Damned / Rejected Science (Miscellaneous)

[feen5]

I'm not going to crow about anything Almond i don't need to. In case you have forgotten you were the one who brought up feathered dinosaurs in the first place when you rehashed the old Fred Hoyle rubbish about the natural history museums archeopteryx being a fake.
As for me needing lessons in gelogy and plate tectonics i think you may need to re think that also. I understand platetectonics and geology well enough having studied them to a degree in college. Your the one who is consistantly stating that the planet Venus travelled to its present orbit from Jupiter causing devestation and catastrophism along the way and provding no evidence either geological or astronomical what so ever.
How can such widespread destruction (which only happened 3,500) years ago leave nothing in the way of evidence in the geology of the earth. We have examples of ancient gelogical events all over the world from events that have happened millions even hundreds of millions of years ago but a catastrophic event 3,500 years ago leaves nothing.
Wheres the dust, rock or other planetary debris that such an encounter would have left behind? Where are all the fault lines dating from 3,500 years ago. If the earthquakes you talk of that happened all over the world there should be faults dating from this time period everywhere.
In the swiss alps you can find fault lines where rock faces have been rubbed smooth as glass along fault lines as the rocks on either side of the fault line slowly grinded past each other (See the earth story documentarties with Aubrey Manning). This is one fault in one small area leaving evidence behind. Yet world wide earthquakes 3,500 years ago leave nothing.
Fossil dating from coal seams have put their ages at way beyond the 3,500 year venus Transit. If you come to Ireland you can see for yourself coal in the process of formation. We have peat bogs all over this country which in hundreds of thousand to millions of years would become coal given the proper pressure and compaction. This countrys entire electricity supply used to be run on Turf which is simply compacted vegetative matter laid down in bogs over hundreds of thousands of years. Given enough time and pressure and its coal.
The whole notion of the Veusian transit (if it ever happened) causing gigantic worldwide earthquakes and simultaneously causing the deposits of coal and oil to be formed just does not stand up to scrutiny.

Oh and please when your using quotes from me do not add in smilies that i did not put there in the first place. I do not appreciate having my quotes being misrepresented. I am not hot headed or raging when i write my posts so i don't need any stupid smilies to make my point and i don't want you adding them to make it look like i am raging or hot headed. Do it again and i will have to report it.

 

[almond13]

feen wrote
I understand platetectonics and geology well enough having studied them to a degree in college.

I think you studied them to a lesser degree.

How can such widespread destruction (which only happened 3,500) years ago leave nothing in the way of evidence in the geology of the earth. We have examples of ancient gelogical events all over the world from events that have happened millions even hundreds of millions of years ago but a catastrophic event 3,500 years ago leaves nothing.
Wheres the dust, rock or other planetary debris that such an encounter would have left behind? Where are all the fault lines dating from 3,500 years ago. If the earthquakes you talk of that happened all over the world there should be faults dating from this time period everywhere.

I have covered these! admit it, you don't read my posts do you?
Don't you remember asking me this exact question and my retuning with examples after saying “if you don't look you won't find anything”.
Look on page nineteen and you will see that I have given a list of catastrophic evidence. Now if you don't believe the evidence I will give you some more – there is no end to the evidence for past catastrophism, I could sit here and churn it out all day if I thought for one minute that you would bother to read it.

 

[feen5]

Quote:
feen wrote
I understand platetectonics and geology well enough having studied them to a degree in college.

I think you studied them to a lesser degree.

Fair enough when you want to resort to insulting me i shall have to leave it at that. Your mistake is that you seem to think that everyone should be converted when they read your posts and attachments. How can you make that assumption. I don't believe Velikovskys Theories and nothing you have provided has made any difference to that. In fact several other posters have offered rebbutals to everything you have posted. Are you saying that i am not allowed to believe them only your posts?

Now if you don't believe the evidence I will give you some more – there is no end to the evidence for past catastrophism, I could sit here and churn it out all day if I thought for one minute that you would bother to read it.

Again it seems like you have not read anything i have posted, i have already said that there have been catastrophies in the past and if you had bothered to read my posts you would see that. The Dinosaur asteroid, Krakatoa, Pompeii etc etc etc all catastropies. I have never denied them what i have denied is velikovskys version of it. I don't believe him. Simple as that.

 

[Timble2]

Now if you don't believe the evidence I will give you some more – there is no end to the evidence for past catastrophism, I could sit here and churn it out all day if I thought for one minute that you would bother to read it.

“”The Florida fossil beds at Vero and Melbourne proved - by the artifacts found there together with human bones and the remains of animals, many of which are extinct - that these fossil beds were deposited between 2,000 and 4,000 years ago. From observations on beaches in numerous places all over the world, Daly concluded that there was a change in the ocean level, which dropped sixteen to twenty feet 3,500 years ago. Kuenen and others confirmed Daly's findings with evidence derived from Europe. “”http://www.zetatalk.com/theword/tword08c.htm

There's no point churning out stuff like this because second or third hand reports of material that may not even have been the primary source in the first place doesn't constitute evidence.

