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I haven't read any of Velikovsky's work, so I can't really comment on that. But I will say that both scientific and religious dogma is harmful at times, to everybody.

And Dogma means belief and action without proof, and is usually manufactured to garner power/authority in a given set of ideas. Dogma doesn't necessarily follow or support the facts of a situation.

Briefly, and I would suppose that there are those on Free Republic who are far more involved with "Velikovsky-ism" than I am these days, Mr. Velikovsky wote a series of books, starting with 1950's "Worlds in Collision", in which he put forth the notion that the Earth was almost struck by a very large body, cicrca 1500 bc, with that near collision almost destroying the planet, and accounting for such things as Joshua's "day the Earth stood still" story in the Bible. Velikovsky started his work by using ancient legends, myths, and writings, such as the Bible, and took them at their literal meanings. He then went off in seasrch of supporting "hard" evidence to support his claims. From that begining, he then went on to suggest that such happenings as the Great Flood accounts were also the result of other bodies impacting the Earth, and that Earth owed it's water and atmospere to the resulting impacts, as just a small example of all the areas Velikovsky went into. However, his basic premise in Worlds in Collision sounds so outlandish, involving Venus being only a few thousands of years old, that it takes awy from some of his other truly groundbreaking notions. But to me, the whole response by the scientific community to Worlds in Collison went beyond reason, involving such things as forcing the original publishers of the book to stop its publication. A really interesting account of the whole story can be found in The Velikovsky Affair by Alfred de Grazia.

As for my use of the word"dogma", perhaps if I had been a little more awake after a sleepness night, I might have opted for "orthodoxy" instead...