaps a clue as to the source of your merriment?  Your comments are
unnecessarily obscure.
-- 

Paul DuBois
Univ. of Wis.-Madison		{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois
UW Regional Primate Center

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist...
						Colossians 1:17

wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) (07/12/84)

Perhaps this should go into net.fairy-tales, net.wild-assumptions,
net.science-is-all-wet, or net.tub-thumping-fundamentalist.  I
could not believe what I was reading.  Velikofsky(sp)?  That old
reprobate was debunked years ago.  Hmmmmm.  Sounds like a good
story line for a new sf movie.  
T. C. Wheeler

dyer@wivax.UUCP (Stephen Dyer) (07/14/84)

Of course, the issue is NOT "cataclysmic evolution" per se which deserves
mention in net.fairy-tales, but the treatment of it in the referenced
article.  Have you noticed the reports in recent months that iridium,
presumably from a comet or meteor, has been found in certain strata dated
around the time of one of the great extinctions?

-- 
/Steve Dyer
decvax!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA

steven@qubix.UUCP (07/16/84)

>> >[Steve Dyer]
>> >Doesn't this belong in net.jokes?  Or at least in net.religion?
>> >(Apologies in advance to the readers of both other groups.)
>> 
>> Perhaps a clue as to the source of your merriment?  Your comments are
>> unnecessarily obscure.

	Considering that the article consisted of a rehash of 50's
    pseudo-science debunked, I think that Mr Dyer might well think
    of it as a joke.   Among other things it contained refrences to
    "Worlds In Collision", the most infamous book of scientific
    charlatinry (sp?) ever written in america.

    Steven Maurer