It's also possible that stuff like this was followed up and was found to be wrong...

And using zetatalk as a information source does nothing for your credibility.

 

[wembley8]

wembley8
I don't think anyone is shocked, but I think most people can spot a number of glaring flaws in an instant. And I think most people are smart enough to realise that trying to use the bible as a textbook and shoehorn physics into it is a doomed if entertaining enterprise.

I'm glad that you've hit the nail on the head; most people don't spot glaring flaws

Read it again. They DO spot the glaring flaws in Velikovsky.

You see, there is no real evidence that the north sea was under water at this time.

...And there is plenty of evidence that it was under water at the time.

Now, if you'd like to try and demonstrate how the gravity of a nearby Venus (!) could move the North Sea out of the way, that might be interesting - but as you don't seem to believe in gravity and resort to making up unquanitifed extra forces at the drop of a hat there doesn't seem to be much point.

 

[wembley8]

You see, scientists are just like you and me but they have to support something that says it knows everything.

You seem to have a rather skewed view of science. I'd like to know who claimed that science 'knows everything' - I don't believe it was a scientist!

 

[almond13]

There's no point churning out stuff like this because second or third hand reports of material that may not even have been the primary source in the first place doesn't constitute evidence.

It's also possible that stuff like this was followed up and was found to be wrong...

And using zetatalk as a information source does nothing for your credibility.

Hi Timble

You may find it here, but I can't get in:
The material you requested is included in JSTOR, an online journal archive made available to researchers through participating libraries and institutions. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0016-7428(192907)19%3A3%3C522%3ANFAG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z

I had read this in books in the past and I'm very lazy. Am I really required to use “The Scientific Method”? yes, I suppose I am.
The whole dating system is a dogs dinner as far as the end of the last 'Ice Age' is concerned. Some of the ice is still melting.
I have data by Jack Hough, Uni of Illinois who took cores in the Ross Sea that give evidence of melting in recent historical times, but I'm told that this has been debunked – well it would be, wouldn't it?
This kind of evidence is hard to find and doubly so due to the fact that it's paradigm shattering. Most of the evidence is also old and I don't think I need to go into the reasons for this. Try a search in back issues of Nature for “catastrophism proven” and I think you may have drawn a blank.

There is lots of evidence for pole shifts and Velikovsky's idea again is taken up by Charles Hapgood “The Path of the Pole” 1990, although he never mentions the fact because he wanted to be taken seriously by scientists (silly boy). The things that cause the serious problems like the glaciation of North America and the non-glaciation of Siberia are all simply answered by assuming that the outer crust of the earth has shifted over the semi-molten mantle in recent and past geology. The corral reefs in the Arctic and the trees in Northern Greenland are explained without exotic causes. Velikovsky's sun and moon standing still are explained without the need for the huge earth-atomising forces that his critics claim. When you consider that the moon and Mars are both said by astronomers to have gone through this same process it does make you wonder why it's not considered for earth? BTW there's a forward to the earlier edition of the above book by Einstein who thinks the theory needs some “careful consideration”.

 

[eburacum]

A page rejecting the Hapgood hypothesis, and the related mythos of Rand Flem-Ath and Graham Hancock here
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/atlantis.html

No matter how brilliant a person might be, his conclusions can be only as good as the data that is available to them. In the case of Dr. Einstein, his conclusions are erroneous because they are built on data which research over the last 43 years have shown to be incorrect and obsolete

Mr. Rand Flem-Ath claims that Hapgood documented three Earth-crustal displacements in the last hundred thousand years. Both he and Hapgood (1970) claim that they occur every 41,000 years. There are many problems with these claims including that contradictory data and studies are ignored, the difference between the magnetic pole and geographic pole is ignored, and that almost innumerable studies of the Quaternary geology, paleoclimatology, palynology, and paleomagnetism within North America, Antarctica, Europe, and other places universally fail to indicate that any such displacements took place. Many of these studies were conducted after Hapgood (1970) was published

 

[eburacum]

How d'ya get a name like Rand Flem-Ath anyway? Just curious...

 

[rynner2]

How d'ya get a name like Rand Flem-Ath anyway? Just curious...

IIRC, it's some conflation of a 'husband and wife' names...

but I have surprisingly little energy to google up more info!

