Ophiolite

Bascule, my apologies for the delay in my reply to your post. I visit the site only rarely. What are you claiming is a totally absurd hypothesis? The expanding Earth? You seem to be unaware that in the 1940s, 1950s and even the early 1960s the idea of an expanding Earth was considered just as viable as a contracting Earth, or one with continental drift. The hypothesis was not thought to be absurd. Our improved understanding of global tectonics has now rendered such a hypothesis foolish, but it was not so at the time it was proposed. Your reaction, as my original post suggested, has all the appearances of a dogmatic, knee jerk reaction to anything opposed to scientific orthodoxy. I don't think that is a particularily useful mindset. It was precisely that same dogmatic resistance that delayed the acceptance of plate tectonics for several years.

I am well familiar with how whacko ideas are treated on this forum. If you glance at my post count and join date you will see I have been around for a while. The reason I rarely post here now is precisely because of a dogmatic defence of scientific orthodoxy that has been used against perfectly sound hypotheses. I commented that I found the reactions here interesting because they might be symptomatic of a knee jerk, dogmatic response to the apparently absurd. And perhaps not. The posts decidedly read as 'who could ever be so foolish as to envisage an expanding Earth'. The responses so far suggest this might have been a faulty reading. Why would I know? I don't think there is one. I don't think the Earth is expanding? In the 1950s (apart from the pioneering thinking of Arthur Holmes) there were no plausible mechanisms for any proposed mountain building concepts. That placed the expanding Earth hypothesis at the same level as the contracting Earth and continental drift.

I have a light fiction book called The Jesus Factor by Edwin Corley. The underlying idea is that, for an unknown reason (the Jesus factor of the title) atomic bombs will explode when stationary on the ground, but not when dropped from a plane, or launched by a missile. The author then builds an entertaining structure to explain the Japanese bombs, involving diverted fire bombing missions, low level explosion of powerful photographic flares to simulate the flash, dispersal of radioactive material, and patient waiting for an anticipated earthquake. I haven't read the book since the 1970s, but it was almost as entertaining as this thread. (It was probably more convincing.)

Three excellent popular works on geology: The Map That Changed The World - Simon Winchester How William Smith more or less invented stratigraphy, correlation by fossils, and the practice of geological mapping. The Dinosaur Hunters - Deborah Cadbury This is not only great insight to the discovery of the first dinosaurs, but a great exploration of human character. Why this hasn't been filmed is beyond me. It has everything: the penniless girl who made money by selling fossils to tourists in Lyme Regis and went on to discover some of the major British dinosaur finds; the ambitious and unethical Richard Owen, at the centre of the scientific establisment; the country doctor Gideon Matell, whose careful descriptions yielded a better understanding of the nature of the beasts. Trilobite - R.A.Fortey Even if you don't thinkk much of arthropods you will likely be carried away by the enthusiasm of the author.

I find it interesting that you are all ridiculing the idea of an expanding Earth, as if only a charlatan could contemplate such a notion. If you had studied geology prior to the plate tectonic revolution that occured in the 1960s, then you would have found the expanding Earth hypothesis was accepted as a bona fide explanation for global structural features. Continental drift was rejected as pretty unlikely because of the absence of any plausible mechanism. New evidence, and a mechanism, have led to acceptance of plate tectonics, and the expanding Earth theory is rightly discarded. It struck me, however, that your reactions to the idea smacked more of dogma than science. You might wish to consider that..... or not.

John argued that the churchmen opposed to Galileo had honest intentions. If that isn't a value judgement I'll eat my mitre. My question to him was designed to highlight that ambiguity in his post. Obviously it failed utterly to do this.

It has answered it inasmuch as it has revealed your interpretation of what is important in the situation - which is to say ethics takes a back seat. Thank you for the illumination.

The discussion between lucaspa and Mr Skeptic interests me. I am, however, disappointed that lucaspa has turned an opportunity to inform into one in which he proselytises with all the vigour and blinkered viewpoint of a creationist. Cells and life are terms that have particular meanings within the scientific community. For some reason you feels a need to have his protobiont assembalges be considerd as cells which are alive. How much more productive to accept them as what they are: probable forerunners of true cells that can afford deep insights into the origin of life. I think we could have a more intriguing discussion around the next stage in the emergence of a complex prokaryote rather than a somewhat pointless battle over misapplication of terminology.

I just have a diametrically opposed reading of the role of religion in Hitler's mind. I see that passage as a token gesture towards the large proportion of Germans who were at least overtly Christian. One suspects Hitler believed in a God, but I do not think it was the Christian God. He used Christianity with a mix of perception, cynicism and effectiveness, just as he used other institutions, traditions and organisations to further his aims. We are drifitng off topic somewhat - my central point is that religion is often blamed for violence when in fact it is merely being used. Hitler, in my view, provides a good example of this.

How would you distinguish that from Hitler's honest beliefs about the role of Germany within Europe and the actions he undertook to implement this role.

Yes. And I don't quite see what you are deducing from them. Can you clarify please.

Consistently, continuously, and convincingly. If the hat fits, wear it.

The problem with this statement is that it is wrong. Wholly, utterly, tragically wrong.I call it tragic, because in delivering a passionate, but wholly inaccurate critique of the use of the word, Mokele calls into question other observations and 'facts' he may offer up. And the consequence of that? The casual reader, perhaps one poorly schooled in the sciences, on the point of deciding between rational Darwinism and irrational creationism is disillusioned when he finds the Darwinist has 'lied'. To defeat the nonsense of creationism we need to ensure that our counter arguments are well founded. Careless oversights of this sort, in my opinion, serve us ill. A couple of examples of use of the term Darwinism by non-creationists: Stephen Gould - http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_tautology.html Stephen Pinker The Blank Slate (2002) “It is not clear whether these worldly thinkers are really convinced that Darwinism is false or whether they think it is important for people to believe that it is false.” Michael Ruse Darwinism Defended (1982) In my book, if it's good enough for Gould, it's good enough for me.

