Neaderthals At It Again

Most people would sooner die than think; and frequently, they do so.

Fantastic! My favorite quote.

Now that I've found you in a thinking mood, perhaps you'll consider the amount of energy diffused to slow -- and stop the mass of the Earth as described in Joshua?

The temperature on Earth would increase approximately 240° centigrade (Sagan's calculations). A nice balmy 70°F would become a rather uncomfortable 500°F. Fred, put your oven on "Broil" and crawl in. Don't worry about a water bottle, it'll boil away in a few minutes.

And then that same amount of energy would be required to restart the spin again 24 hours later.

And consider the tidal forces involved with two bodies, the Earth at 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg and Venus 4,890,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg with a closest point of approach (CPA) less than 1,000 km. The crust of the Earth (assuming Earth didn't didn't rip apart) would be crasen and lava would've have seeped up everywhere. -not to mention completely liquefying Venus.
But the Earth didn't rip apart, we don't see that cooled lava everywhere, and Venus has a crust too thick to have been molten 3,500 years ago.

Fred, do you really think this is believable?

To say Velikovsky was a moron is an crude and unnecessary insult to morons.

Read Worlds in Collison and Earth in Upheaval and then come back and tell me he was a moron.
Without reading the work, you are making that fatal error, 'I don't need to study the book to know the author is an idiot'. The questions you asked me are answered in his work.
I took the time to read his books. Why not you? What are you afraid of? He does not dispute any religious belief, he presents nothing more than the result of his research into ancient myth and legend, worldwide.
For Velikovsky to be 'wrong' - every ancient culture, every clay tablet, every papyrus of the period was produced by liars, including the OT, btw.

And that favourite quote of yours, I took it from your Page. It seemed rather fitting.

Earth in Upheaval presents the geological evidence.

Worlds in Collision deals with the tales of the ancients, worldwide.

Ages in Chaos deals with the chronology of the Middle East.

Have you read the koran? Have you read THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD? (SEE TAGLINE) Have you read the Bible recently?
Why do we read? Have you read Mein Kampf? Again, why do we read? Or, do you believe that science is finished, it's all been done, nothing more to see, move along? Do you believe that a celestial accident negates the existence of a Creator? Do you think you know the will of God? The power He uses?

I'll ask you again. Have you read the works of Velikovsky, or are you so easily led that you feel there is nothing UNKNOWN IN THE UNIVERSE? Nothing after Sagan?

I will never, never in my life understand anyone who can do what you do, tear someone apart and call them a moron without looking at the sum of their work.

Author: Ted Holden

The argument against Velikovsky derived from the Babylonian Venus
tablets is part of the so-called "Merrit FAQ" (Worlds in Confusion...).
It turns out it is again Sagan and the rest, along with t.o regulars who
parrot them, who are confused.

If Sagan is correct and our system is billions of years old,
and Venus has been in its present place for billions of years, then
ancient astronomical charts and observations MUST show Venus in its
present orbit. Indeed, scientists claim that they DO; they used
some of this evidence at the AAAS meeting in 1974 which produced
"Scientists Confront Velikovsky", claiming that the well-known
"Venus Tablets" of the Babylonian king Ammizaduga showed Venus
entirely in its present orbit in the middle of the second
millennium BC i.e. during the period when, according to Velikovsky,
it would have perforce been unstable.

But then, a number of real scholars began to take a harder
look at the Venus Tablets. The following is from an article by
Lynn E. Rose from the Winter 73 issue (#III) of the Pensee Journal,
the old Student Academic Freedom Forum. This is a long article
which I could not quote in its entirety. The article treated
mostly with the manner in which the tablets involved have been
translated in the past.

The key paragraph of the article read as follows:

"Unfortunately, nearly all treatments of groups one and three
on K. 160, and of the genuinely observational material on the
other Venus tablets that supplement K. 160, have been based on
what I call the "astronomer's dogma". The "astronomer's
dogma" is the uniformatarian attitude that the solar system
has for untold years been just as it is now, and that Venus
and Earth in particular have always been on the same orbits
they are on now, except for certain very minor perturbations
that are for most purposes entirely negligible. This means
that we can look at the present motions of Earth and Venus and
then judge on that basis how accurate the ancient observations
were. If the ancient observations do not conform to what
would be expected from the present state of affairs, then the
ancient records were defective, and were either fictions or
errors, but could not have been accurate observations of what
was going on in the sky; accordingly, it is up to us to
rewrite those ancient records so that they WILL conform to
what we see in the sky today."