 

[Analis]

eburacum: "The conditions on the Earth during the Carboniferous were very different to those on our planet today; the oxygen level was perhaps 15% higher, and vast forest fires were only prevented by waterlogged forests of fire-resistant species, none of which are extant today."
Theories take into account too another factor: at the time, terrestrial or semi-terrestrial ecosystems were younger, and probably less diversified and efficient than now. Notably decomposers. It probably explains partially why coal deposits from this period are much richer than from more recent ones.

almond13:
I don't understand why you insist on Velikovsky's theory. There is not an hint of evidence supporting it. The theory is flawed at its very core, as it violates everything we know about gravity (discussing general relativity will lead you to nowhere, as any other theory should take into account its achievements). The bibliucal chronology it relies upon is false: the Bible is a very bad historical book. Venus is completely different from its predictions (andd how a mass of rocks could emerge from a planet made mainly of hydrogen and helium?). There is no evidence of any devastation on Earth at the time. You listed a number of intriguing facts, unnacounted by science. But by supporting such a fanciful theory, you're only weakening their case. Skeptics will only say, "well, the person who published this list is a proponent of 'Worlds in Collision'". Velikovsky's theory is rubbish, period.
The only benefit is that forumers can perfect their knowledge on oil formation, plate tectonics, sedimentation...

 

[almond13]

eberacum
I tend to ignore the works of Hancock and the Flem-Ath's. I did buy the Flem-Ath book but found it a rehash of previous better works. As for Hancock, I find his books (and I only read one) to be well written, but again a rehash of stuff already done by much better researchers. I tend to think that he muddied the waters and went some way towards giving the subject a bad name. I'm thinking of the Horizon program in particular, that he made such a hash of.

I like TO, because the propaganda that they spout is tailor made for the faithful who lap it up by the bucketful with little or no incredulity.

“”At most, only a few tens of frozen carcasses have been documented in all of Siberia and Alaska.”” http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/atlantis.html
You will notice the phrase “have been documented” that says nothing about the actual number of carcases that are known to be there.
I've read some of the reports from Sue Bishop et al and to me they seem to be a little naïve as the natives of the area (Siberia) make a living from the export of mammoth ivory and are not likely to reveal their sources.


“”As Europe's legal ivory stocks dwindle, some craftsmen are using mammoth tusks as a substitute. The tusk is brittle and discoloured but prized by collectors.
Another co-author of the report, Dr Dan Stiles, said that in north-east Siberia the permafrost was melting as a result of climate change and exposing large numbers of mammoth remains.
"There is no way of quantifying stockpiles but we found 3,424 mammoth ivory pieces in Germany and France alone," he said. “”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4287548.stm

I have a very old book by Sir Henry H Howorth “The Mammoth and the Flood” that outlines the extent of the bones and carcases at the time of writing and is diametrically opposed to some reports of modern science.

“”The sale of fossil ivory has been touted as a good alternative, since it doesn't endanger any species. Advocates note that it's plentiful—an estimated ten million mammoths are buried under the Siberian tundra, and there are likely to be millions more in China—but paleontologists counter that fossils aren't an infinite resource and that when taken by fossil hunters, valuable scientific information can be destroyed. “”http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0505/feature3/learn.html
You can't have it both ways?

“”There is absolutely no evidence of temperate or tropical plants associated with this mammoth.””

I like this quote, it covers a large stretch of ground. As if anyone would seriously expect the mammoth to eat both temperate and tropical foliage, but it does, with a wave of the hand, dispel any lingering doubt about catastrophism without the need for reference or even logical argument.
The mammoth is a very large animal and as such, requires an equally large amount of food. It's questionable if the local flora would be adequate to feed what I have shown above to be large herds of these animals.

Radiocarbon and other forms of dating are notoriously inaccurate unless accompanied by dendrochronology and history etc. I'm thinking of Leaky's fossils that were returned again and again until they gave dates that were close to what he wanted.

“”In the case of Dr. Einstein, his conclusions are erroneous because they are built on data which research over the last 43 years have shown to be incorrect and obsolete. “”http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/atlantis.html
What is this data and what does it say?

“”The crust of the earth is firmly attached to the upper mantle such that there is no possibility that the crust can slide around independently “” see above for link.

I have already been over this and what is beneath the crust is definitely not know by geologists in any way shape or form. See deep hole drilling.

 

[almond13]

Analis
You say that there is not a hint of evidence for Velikovsky's theory and yet I have spent two weeks giving evidence and then there's the dreaded book. At the time of publishing the same criticism was made by scientists with credentials in all the required subjects. To my certain knowledge all of these criticisms were rebuffed and found to be inaccurate – in many cases because they had not read the book or that they had not done their homework. Almost none of these replies were ever published in scientific journals.
In later years some of the brighter sparks decided that the situation was serious and decided to concentrate. This led to the situation we have today, where any evidence that supports Velikovsky is suppressed. The already stated example of the Sky and Telescope photographs of Mars were withheld for just this reason. We then have the revisionism to contend with and I have mentioned this on several occasions, like the temperature of Venus and who first measured it. The very fact that this is deemed necessary gives cause to wonder what exactly is going on?

