Replies

"Velikovsky, with whatever illustrations he chose to use, tendered the radical idea that the earth was shaped through agents of catastrophe rather than uniformitarian processes."

He was wrong in every detail.

"I don't disagree with that and the thread article echoes it. You seem to reject anything the man said and we simply won't reach consensus. 'Nuff said."

I reject what he said because nothing he said was right.

"This, at 68 million years, is close enough to meat to abandon rhetorical pretense and parsing - you know exactly what I mean."

You are wrong. It was not at all like *meat*. It was a 3mm in diamter section of the fossil that under chemical treatment showed remnants of cells, maybe.

"This find is, at the core, beyond comprehension, man. 68 million years! New stories will have to be tendered - and soon. Paraphrasing Dr. Schweitzer, it stands current explanations on their ears. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time that science had pull new explanations out of their butts so I'm certain that they'll know just how to do it."

She also said that the creationists who have taken her discovery to mean that raw meat was found were dead wrong.

Again, your bringing up this study, totally unrelated to anything about Velikovsky, shows your desperation and inability to counter what I have said.

"He was wrong in every detail."

Some outside thoughts on your disagreement. First let me say I read 3 of Velikovsky's books about 30 years ago. I had 2 semesters of geology, and 1 of Astronomy in college, 45 years ago. Velikovsky's books dealt with two distinct areas. One was his theory of cometary castastrophy on the earth, related to interaction with the planets. My inclination at the time was to think that the planetary aspect of his theory was wrong. However, I was intrigued by his idea of major catastrophys caused be comets or other boloids. New findings do seem to be confirming that perspective.

Secondly, he listed a large number of unusual phenomena on earth that he suggested as evidence for his theories. These include flash frozen mammoths in Siberia with buttercups in their stomachs, and great masses of shredded animal remains in the far north of our continent. The buttercup material has been repeated in a number of other places, and a book I read entitled (I think) "My Way Was North," described a bluff along the coast of Alaska or Canada that was over 200 feet thick with jumbled animal bones including mammoths (a source of carving ivory). The Ipuwer papyrus describes terrible natural conditions at the time of Egypt's First Intermediate Period, which was a time of great chaos. Recently a 2 mile wide crater was discovered in the drained Iraq marshes that dates to the Ipuwer period.

In sum, I think that Velikovsky's theory of boloid catastrophys was right, his theory of causation was probably wrong, and many of his examples were probably true. I know his books have triggered a life long interest in seeking answers to such questions. For another "kook" check out Graham Hancock. Also lots of fascinating conjecture/information.