Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Valentine Pontifex · 05-01-2003, 09:41 PM

Quote:

New Educational Activities for Home Schooling Science:
A Hands-on Science Activity that Demonstrates the Atheism and Nihilism of Evolution is by John Woodmorappe, Edited by a moderator.

I will let people read Woodmorappe's article: it is VERY short. Do note who the evolutionist school teacher who wrote that evolutionist article he cited is.

The edited material read:

Quote:

the pen name of Jan Peczkis. Woodmorappe does not admit that he is Peczkis but it is trivially easy to document it (they both live at the same address, they both have the same degree, both are Polish-American, both are school teachers, etc.) and it has been well-known among those who follow the evolution/creationism for a decade

The software for edit merely put an "[edit]" and [/edit] in the stored text as I found when I replied to my message. You can find out what the content of any such edit is by replying to it.

I can understand removing "Glenn Moron" but not factual material. Certainly this is not violationg Mr. Peczkis' privacy since he was outed well over a decade ago.

Valentine Pontifex · 05-01-2003, 09:53 PM

Lets restore some one else's post:

Quote:

[edit]I assume that everyone here does know John Woodmorappe's real name. :wink: which I assume was the point of the first post. Is that what the monitor took out? It seems to me that this has been well established for some time and I think he stopped threatening to sue people for revealing it some years ago and doesn't even deny it so I hope I don't get in trouble for this post.[/edit]

I don't know if you could call Jan Peczkis an evolutionist but he did write this paper.

http://www.vertpaleo.org/jvp/14-520-533.html

� Implications of body-mass estimates for dinosaurs
Jan Peczkis, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 1994, 14(4):520-533

ABSTRACT
Body-mass estimates have been made for 220 of the over 300 generally accepted dinosaur genera. The 1-10 ton body-mass category is the modal one for all dinosaur genera, dinosaurs on nearly every continent, dinosaurs during most stages of the Mesozoic, and dinosaurs in two of the three peak historical periods of dinosaur discoveries. Carnivorous dinosaurs were much smaller than herbivores during the Late Jurassic and again in the Late Cretaceous: at other times the two were roughly equivalent in mass. In terms of discovery of dinosaur genera over time, there has been a simultaneous increase in proportion of very small (under 10 kg) dinosaurs and a relative decline in giant dinosaurs (10-100 tons). This suggests that early researchers tended to collect giant dinosaurs. �

It is one of three papers by Peczkis that "Woodmorappe" references in Noah's Ark a Feasibility Study

[edit]As "Woodmorappe" points out there is nothing wrong with using a pseudonym.
http://www.trueorigin.org/ca_jw_01.asp

and I can see why he might want to. I don't really consider what he has done deceitful. However, I think it is pretty bizarre to quote work published under your real name while writing under your pseudonym without even mentioning the connection. Anyway, that's just my opinion.[/edit]

My opinion of Noah's Ark a Feasibility Study, which I have, is that it's totally bogus and very amusing in places. I thought the part about possibly training large animals to urinate or deficate in buckets was hilarious. I spent most of my youth milking cows and believe me, even if this were possible and it's not, you would rather clean up the mess than try to hold the bucket when a cow lets go her urine.

When he talks about taking the young of large mammals on board shortly after birth he makes a blunder that shows he never lived on a farm and has forgetten what it means to be a mammal. Unless you take momma along as well you are going to have a big problem with feeding. Where are you going to get the milk and who will spend the amount of time it takes to do all that hand feeding? You can train calves to drink from a bucket but still it takes quite a bit of time to feed them that way and there are a lot of different "kinds" of large mammals. Also many animals need to learn proper behavior from their parents in the wild. Did you ever watch any of the nature shows on all the trouble it is to introduce animals raised in captivity into the wild?

He also talks a lot about specialized diets that might be prepared for many the animals that would need them but he does not seem to put the enormous amount of time this would take into his time calculations. For instance the Brown bat eats twice its weight in insects every night. You might make up something to feed it but it will take a lot of time and this is repeated over and over for hundreds of species with unique diets.

All the animal feed he takes on board is going to get pretty soggy and a lot of it will spoil during the 40 days and nights of continous rain not to mention all the water that will be put in the air from animal respiration and urination.