False bible chronology is an old chestnut as the Bible must be the most misquoted, abused, and misused book of all time.

There is devastation from the time as I have shown with several examples for feen. I did offer more but there were no requests and I added that they would not be read, which seems to be the case.

I really don't give a tinkers cuss about the skeptics.
I'm told that scepticism was first used by the church and later adopted by science. It has now become an entity on it's own.
Scepticism has never added one jot to the sum of human knowledge. It is a negative restraint and insists that the knowledge base be restricted to some quasi-safe ideas of science. Anything new is excluded on the basis that it's not scientific. Anything that smacks of the “black arts”, and this is a purely subjective assessment with the goal posts constantly in motion, is rejected with mass indignation.

Descartes famous quote was the result of scepticism in which he reduced everything to nothing but the “I think therefore I am”. This can be done with any subject under the sun and science is not excluded. I fear that the skeptics have engineered their own demise.

 

[Timble2]

[
I really don't give a tinkers cuss about the skeptics.
I'm told that scepticism was first used by the church and later adopted by science.

Skepticism goes back at least to Plato, so you shouldn't believe everything you're told.

 

[almond13]

[
I really don't give a tinkers cuss about the skeptics.
I'm told that scepticism was first used by the church and later adopted by science.

Skepticism goes back at least to Plato, so you shouldn't believe everything you're told.

thanks timble2 :headbutt:

 

[eburacum]

The great hope of Plate tectonic advocates was that the use of GPS (global positioning system) readings would confirm the movement of platse round the world. Well in large part they have, but the situation seems to be much more complex than the simple tectonic theory allows for.

Here is a detailed study of South East Asia using GPS readings;
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/0702 ... sAsia.html

New data shakes accepted models of collisions of the Earth's crust

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - New research findings may help refine the accepted models used by earth scientists over the past 30 years to describe the ways in which continents clash to form the Earth's landscape.
Eric Calais, an associate professor of geophysics at Purdue University, in collaboration with Ming Wang and Zenghang Shen from the Institute for Geology and Earthquake Science in China, used global positioning systems to record the precise movements of hundreds of points on the continent of Asia over a 10-year period.


"Prior to this, we had only partial regional views that were sometimes inconsistent with each other," Calais said. "With this work, we addressed a fundamental question that geologists have been debating for the past 40 years: Are continents strong and brittle or weak and viscous?"

The "strong and brittle" theory suggests continents break into pieces during collisions of the tectonic plates, pieces of the Earth's crust into which the continents are embedded. The "weak and viscous" theory suggests, on the contrary, that continents thicken and flow upon collision.

The data collected by Calais and his team, reported in the Dec. 30 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, suggests the answer is a combination of both theories. His team found that the surface of the Asian continent behaves differently in areas of high elevation, such as mountains.

"We found that most of Asia is very strong and breaks like a ceramic plate, much like what would be predicted by classic plate tectonics, but there also are large chunks like Tibet and the Tien Shan mountains that seem to deform more like Play-Doh," he said.

The Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide at a rate of 38 millimeters, or about one and one-half inches, per year. This slow-motion crash is responsible for the formation of the Himalayas and holds up the Tibetan Plateau, Calais said.


"These movements happen slowly over millions of years, but the impact is tremendous because of the huge masses involved," he said. "When the Earth's crust is put under stress, it deforms. Like a rubber band, the crust can only take so much stress before it breaks, causing an earthquake. We must understand the stresses and their accumulation in the Earth's crust to better understand earthquakes and, eventually, save lives."

The continent of Asia, home to more than 3 billion people, has had some of the largest earthquakes in the recent past, but areas in the United States also are deforming.

"The western third of North America is seismically active," Calais said. "The most well-known area is along the San Andreas Fault in California, but there also is deformation occurring across the Nevada desert, along the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, and further south in Colorado and New Mexico. The National Science Foundation is currently funding a large research effort called the "Plate Boundary Observatory" to apply this same method to study the Western United States."

Calais and his team gathered data from geodetic markers, metal pins about the size of a pen, that they placed in some of the most remote areas of the world, including Siberia and Mongolia. The markers remain in place for use in future studies. They are surveyed for a few days every year by GPS tracking equipment, which is then removed once the data is collected. The tops of the markers have a 1-millimeter-wide dimple that is the actual point tracked by the equipment.

The team tracked changes in height and horizontal movements and compared each site to those surrounding it to determine if the larger area responded to forces as a rigid or malleable segment. If the movement of sites within an area was consistent with a rigid rotation, it could be confirmed that the area fit the strong and brittle theory. However, a change in height did not necessarily mean an area fit the weak and viscous theory, Calais said.

"The change in height of an individual site could be a sign of thickening or it could mean that a rigid block is uplifting as a whole," he said. "We had to look at the behavior of the neighboring sites as well to accurately understand what was happening to the area as a whole."

The team also pulled data from existing tracking stations and through contributions from collaborators, including scientists in Russia and Kirgistan.

"International collaboration was essential for us to achieve a complete view of the surface deformation of the continent," Calais said.

The precision of the team's techniques and use of GPS allowed researchers to track movement as small as 1 millimeter per year. The team plans to place additional GPS tracking points to increase the resolution of their continentwide measurements in the future.

"This is beyond plate tectonics and theories," he said. "We now have the ability to directly measure how continents deform and to use that information to validate or invalidate theories of why this happens."

The National Science Foundation funded this research.

Writer: Elizabeth Gardner, (765) 494-2081, [email protected]

And an amazing picture
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2007/calais-map.jpg

As you can see, there is definitely a lot of movement, and some of it is plate-like; but the Himalaya region and regions surrounding the mountains are deformed and chaotic, flowing almost in a plastic fashion.

 

[almond13]

Hi eberacum
Thanks for the map, it's very interesting.
I may have misinterpreted this but the oceanic plates seem to be moving north while the continental plates are moving south west, with the exception of India that is moving north. I don't understand the caption on the Indian Plate that says it's moving west at 10 mm per year. The Eurasian Plate seems to be moving in a generally northern direction, but we are told that the Arctic Ocean is spreading?
The Philippine Sea Plate is moving in tree directions with two opposing and one at right angles to the other two. It seems that crustal movements are very complex.

 

[Analis]

almond13:
Yes, you gave much "evidence", but most of it was answered quite convincingly. You rely on Thomas GOLD's theories maybe too much. His works are interesting. His hypothesis about bacterial life in the great depths of Earth are now accepted. It revolutionnized the prospects of finding life elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that all his ideas are true. Relating to oil and coal formation, his views remain unsubstantiated and less parcimonious than others.

"False bible chronology is an old chestnut..."
Maybe, but VELIKOVSKY's theory relies much on it.

"There is devastation from the time as I have shown."
But from which time? Bible conflates events disatnt from 500 years, sometimes. See for example Martin BERNAL's analysis of teh exodus: it mixes Thera explosion, the Hyksos deportation, the Hekla explosion... Devastation from those eras is easily expalined by those great volcanic eruptions.

And frozen mammoths are an old chestnut too. There were many discussions in this forum relating to them. They are not mysterious.

 

[almond13]

“”You rely on Thomas GOLD's theories maybe too much. “”

I repeat, that I used Gold as an example of a well known scientists not agreeing with consensus theory. Gold's theories play no part in my catastrophic scenario.

“"False bible chronology is an old chestnut..."
Maybe, but VELIKOVSKY's theory relies much on it. “”

I've already been through this also: Velikovsky presented his theory on the basis of historical documents. Worlds in Collision is just about historical documents, little else. He then went on to make predictions based on this theory. Just about every one was later found to be correct with the possible exception of the Venusian hydrocarbons and I challenge you to deny this with any real evidence. When I say real evidence I mean giving the ideas a level playing field not based on some special criteria invented for the purpose. Because of his unorthodox methods, he was accused of being unscientific and with this unfounded accusation was vilified and called a crank. On the basis of the criteria given to prove this, every researcher who ever had an original thought can be called a crank.
The archaeology of the Bible depends on who is doing the digging and if they have an agenda to disprove it's veracity. They only tend to find what they're looking for.

“"There is devastation from the time as I have shown."
But from which time? Bible conflates events disatnt from 500 years, sometimes. See for example Martin BERNAL's analysis of teh exodus: it mixes Thera explosion, the Hyksos deportation, the Hekla explosion... Devastation from those eras is easily explained by those great volcanic eruptions. “”

Velikovsky explains the 500 years, it's all part of the theory. This idea has been taken up by many researcher since his time and used as supporting evidence. Chronology from this time is uncertain and has been fixed as a convenience by historians and like many other of your comments is now being used as if it were fact. Velikovsky's chronology is every bit as valid as anyone else's. There actually is a dark age of 500 years with no records.
If you Google 1500 BC for eruptions, you will see that there are quite a few dated around this time. The Thera explosion has been called the greatest in history. Again the dating is not chiselled in stone and they can only be close approximations.

“”And frozen mammoths are an old chestnut too. There were many discussions in this forum relating to them. They are not mysterious.””

