Wegener and Evidence for Continental Drift

This seems to be getting beyond either a joke or a reasonable misunderstanding.Indeed I notice two claims which I can only regard as outright lies - the claim that continental drift predicts Flood geology (which you must certainly know to be false) and your assertion that you did not claim that the evidence Wegener had did not support conventional Plate Tectonics over CPT.Although you call this claim "ridiculous", deny making it and state that my argument is "false" you go on to explicitly assert the very same thing.

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All the evidence wegener had for conventional plate tectonics was merely evidence for the idea of 'continental drift' and is so ambiguous that it could not independently differentiate between any CPT or PT theory.

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Well which is it ? Something so ridiculous that you would never say it OR exactly what you HAVE been saying and STILL say ?You can't have it both ways.As to the other sssertiosn. This thread WAS specifically started to compare the evidence FOR continental drift available to Wegenr with theat FOR flood geology. If you wish to deny my original statement then you must either produce evidence FOR Flood geology OR deny the Wegener had evidence FOR continental drift. You may, of course, choose to concede instead.I do find it amusing that you again cliam that it would need "superhuman research skills" to find evidnece for CPT. Baumgartner prposed it what ? 15 years ago ? And there still isn't any evidence for it ? So far as I can tell the main obstacle to finding evidence is an insistence on assuming that the results of CPT must look identical to those of conventional Plate tectonics. Perhaps if this insistence were replaced with an attempt to actually understand CPT evidence for or against it would be found. Of course, it may be that you know in advance that the evidence will almost certainly come out against.For instance the usual model of CPT assumes that the configuration discovered by Wegener (perhaps with some small modifications) was the original configuration and it therefore follows that we should not find evidence of prior configurations. This is already known to be false.

Well your response here is loaded with errors and it seems that rather than answering my points you are just going to insist that CPT somehow must produce exactly the same results as conventional plate tectonics. Which seems to include tens of milliosn of years of evolution happening during the Flood year - if you really do beleive that then I would appreciate it if you made it explicit and offered an explanation of how it could happen.Let us go with the problems with your reply.1) Although you deny putting the entire post-seperation fossil record into the post-Flood period you do not explain how the populations are supposed to diversify.2) Your "explanation" insists of repeatign the same assertion you are supposed to be defending. Rather than explaining how the evidence can be explained in terms of CPT you merely assert that CPT must produce exactly the same evidence as conventional plate tectonics despite the clear differences between them3) On the agreed assumption that fossils are found in the places where they lived the divergence of the continents cannot explain a divergence in the fossil record. As I pointed out the sortign methods proposed by flood geologists cannot explain this4) The final comment ("unless they all died") makes no sense in the light of the assertion that the diversification of the fossil record does not reflect a post-flood state.
Even if for some reason the members of a particular species were killed and buried on one continent before the other then they should still be found on both continents - with the addiitonal puzzle of explaining why they appear so much earlier.So it appears that we have good reason to think that Wegener's fossil evidence does indeed support conventional plate tectonics over CPT.

First you say that we shoudl see the same diversiifcation of species as the continents seperate under CPT as under conventional plate tectonics and then you turn around and deny it.Can you make your mind up ?And can you explain why it is wrogn to say that you just keep assertign that the results will be the same when that is in fact precisely what you are doing ? I have been explaining why I expect to see diferences and all you do is assert that there won't be without explanation or it seems a coherrent picture of what you are talking aboutHere's the point that you don't understand.To support Wegener's view the fossil record should show diversification after the point when the continents seperated. Only species able to make it across the growing gap can be found on both sides.But in CPT the fossil record should reflect the pre-Flood state and therefore there should be no diversification until the post-FLood period.Obviously the actual configuration and the pssiblity of longer routes around the gap can be considered but the essence really is that simple.

What would I expect to be different in the fossil record ? Well given conventional geology I would expect to see a diversification as the continents drifted apart. Obviously you agree that CPT does not allow time for evolutionary diversification so it seems that you should agree that CPT should not show that at all.[This message has been edited by PaulK, 06-04-2003]

The problem is not that anyone is trying to use you as an example.What we are trying to do is1) get you to answer the point this topic was originally started to deal with.and2) support some of the other claims that you have made in the course of this threadIn response we get a lot of evasion and unsupported assertions - some of which are then denied, sometimess even in the same post.You may be setting yourself up as an example of the dishonesty and evasiveness of YECs. But it is all your own doing.For example insisted that it was ridiculous to say that Wegenr's evidence did not support conventional plate tectonics over CPT - and denied ever having said it. And in the next SENTENCE insisted that the evidence available to Wegener did not differntiate between the two !
Is it your position that I somehow MADE you say that ? That I somehow forced you into self contradiction ?Your problem on this thread is not the actions of others - it is your own.

That's a nice page. The linked page (sidebar)http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/stripes.html is even more interesting.It looks to me as if CPT needs the rate of spread to be closely correlated with the (hypothetical) accelerated decay rate to explain the data.

Firstly, I am not the only one who has tried to get you to deal with the original question - Percy for instance has made a number of attempts to no avail.Second, I am sorry if you have not understood my explanations of why the fossil record should show a diference between CPT and conventional Plate Tectonics but at least I have tried. Where is your explanation of what CPT predicts for the fossil record - and how it follows from CPT ? Surely you must admit that it is not obvious that the fossil record shoudl be equally consistent with both.I do have a problem with you asking others to back up their assertions at this point in the discussion - because you have refused to back up yours too many times. Of course if you would rather retract your claims or admit that they are not defensible given your present state of knowledge that would be different - although it would raise the question of why you made the assertions in the first place.Since I see that you have founfd thew quote I am talkign about perhaps you would like to say what is "wrong" about it if it is not the idea that you claim that Wegerer's evidence did not support conventional Plate Tectonics over CPT - if you want to claim that you have offered a real argument instead of assertions then please refer to the actual post.And I note that despite your attempts to make comparisons CPT itself still lacks any real evidence to support it over conventional Plate Tectonics. Even on that basis it comes behind Continental Drift despite the fact that it has been around for years.