Metabolism and mutable inheritance. http://www.lyricsbase.com/w/westlife/thats-life.html

What a strange suite of comments.I believe in evolution because of the evidence I have observed directly and read about in detail while studying paleaontology. It is only in the last decade I have paid any attention to the mass of supporting evidence available from comparative anatomy, embryology and genetics. I certainly have taken none of it on faith. My teachers helped structure and channel my natural skepticism so that I took nothing on faith. (I'm still having trouble with accepting the conventional view of the Big Bang precisely because of evidential conflicts.) Paralith has expressed my views on that point a little earlier. I would add that this is not a politicised subject within science. It certainly wasn't a politicised subject when I began my studies of it.

I rather doubt this is the case. The evidence for evolution from comparative anatomy, the fossil record, embryology and genetics is of such depth and breadth, and so mutally supportive, that to deny the reality of evolution one would require to ignore a substantial proportion of this evidence. Certainly there are many aspects relating to the details of evolution, both in terms of mechanism and of historical relationships between organisms, that need to be worked out, but the 'big picture' is just about as certain as anything can ever be in science. We do not prove things in science, we merely increase the probability that a particular hypothesis is valid. There is no such thing as an impartial computer. The program and the questions we ask are inherently (pun intended) biased. Given your misunderstanding of these fundamental aspects of the way science works I think I can see partly why you would doubt evolution. Open minds are excellent, but as the saying goes, you don't want it to be so open that your brains fall out.

I shall set aside swansont's comments on your faulty definition of evolution. (He is correct, but for the sake of discussion I shall accept your definition.) You are absolutely correct. Natural selection will not produce evolution in the sense that you mean it. However, natural selection acting on genetic changes arising from mutations will most certainly result in evolution. i.e. Natural selection works in combination with novel heritable variations arising from changes in the organism's germinal DNA to deliver evolution.

I thnk the difficulty is in the word selection. What we appear to be seeing not selection, which implies alternatives, but progression, which implies a somewhat deterministic outcome. It seems reasonable to call it progression since the emergence of complexity - particles, galaxies, stellar systems, life etc, - is not obvious from the intial almost uniform conditions of the Big Bang singularity. It is the complexity that makes the Universe interesting (and allows us to be here and be interested in it). That complexity has been increasing since the first moments of the Big Bang. I am interested in what the next emergent property might be, after life and consciousness, and whether or not it has already emerged somewhere in the Universe, and whether or not we would be able to recognise it.

I thought that thoughtful biologists had all but abandoned serious attempts to define life for many of the reasons touched upon implicitly and explicitly in several of the foregoing posts. If you are determined, Donnie, to have viruses treated as life, would you also like to cast a vote for prions?

In the unlikely event it is diverted, during a close approach, by enough to cause a later impact with the Earth then we need to more about its character. Diverting it from impact would certainly be technologically feasible, but we need to know if it is a rubble pile , a hunkg of iron, or a well compacted, unitary 'stone'. That means careful observation by multiple devices during its next close approach and , ideally, a rendezvous mission.

Astrobuff, you make much of the orbital peculiarities of Sedna etc. However alternative, potentially viable and certainly plausible alternative explanations exist. For example Morbidelli, et al, considered five explanations: "(1) the passage of Neptune through a high-eccentricity phase, (2) the past existence of massive planetary embryos in the Kuiper belt or the scattered disk, (3) the presence of a massive trans-Neptunian disk at early epochs that perturbed highly inclined scattered-disk objects, (4) encounters with other stars that perturbed the orbits of some of the solar system's trans-Neptunian planetesimals, and (5) the capture of extrasolar planetesimals from low-mass stars or brown dwarfs encountering the Sun." They favoured "mechanism 4, since it produces an orbital element distribution that is more consistent with the observations....." What is your view of their interpretation? Morbidelli, A. et al Scenarios for the Origin of the Orbits of the Trans-Neptunian Objects 2000 CR105 and 2003 VB12 (Sedna) The Astronomical Journal, Volume 128, Issue 5, pp. 2564-2576 2004

There is doubtless a raft of research work that demomstrates very clearly that taking notes achieves at least three things: a) it focuses our attention on what is being said b) it enhances recall of the facts c) it improves understanding It can also provide, in the case of a good teacher, an excellent framework of headings upon which a more extensive structure can be created. I routinely see individuals who do take notes demonstrating a superior grasp of facts and understanding of principles than those who do not. I am so convinced of this benefit that I view the failure to takes notes as being little short of insane.

Very interesting. May I ask why you have posted it in pseudoscience?

Thank you for your kind remark. I'm sorry it brought down a misguided attack on you. I thought it was obvious that your last paragraph was intended to make clear your intention was somewhat tongue in cheek. That's the marvellous thing about the English language - so easy to misinterpret! I think my underlying thesis is that this statement should be generalised to "So, humans find others to be human."

The thing you must understand Tim, is that in science the onus of proof is on the person making a novel claim. (In this context novel means, not previously validated by scientific experiment.)You have to demonstrate the reality of an out of body afterlife, or at least suggest how such a thing might be demonstrated as possible/probable. We are not obliged to disprove it.