There has been trade in mammoth ivory for thousands of years and there are millions of mammoth carcases in Siberia.(see links) The mammoth is a close relation of the elephant and was not a polar animal. This is backed by the other non-polar animals that are buried along with them. It has been pointed out that the skin of the mammoth is identical to that of the elephant with no sweat glands and therefore no provision for oiling the fur for protection from the elements. It must follow that there is no cold climate adaptation and that the furry coat for protection from cold is a myth.
It would be impossible for large herds or even single mammoths to survive in the conditions that we see today, both in winter and in summer due to lack of vegetation. The theory that the carcases and other remains of the New Siberian Islands were washed from the rivers of Northern Siberia is clearly absurd as they would have to cross 200 miles of ocean and then find their way onto the highlands of the islands. I don't think that bodies tend to float in very cold water. I suggest that you look at some old accounts from real explorers of the area and not the modern revisionist accounts that are designed to debunk and reduce the incidence of remains to a few isolated finds.(see comments to the TO link) :arrow:

 

[Analis]

"Again the dating is not chiselled in stone and they can only be by close approximations."
The exact datation of the Thera explosion is not 100% established. But there is little room for a date outside the frame 1575-1500. A number of methods converge on it. In any case, it has little bearing on the problem of the absence of large devastation. If a marauding planet had come near Earth, there would have been much more devastation. And the Bible is not a historical document, we don't know if any event it described actually happened.. Many mistake it with one such document; but is it a reason to do the same mistake? That's what he did.

"Velikovsky's theory is every as valid as anyone else's. There is actually a dark age with no records."
Not exactely. There are Egyptian ones. They're not complete, but they exist. And you admit that VELIKOVSKY's theories and chronology, on their historical side, are not more grounded than others.

"I challenge you to deny this with any real evidence."
Well, I'll cite the previous paragraph: there is no vast devastation his theories predicted; and they don't predict the state of the current solar system. They don't fit with any tested and verified model of gravity, planetary or cometary formation, etc... I insist on verified: this is evidence. But you just told it: we've already been through it.

"The mammoth is a close relative relative of the elephant and was not a polar animal."
To be more precise, the mammoth is an elephant. Everything in mammoth morphology is clearly adapted to cold: smaller ears, head shape, humped back; and yes longer fur. As for the absence of oily glands, other animals with fur or fur-like cover don't possess them (like juvenile birds). But it acts for them as an isolating cover.
The problem of food changes nothing to the fact that there were mammoths. If their carcasses are found there, it means that they lived there (the suggestion of crustal displacement has been satisfactorily answered). Do not forget that big animals can actually migrate on great distances. Huge mammals usually have a much slower metabolism. Related to their size, they don't need to eat as much as smaller mammals. And during the Ice Ages, Siberia was not covered by ice caps for the most part, due to drier climate. Conditions were subpolar. They are compatible with bushes and small trees, notably birchers. Grass under this climate grows high enough. Today, alpine pastures, under similar conditions, can feed whole packs of cows over a limited area. Mammoth guts were filled with grass. Those who say that they can't feed in such environment only underestimate them. If there are millions of carcasses, they accumulated under a long time period.

 

[almond13]

I would like to know how modern science justifies all this – or does it just ignore it? Any mention of a “flood” sends shivers of revulsion down the spines of the scientistic and even though the flood is not “the dreaded one” the revisionists feel that demolition is the only answer. This denial is the basic reason for the chaos that science finds itself in today.

http://www.custance.org/old/evol/ch10e.html

After speaking of Darwin's amazement at past extinctions the author continues:

His contemporary, Alfred R. Wallace, in 1876 wrote in a similar vein: (164)
We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared.... Yet it is surely a marvelous fact, and one that has hardly been sufficiently dwelt upon this sudden dying out of so many large mammalia not in one place only but over half the land surface of the globe....

There must have been some physical cause for this great change, and it must have been a cause capable of acting almost simultaneously over large portions of the earth's surface.

One of the most thorough students of this last great catastrophe was Sir Henry Howorth whose works are now virtually unobtainable. Although his interpretation of the evidence was, and still is, rejected by geologists committed to Lyell's principle of uniformity, he nevertheless put on record a tremendous amount of data, much of it gathered at firsthand, which is not nearly as well known as it should be. In one of his major works, The Mammoth and the Flood, he collected data regarding the innumerable known cases of mammoths frozen in northern latitudes, particularly in Siberia. (165) And yet in spite of this information, which is always very well documented, a comparatively recent paper by William R. Farrand entitled, "Frozen Mammoths and Modern Geology," spoke of only some 39 known frozen carcasses, of which only four are by any means complete; and it never once mentions the books and papers published by Sir Henry Howorth. (166) To Dr. Farrand, there is no real evidence of catastrophe in spite of the extraordinary circumstances under which these giant creatures evidently died. Howorth, however, gives many details which it is quite impossible, I believe, to account for in any other way than by assuming a very sudden catastrophe followed almost immediately by intense cold. It was encouraging to see that a correspondent countered Farrand's statements very effectively: (167) but Farrand replied with considerable sarcasm, clearly being on the defensive.

