Tero Sand                              
Mar-21-93 06:17AM
FAQTTNA (reorganization)

Organization: University of Helsinki
From: cust_ts@kruuna.Helsinki.FI (Tero Sand)
Message-ID: <1993Mar21.141711.10289@klaava.helsinki.fi>
Newsgroups: talk.origins

Or: Frequently Asked Questions That Ted Never Answers. All
occurrences of "you" are, naturally, referring to Ted.

I have reorganized the questions into subject categories. Suggestions on
adding/deleting categories, moving questions from one category to the
other, and of course adding/deleting questions* are welcome. In the
interest of saving bandwith (and to make my job easier, too) these
should probably be emailed.

* Somebody mentioned the Roche limit isn't a problem. Is this so?

Attenuated gravity
==================

- How is scaling Kaz up to 70,000 pounds (or whatever you like)
  relevant to whether sauropods could stand?
- How is success or failure in trying to breed big eagles relevant to
  the maximum weight of a flying creature?
- Why do so many dinosaur localities occur at the edges of Pangaea
  (e.g., the western U.S. and Arctic), the area where, according to
  Ted's "reduced felt effect of gravity" model, the effects should be
  minimal because they are located near the paleo-equator?
- If gravity was reduced, why aren't fossil trees proportionally
  bigger?


Myth, history, facts
====================

- How do you differentiate between historically accurate myth and
  fantasy mythology? Do you believe in the Norse gods? Why or why
  not?
- Why is it so easy to find interpretations of mythology which
  support scenarios totally different from Ted's?
- Why does Ted believe that written, fragmentary, multi-translated,
  emotional, human historical accounts of past events are more
  objective than physical evidence?  [Answer: he has never read/seen
  Sherlock Holmes?]


Pangaea, plate tectonics
========================

- How is calculating the odds of a *given* continent being in a
  *given* hemisphere at a *given* time relevant to the odds of all
  continents being in one hemisphere some time in the past?
- Why does Ted assume continents move randomly? Furthermore, why does
  he assume continents moved at all, since all the evidence for their
  motion is "uniformitarianistic"?
- Why does Ted use 1970s vintage plate tectonic interpretations of
  the Afar Triangle, when plenty of new ones are available? [2]
- Why does Ted's model imply total, continual darkness in one
  hemisphere, and yet dinosaurs and plants were living happily at the
  darkened edges of Pangaea, and photosynthetic plankton were living
  in the paleo-Pacific (which wasn't frozen over)?
- Why does paleomagnetic pole data _not_ point to the Afar Triangle
  region during the time of Pangea?  Was the magnetic pole
  perpendicular to the rotational pole? (cf. Uranus)


Biology
=======

- How did life survive the trip from Saturn to Earth's present
  position?
- How does evolution violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
- How did the huge increase in radiation during/after the flood
  _increase_ genetic diversity and allow extremely rapid evolution to
  occur, when all of biology says that it would drive populations
  through tiny bottlenecks, actually _decreasing_ diversity?
- Why does Ted's model imply a world without seasons (confirmed by
  Ted), yet fossil trees have seasonal growth rings?
- In a world with no seasons, why did trees have deciduous leaves?
  [this is obvious from the anatomy of the leaf stems, and the sheer
  quantity of fossil leaves]


Astronomy, Geology, Physics
===========================

- How was the pole kept pointing at Saturn?
- How did Earth survive the Roche limit?
- How was the atmosphere retained, that is, neutral particles?
- What kept the CO2 from freezing?
- How could Jupiter/Saturn be a star when each lacks the required
  mass?
  - Assuming an answer, what extinguished the star?
- Where was this system, relative to our current solar system? (Were
  we part of that system in some way also? Or did we just bump into
  it?)
- Why did the large amount of radiation leave no trace in terms of
  elevated C-14 or Be-10 levels?
- Why does astronomical dating (based on orbital calculations) agree
  with radioisotopic dating?  Even if both are considered
  uniformitarian, how could a catastrophe affect both in exactly the
  same way?
- Why can ten thousand annual layers be counted in ice cores, and
  none of them show any sign of a flood (note, isotopic analysis
  shows that these are annual layers, not layers due to individual
  storms [1]).Why do tree records of the same length agree with this?
- Why does the isostatic rebound of the earth agree so well with a
  loading history which consists of deglaciation occuring between
  21,000 and about 6,000 years ago?  Why does this particular pattern
  of isostatic rebound match such various data as the free air
  gravity anomaly, movement of the rotation pole, and the timing of
  babylonian eclipses?
- Why is there no sign in the above data of the rebound due to the
  flattening of Rose's "magic mountain"?  Such an event should leave
  unmistakable traces for many tens of thousands of years after the
  departure of the perturbing force (in this case, the gravity of
  Saturn).
- With the stellar configuration Ted describes, why is there
  sedimentologic evidence for tidal cycles similar to modern, monthly
  spring-neep tides due to the moon?


Miscellanea
===========

- Why does Ted keep misspelling McGowan?
- Why does Ted think uniformitarian principles do not allow for
  different processes from today operating in the past?
- Why does Ted think geologists only use this strict sense of
  uniformitarian principles?  [We don't.  Simple examples: km-size
  meteorite impacts or atmospheres without oxygen in the
  Precambrian.]
- Why does Ted criticize "uniformitarianism", and yet says "the laws
  of physics don't change" (i.e. the same thing)?
- Why does Ted use Pangaea as evidence for his theories, and yet
  criticizes all of the geology used to hypothesize Pangaea in the
  first place?
- How can Ted honestly believe that thousands of disagreeing,
  debating, competitive geologists, biologists, physicists, etc. in
  academia and industry are involved in a conspiracy to misinform?
- What is Ted's first-hand experience with geology?


References:

[1. One of the many references on deglaciation histories and
  isostatic rebound will be found in: Tushingham, A.M. and W. R.
  Peltier, "Validation of the ice-3g model of Wurm-Wisconsin
  deglaciation using a global data base of relative sea level
  histories.", J. Geophys. Res, 1991.]
[2. Souriot, T. and Brun, J.-P., 1992. Faulting and block rotation in
  the Afar triangle, East Africa: the Danakil "crank-arm" model.
  Geology, v.20, p.911-914.]


      Tero Sand
-- 
      EMail: cust_ts@cc.helsinki.fi   or   custts@cc.helsinki.fi
   "I feel most ministers who claim they've heard God's voice are eating
too much pizza before they go to bed at night, and it's really an 
intestinal disorder, not a revelation." - Reverend Jerry Falwell