And pardon me for saying this but his ideas for disposal of the animal waste show that he doesn't know **** about animal **** and has probably never cleaned a barn after milking the cows or stalls during confinement. I wonder if any of you have seen what often happens to large animals when they get "off their feed" when traveling. What a mess! You will have to remove all the bird waste promptly or the ammonia generated will be toxic unless the ventillation is really good and I don't see how you can get good ventillation in a boat that must be sealed against massive global rains especially on the lower decks, in spite of Woodmorappes claim. As to slatted floors, I wonder how that works on a boat. Draining through an outfall? How high does this barge ride in the water? What happens in the waves? The whole thing is a collection of one ad hoc rationalization after another. I have a lot of experience in caring for animals large and small in both modern and relatively old fashioned settings and have spent some time working on boats. I don't think it makes the least bit of sense that eight people could care for nearly 16,000 animals of about 8,000 different kinds on a big wooden boat for a year.

I don't happen to think the mean/median thing is such a big deal since he did his caculations on total mass but it was a little sneaky as Socratism has pointed out.

BTW the weight of a "sheep" depends on what breed of "sheep" you are talking about. Adult Wiltshire Horn ewes typically weigh about 140-160 lbs and a ram will often weigh well over 200 lbs. Sheep such as Merinos that are raised primarily for wool may only weigh about 100 lbs as adults. Maybe sheep were even smaller in Noah's day.

The Frumious Bandersnatch

S2Focus · 05-01-2003, 10:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Valentine Pontifex
The edited material read:

.....

I can understand removing "Glenn Moron" but not factual material. Certainly this is not violationg Mr. Peczkis' privacy since he was outed well over a decade ago.

Heh heh -- A few years ago, I received an emailed lawsuit threat from Peczkis in response to my participation in an on-line discussion about the Peczkis/Woodmorappe link.

Peczkis apparently was so proud of the work he published under his Woodmorappe pen-name that he felt compelled to threaten legal action against folks who wanted to give him credit for "John Woodmorappe's" work!!!

P.S. -- I posted a message similar to this over at the theologyweb message board (under the handle "caerbannog"). We'll see how quickly it gets "edited".

Valentine Pontifex · 05-01-2003, 11:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by S2Focus
Heh heh -- A few years ago, I received an emailed lawsuit threat from Peczkis in response to my participation in an on-line discussion about the Peczkis/Woodmorappe link.

Peczkis apparently was so proud of the work he published under his Woodmorappe pen-name that he felt compelled to threaten legal action against folks who wanted to give him credit for "John Woodmorappe's" work!!!

P.S. -- I posted a message similar to this over at the theologyweb message board (under the handle "caerbannog"). We'll see how quickly it gets "edited".

The Fearless Lawsuit Monger�!

If Woodmorappe was not citing himself, I really don't think that I would think of it as a big deal. One has got to wonder if the stuff he has published under his true name were created so he could cite them with his pseudonym. Has anyone taken a close look at checking if he has played any of his games in those papers? I am sure that the referees are not accustomed to see the level of deceit or incompetence some creationists are capable of in papers and hense don't really consider that as much as they should. And even he not pulling the wool over the referees eyes, I really think it is dishonest citing what appears to be another person's work (and by implication an independent authority) without that to support controversial claims.

RBH · 05-02-2003, 07:52 AM

VP wrote

Quote:

I wonder if any of you have seen what often happens to large animals when they get "off their feed" when traveling. What a mess!

The dirtiest job I've ever done, bar none, was cleaning out calf pens when the calves had diarrhea. Noah must have had a stomach of steel to take care of the young of all those kinds at sea.

RBH

Tharmas · 05-02-2003, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by RBH
Noah must have had a stomach of steel to take care of the young of all those kinds at sea.

RBH

No wonder the old b*stard started hitting the bottle!

MrDarwin · 05-02-2003, 08:37 AM

Regarding the "feasability" of taking care of all those animals on the ark, it might be worth noting that the National Zoo in Washington, DC needs 320 full-time employees (not counting the multitude of volunteers who help out) to take care of fewer than 3,000 animals (data from this article from the Washington Post).

pangloss · 05-02-2003, 08:51 AM

"Momma Dee Dee" has been editing the shit out of my posts, and I suspect the "5 Solas" has been as well. I've had SEVERAL posts simply not make it to the board at all.
Here for example, 'Momma Dee Dee' refused to even let me reply to her idiotic charges...

Yet "Socrates" is allowed - encouraged, it seems - to post childish insults in EVERY single post.

This is endemic in these "Christian" run boards. When they can't win with their "intellectual" prowess, they stack the deck...

It is another CARM being "moderated" by Helen waiting to happen...

pangloss · 05-02-2003, 09:08 AM

I just read a post there where 'Momma Dee Dee' basically gives asshole - I mean, Socrates - the go ahead to keep starting sentences with things like "non-scientist so-and-so can be ignored..."