In 1887 Howorth wrote: (168)
In the first place, it is almost certain in my opinion that a very great cataclysm or catastrophe occurred . . . by which the mammoth with his companions was overwhelmed over a very large part of the earth's surface. This catastrophe, secondly, involved a widespread flood of waters which not only killed the animals but also buried them under continuous beds of loam or gravel. Thirdly, that the same catastrophe was accompanied by a very sudden change of climate in Siberia, by which the animals that had previously lived in fairly temperate conditions were frozen in their flesh under the ground and have remained there ever since.
When the facts are stated, they are of such a nature as to be almost incredible and they are drawn from the works of such men as Wrangell, Strahlenberg, Witzen, Muller, Klaproth, Avril, Erman, Hedenstrom, Betuschef, Bregne, Gemlin, Brandt, Antermony, Liachof, Kusholof, Chamisso, Maljuschkin, Ides, Baer, Schmidt, Bell, Tatishof, Middendorf, von Schrenck, Olders, Laptef, Sarytschef, Motschulsky, Schtscukin, Maydell, besides the official documents of the Russian Government.

 

[Jerry_B]

Then again, this is based on research from the late 1800s, and from a Biblical interpetation site...

 

[almond13]

Then again, this is based on research from the late 1800s, and from a Biblical interpetation site...

Hi Jerry_B, nice to see you again and welcome.
Yes, you're right on both counts, but where else would you find stuff like this? I actually have the book mentioned and the “creationist” interpretation is correct as are the references. I could copy excerpts from the book, but I'm lazy. I realise that you would reject anything that isn't peer reviewed, but I tend to think that this is a very narrow view of the world and scientific observation from the 1800's is not invalid is it? I don't think that Darwin's is.
At no time does Howorth say that he has seen evidence of the Biblical Flood, he is just making observations in the northern regions and the rest of the world. Many of his contemporaries did the same thing and it's a pity that someone without an agenda doesn't do the same today or alternatively, accept what was in fact observed all these years ago. To deny Howorth requires that all of his evidence be debunked and I'm sure that this has not been done as my recent past comments go some way to show.

What this evidence supports is a global pole shift, like on Mars and the moon and my intention is to collect and post more of the same

The Mammoth and the Flood, "An attempt to confront the theory of uniformity with the facts of recent geology" Henry H Howorth MP. FSA, MRAS also member of the Royal Accademy of Lisbon

 

[Jerry_B]

I don't think that you can really bundle this particular instance - in terms of validity - with Darwin. One could, after all, argue that since Darwin's time science behind Darwinism has moved onwards within it's own particular branch, and in other related areas. However, it seems to me that to rely on old data and research in order to back up one's is not at all useful in this instance. One would hope that instead more up to date data - and not from a website that is slanted towards a Christian outlook - would be a better basis for your point.

 

[almond13]

Jerry_B
I don't think that you can really bundle this particular instance - in terms of validity - with Darwin. One could, after all, argue that since Darwin's time science behind Darwinism has moved onwards within it's own particular branch, and in other related areas...

I can also argue that science has receded in the past century and this recession is due to a number of causes:
The rise of negative scepticism in recent times has reinforced the constraints imposed by earlier uniformitarians. This is further compounded by the funding of science by those with agendas for profit not wishing to lose their market share through advances. Science has willingly followed this path and now expects the rest of us to do likewise. Not only this, but it has used dubious means to ensure it's success as with the blatant example of Velikovsky and many others, some of whom I have mentioned in this thread. All of this is condoned and encouraged by an authoritarian academia, eager to preserve the status-quo and their cushy jobs. None of which is conducive to good science and I therefore submit that older science is more reliable science.

 

[Jerry_B]

Then you can pretty much cherry pick elements of older science and say that it's 'better' (and perhaps backs up your argument) simply because you have a disdain for more modern science. This isn't really going to wash as an argument. You're always going to win, because you will simply shift the goalposts when you feel like it. You seeming to be damning modern science using the same methods you claim it uses against Velikovsky, etc.. It also starts to sound like some sort of conspiracy theory.

Besides that, academia has always been closeted in terms of cushy jobs and money, so to try and make out that it was somehow more pure in the 1800s is somewhat naiive IMHO.

 

[almond13]

You're always going to win, because you will simply shift the goalposts when you feel like it. You seeming to be damning modern science using the same methods you claim it uses against Velikovsky, etc.. It also starts to sound like some sort of conspiracy theory.

Hi Jerry_B
I'd like to start by saying that conspiracy theories are something close to the basis of democracy. The idea that anyone can complain if things are going awry. There are some that would welcome a more authoritarian society as long as they were in authority. Having said that, you won't find many posts of mine on the conspiracy threads.
I don't need to dam modern science as it does that itself.
I seem to be hearing the phrase “cherry picking” quite often these days, is it sound bite of the month? How can I be cherry picking if I'm answering questions? To cherry pick, I would have to call the shots and by-and-large I don't. I set them up and wait for you and others to knock 'em down. The fact that you rarely do says something about the cherries quality, surely. Yes, I have a list of damned science and I find more as I go along. No, I don't have an agenda per se. It's something that interests me – a hobby if you like.
As for using Velikovsky type methods: With the exception of Dawkins, I don't think that I have singled out any individual by name. It's the system that's bad and not the individuals.