Rose notes the nature of Venus as it appears to us first as
evening star, disappears for a few days of inferior conjunction,
reappears as morning star West of the sun for some months and then
disappears during superior conjunction. He notes that one of the
Babylonian tablet fragments (K. 160 from the library of
Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum) appears to be a record of
these comings and goings:

"Let me give some typical passages from the tablet:

"In the month of Sivan, on the twenty fifth day, Ninsianna
[that is, Venus] disappeared in the east; she remained absent
from the sky for two months, six days; in the month Ulul on
the 24'th day, Ninsianna appeared in the West - the heart of
the land is happy. In the month Nisan on the 27'th day,
Ninsianna disappeared in the West; she remained absent from
the sky for seven days; in the month Ayar on the third day,
Ninsianna appeared in the east - hostilities occur in the
land, the harvest of the land is successful.

"The first invisibility mentioned in these lines involves a
disappearance in the east, an invisibility of two months, six
days, and a reappearance in the west. This seems to be a
superior conjunction. The second invisibility involves a
disappearance in the west, an invisibility of seven days, and
a reappearance in the east. This seems to be an inferior
conjunction. Most of the data in groups one and three on the
tablet are of this form. But the lengths and spacings of
these invisibilities have a certain irregularity about them,
and they do not conform to the manner in which Venus moves at
present.

"The data given in the second group on the tablet do have
regularity - even too much regularity to be believable, - but
they do not conform to the present state of affairs
either.....

These kinds of things are well-known to scholars who have
actually studied the tablets. Rose mentions numerous translators,
Boseanquet & Sayce, Schiaperelli, Langdon and Fotheringham... He
notes [as an example], that:

"The next major study of the Venus tablets was by Langdon and
Fotheringham in 1928. Their book is important for the student
of the tablets in that they bring together a great deal of
material that is not available in any one other place;
unfortunately, however, their book is dominated and severely
handicapped by the astronomer's dogma, and they find it
necessary to scoff at much of what the tablets say was
actually seen, simply because such things are not seen today."

He cites also the case of Van der Waerden:

"Further attempts to deal with the tablets along
uniformitarian lines were made by Ungnad in 1940 and van der
Waerden in 1946. Van der Waerden plays the uniformitarian
game much better than some of his predecessors, but the main
reason I want to mention him here is that he is the clearest
example I have found of an unfortunate way of talking and
thinking that is characteristic of uniformitarians. He says
at one point, after either rejecting or radically rewriting
about three out of four of the recorded observations, that:
"All I have done is to remove inner contradictions from the
text."

there's lots more...
http://www.skepticfiles.org/neocat/ammi.htm

MEGABRECCIAS: EVIDENCE FOR CATASTROPHISM Arthur V. Chadwick Associate Professor of Biology, Loma Linda University Origins 5(1):39-46 (1978). Related page — | IN A FEW WORDS |

Megabreccias give evidence of transported rock masses whose size challenges our imagination. Dr. Chadwick describes some of these and comments on their implications. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many geologic phenomena of the past do not appear to be adequately accounted for in terms of the processes now occurring on the earth's surface. In some cases it is difficult to conceive of any mechanism capable of explaining them. Among these problem areas in geology the explanation of the origin, transportation and deposition of megabreccias has long rated a prominent place. An increasing number of geologists (the so-called "neocatastrophists") have recognized the need to consider forces of enormous magnitude not now operating to explain observations of the geologic record. One of these individuals, Derek Ager, has considered the catastrophic implications of megabreccias in his book The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (1). In this report we will take a more comprehensive view of megabreccias and attempt to bring the insights they provide to bear on the larger problem of understanding the past history of the earth.

Megabreccias are sedimentary deposits in which angular fragments of rock in excess of one meter in diameter occur as conspicuous components (Figure 1). Such a deposit may include many other clasts smaller than one meter, which may or may not be angular. This definition, modified from Cook et al. (2), is purely descriptive and thus includes both subaerial (land) and subaqueous (underwater) deposits that have the above characteristics.

FIGURE 1. Giant rip-up associated with megabreccia flow in basal Cambrian Tapeats Sandstone at Ninetyone Mile Canyon in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Weathered Precambrian Vishnu Schist is found below the Tapeats (lower part of the cliff). The Tapeats includes the massive sandstone found above.

FIGURE 2. Exotic quartzite boulder compressing sand laminae in basal Bright Angel Shale overlying Tapeats Sandstone at Ninetyone Mile Canyon in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

The process of generation and deposition of these megabreccias represents catastrophes of extraordinary dimensions, as substantiated by both the clast size and by the requirement for rapid movement across gently dipping or flat terrain for many kilometers. Wilson (9), assessing the magnitude of the problem, has called for consideration of "major disturbances originating outside the planetary system" which may have affected the speed of revolution of the earth and the earth's revolution about the sun. All things considered, such a statement may not be too far from truth!

there's lots more... http://www.grisda.org/origins/05039.htm

And that Sagan story went right over my head as well. I'm an Aussie, maybe we don't say his name the same way that you do?

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