Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!udel!gatech!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw From: throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop) Newsgroups: sci.misc Subject: Re: more Velikovsky Message-ID: <702@xyzzy.UUCP> Date: 23 Mar 88 16:10:17 GMT References: <5236@uwmcsd1.UUCP> <1138@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <5250@uwmcsd1.UUCP> <1167@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <5265@uwmcsd1.UUCP> Organization: Data General, RTP NC. Lines: 58 >,>>> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) >>,>>>> lindsay@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Donald Lindsay) >>>>>Velikovsky's hypothesis was that the climatic change brought about by the >>>>>near collision caused the mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age ... the >>>>>very same kind of hypothesis. >>>>A planet floating by, and an asteroid ramming us, are not "the same kind of >>>>hypothesis". >>>In both cases we are talking about collisions or near collisions. >>No. Read carefully. A planet floating by is a near-collision. It is not a >>collision. An asteroid ramming us is a collision. It is not a near- >>collision. > Okay. However, the difference is still superficial because in both cases > we are talking about a catastrophe caused by a collision OR a near collision > bringing about the extinction of species. Of course, by this standard, the differences between evolution and special creation are superficial because in both cases we are talking about origins caused by mutation and natural selection OR direct divine intervention. The point is, Mark has displaced most of the material that explains why a collision with an asteroid is very different from a near collision with an object many orders of magnitude more massive. The only thing they have in common is "a body approaches the earth" in each scenario, just as about the ony thing evolution and special creation have in common is "species result from the process". > Methods that use radiation counts > to date things prior to a supposed catastrophe cannot be used to disprove the > catastrophe existed. [...] > The best test I can think of would use tree ring analysis. Tree rings are > perfectly reliable calendars for determining past dates and past climate > accurate to the year, once one has calibrated the rings. Just out of curriosity, why is this any better than radiation dating? After all, catastrophic changes may have occured to change the rate of ring formation, or obliterate some of the rings of all the trees you are using. (This is the direct analog of the argument Mark just used against isotope dating methods, and is even used against other yearly-depsosition methods by creationists and Velikovsky enthusiasts.) (Note that I'm not trying to group the above two groups in the same camp... I'm just using them as two examples.) > Velikovsky was wronged > and the conditions that led to this happening have not changed all that > greatly. True, but important to remember that being wronged doesn't make him correct. It merely makes him wronged. (I would also argue that the extent of the "wrong" is very small, and did not in the least succeed in supressing Velikovsky's theories. They are rejected not because they are unknown, they are rejected because *are* known, and they don't make sense.) -- A program without a loop and a structured variable isn't worth writing. --- Alan J. Perlis -- Wayne Throop !mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw