Replies

I have stated nothing irrelevant. Let's go to the videotape:

To: Alouette
I know a number of ultra-Orthodox Jews who are highly qualified physicians, engineers, physicists (including Israel's leading hydro-physicist), and other type of scientists in spite of believing that the earth is 5763 years old.
They'd certainly suck as paleontologists.
25 posted on 10/6/02 12:51 PM Eastern by VadeRetro

An obvious point, and not one that can be attacked frontally. Nobody who has a religious commandment to believe that the earth is 5763 years old is going to be able to properly interpret or present data about a much older earth. I might as easily have said "They'd certainly suck as geologists," or "They'd certainly suck as astronomers." These people cannot do a good job in any area which involves an obvious contradiction to what they perceive as a duty to promulgate an idea contradicted by the everyday facts of certain disciplines of study.

So what does AndrewC post?

To: VadeRetro

They'd certainly suck as paleontologists.
Paleontologists suck as paleontologists.
Whale bones.

A diversion to a subject the lurker is expected to imagine as rout of paleontology. What is the nature of this rout? Paleontologists changed their story in light of new evidence, the crucial piece of which was paleontological.

Pakicetus, a creature with a rather cetacean head except the nostrils haven't become a blowhole yet, had artiodactyl ankles and Mesonychus didn't. So Meso is either a spectacular convergence, or a spectacular retention of related features on another branch, or a close relative that lost the ankles.

There's no there there. Paleontology has not gone away as a fallout of the exciting finds in Pakistan. The whole discussion is a diversion from the question of whether YECs should be working in areas of science that require knowledge more recent than about 450 BC.

The Clinton trick. Open your mouth and say something. The faithful will score you as having answered all points. Play to the pom-pom shakers.

You allegedly believe in common descent with modification. That should produce a fossil record of evolution change, as indeed it seems to have done. Yet AndrewC is out blocking for the Luddites.

Odd.

Paleontologists changed their story in light of new evidence, the crucial piece of which was paleontological.

As I said they suck as paleontologists.

Your defence--

denial---. The narrative is false. Mesonychus was not called into question by any old-news molecular studies.
Ad Hominem ----And, having provoked a sh!tstorm of blue obfuscation, I'm out for the night.
More Ad Hominem, with evidence of lack of reading skills ---For an even better overall summary, I suggest the next time you're in a library you read an article in Scientific American's May 2002 issue, The Mammals that Conquered the Sea. Unfortunately, that one's not on their web site. It gives you a somewhat less skewed version than you get from asking the slimy lawyer for one side.
Even More Ad Hominem which is of such poor quality it is not even worth quoting here from post 242.
Yet even more Ad Hominem not worth quoting from post 245.
Finally coming to the conclusion that paleontologists suck as paleontologists.