Dr.GH · 05-02-2003, 09:51 AM

The OOL bibliography I posted over there was trashed under the guise of a rule violation. Our own Rufus backed TFS and DD. If one were to follow a really anal interpretation, I suppose they are right. They should just post a rule "Not too much counter information can be posted."

I have also noted that "QED" pretends to be proscience and then spends a lot of bandwidth on "Me too." messages to socrat and company. An example"

Quote:

That's nothing special. The majority of scientists have no problem admitting the possibility that life began supernaturally (as non-scientific speculation, of course)... Only a relative handful are such staunch philosophical naturalists that they think there is justification for feeling that a supernatural origin of life is unthinkable.

There are those who would have you believe that scientists push abiogenesis as though it had the same theoretical foundation and the same mountain of evidence behind it that biological evolution has. I'm fairly certain that these people are mistaken, because I've never seen a scientist ever push abiogenesis as though it was anything more than a research program with a few hypotheses, and just a very little bit of evidence to support this or that model.

There sure as spit is not a " ... majority of scientists have no problem admitting the possibility that life began supernaturally ..."

I can see why QED might think that abiogensis is nothing more " ... than a research program with a few hypotheses, and just a very little bit of evidence to support this or that model." because they have been too lazy to examine the evidence, and the bibliography I posted gets ripped down.

If anything, there is an embarasment of demonstrated in vitro mechanisms. The various research groups are all pushing their mechanism exclucively. What is hard to come by is geochemical data that can conclucively select one over the other. BUT, there is NO point in this, as each of the known mechanisms can contribute, and none are mutually exclucive anyway. This is not a science problem, it is a competition for funding problem.

The oxygen question has been resolved by geochemical analysis of Hadean-Archean rock and meteorites, the amino acid source problem has been solved 4 different ways, the polymerization problem has been solved twice, the lipid problem has been solved, the complexity problem has been solved, the sugar problem has been solved, there are 2 or 3 good answers to the chirility question, the self catalysis (RNA) problem has been solved, minimally complex enzymes have been synthesized. And so on ...

The economics of in silico v.s. in vitro experiments means that the evolution of these primitive chemical life forms will not take place in test tubes. So, I suppose that the cretos will never admit the game is over. YECs won't even admit the universe is old, and that there was no Genesis Flood. Some "scientists" will never admit that the OOL is known either. There will always be some remaining question that can be stretched, and exagerated to fit a grant proposal. After all, there are still paleontology projects aren't there? Do we need any more fossils to know that evolution happened? Is the denial of evolution by YECs adequate justification for further paleontology research? Is there any paleontologist (or member of this BB) who thinks we know everything there is to know about paleo', or genetics, or biology, or geology. Is there anyone here who thinks that because every possible fossil "link" has not been excavated that we should entertain serious doubt about evolution?

I think that people in the E/C debate had better start reading the OOL literature in the same serious way they look at the paleo' literature. I understand that the fossils are pretty to look at, and that chemical formula are "hard." But, we need to stop letting ignorance be used by cretos who maintain that there is some sort of window for magic in the Hadean.

This is the reason that I have been pushing that bibliography. I know that the cretos won't/can't read it. But the evos should at least be familiar with a good portion of it.

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05-02-2003, 08:37 AM	#7
MrDarwin Veteran Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 4,140	Regarding the "feasability" of taking care of all those animals on the ark, it might be worth noting that the National Zoo in Washington, DC needs 320 full-time employees (not counting the multitude of volunteers who help out) to take care of fewer than 3,000 animals (data from this article from the Washington Post).

05-02-2003, 08:51 AM	#8
pangloss Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Posts: 1,302	"Momma Dee Dee" has been editing the shit out of my posts, and I suspect the "5 Solas" has been as well. I've had SEVERAL posts simply not make it to the board at all. Here for example, 'Momma Dee Dee' refused to even let me reply to her idiotic charges... Yet "Socrates" is allowed - encouraged, it seems - to post childish insults in EVERY single post. This is endemic in these "Christian" run boards. When they can't win with their "intellectual" prowess, they stack the deck... It is another CARM being "moderated" by Helen waiting to happen...

05-02-2003, 09:08 AM	#9
pangloss Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Posts: 1,302	I just read a post there where 'Momma Dee Dee' basically gives asshole - I mean, Socrates - the go ahead to keep starting sentences with things like "non-scientist so-and-so can be ignored..."

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