You say,
Besides that, academia has always been closeted in terms of cushy jobs and money, so to try and make out that it was somehow more pure in the 1800s is somewhat naiive IMHO.

There is one crucial difference between now and the 1800's in that the academics were not getting it all there own way at that time. They did not have the power that they have today. It's because of this that people like Tesla for example were able to function. Now if we look at recent times we see that the academics are able to silence the like of Pons and Fleishman with the wave of a hand. No, you're right, it wasn't pure in the past, but it wasn't as bad as it is now.

 

[Jerry_B]

I seem to be hearing the phrase “cherry picking” quite often these days, is it sound bite of the month? How can I be cherry picking if I'm answering questions? To cherry pick, I would have to call the shots and by-and-large I don't. I set them up and wait for you and others to knock 'em down. The fact that you rarely do says something about the cherries quality, surely. Yes, I have a list of damned science and I find more as I go along. No, I don't have an agenda per se. It's something that interests me – a hobby if you like.

WRT cherry picking, what I meant was that if one works from the premise that all modern science is somehow 'bad' or tainted in some way, you could find all sorts of older science to back up your ideas. It doesn't seem to matter that the older science could be inaccurate or wrong in it's conclusions, etc..

I'm all for challenging paradigms, but I would've thought it supported your argument better if you used more up-to-date data. If Velikovsky and others are right, then there must still be modern data out there that continues to back up their ideas - otherwise one can only assume that their ideas were based on the science of their day and perhaps is not as accurate as it could be compared to more modern science. One has to ask if they were ahead of their time or a product of their time.

 

[many_angled_one]

I dont think we should completely dismiss a lot of older scientific findings out of hand. A lot of researchers were out there, on the scene, getting their hands dirty as it were and listening to local people.
On the other hand it is old science and quite often based on faulty premise with conclusions now proven false.
I think with works from that long ago you have to try and isolate the pure facts from the authors opinions and apply modern scientific method to it. Let's be honest, it was not as professional as the methods of todays researchers in many cases, and might now be unverifiable in any case.
But it is still worthwhile to look at and consider.

As for Velikovsky's theories I think they are mainly a load of rubbish personally, I have been watching this thread as well and still remain entirely unconvinced, so no change there. But it is always good to keep an open mind. I do not claim to be an expert in the fields involved however so have to go on the various claims and counter-claims, proposed evidence and debunking etc here and elsewhere, as well as what I myself know about the science behind it.

But on the other hand it is good that people are out there proposing theories that go against current thinking, shaking up the status quo as it were. But without the evidence to back it up it has the same validity as any other far out theory. At the end of the day there is much more evidence against Velikovsky than for him.
In going so far against against prevailing thinking you simply HAVE to prove it with enough evidence to back it up (or as you quite rightly put Almond13 you get laughed at and dismissed by a lot of people). And that has not been done to the vast, vast, vast majority of academia's (not to mention the public's) satisfaction I am afraid.
At the end of the day if Velikovsky is right then it falls on people to *prove* it.

 

[almond13]

Hi many_angled_one nice to hear from you
What you say is basically true. There is a problem however in that what constitutes evidence to one person is not evidence to another and I find myself in the position of attempting to be all things to all men. This is clearly absurd.
If you find a problem with some aspect of credulity then by all means hit me with it. I don't promise to give an answer as I'm only human.

An additional problem is that there has grown up a cottage industry of Velikovsky knockers among the scientific community and the fact that no research will be done that supports his theory. This is definitely not conspiracy and I could back it up with reams of evidence all the way to the present day. There is a genuine fear of the man and a repeat of the 1950's scenario.

To return to evidence: I find that this tends to be strongest in an emotional context. People seem to find evidence that contradicts the scientific opinion the hardest to come to terms with. There is some unwritten law that says that if a scientist has said something it has more value that if I or you say it, for instance. I find something basically wrong and dangerous with this and I think that the layman should be informed that science is fallible and no more likely to be “right” than the rest of us. Science should, by it's own rules, not be about right.
As an example, in the mammoths thread I have pointed out that the scientific evidence for 96 mammoth carcases is false and due to the highlighting of the ivory shortage there is tons of evidence that there are millions of mammoth tusks (and carcases) in Siberia. My evidence for this , as you can see, is called “cherry picking” and dismissed even though it's solid. How do you get round this – you don't. All that i do is to ignore it and hope that some people see through the subterfuge.