ABSTRACTS
THE CHAOTIC CHRONOLOGY OF CATASTROPHIC PLATE TECTONICS
John K. Reed and Carl R. Froede, Jr.
Developed from computer models, Catastrophic Plate Tectonics was introduced in 1994 as a global tectonic model of the Genesis Flood. Advocates of the model claimed that evidence for Plate Tectonic theory also supported its catastrophic daughter. Examination of the literature identified several inconsistencies in the timing of events between the parent Plate Tectonic theory and its creationist offspring. Various events within catastrophic plate tectonics also appear to be in conflict in their relative timing and potentially in disagreement with the biblical record. Caution should be exercised in applying catastrophic plate tectonic concepts to field situations until these problems are addressed and resolved.
LA BREA TAR PITS: A CRITIQUE OF ANIMAL ENTRAPMENT THEORIES
William Weston
New evidence acquired from an ongoing excavation project at Rancho La Brea has led to a major re-evaluation of how the fossils were deposited. The traditional idea that animals were trapped in continuously active, open pools of tar has been discarded, and new theories of entrapment and deposition emerged. Although more realistic in some ways than the old theory, the alternatives suffer from the same inability to provide a defendable, gradualistic explanation. This critique represents a preparatory stage in the development of a theory that discards the principle of animal entrapments and advances the concept of a diluvial process in the formation of the tar pit fossil beds.
DARWIN’S COUSIN SIR FRANCIS GALTON (1822–1911) AND THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT
Jerry Bergman
A central plank in Nazism, communism, and other totalitarianism movements was eugenics. Eugenics, the science of improving the human race by scientific control of breeding, was viewed by a large percentage of all life scientists, professors, and social reformers for over a century as an important, if not a major means toward producing paradise on Earth. The founder of this new science was Sir Francis Galton, a cousin and close associate of Charles Darwin. Galton’s work was crucial in providing the foundation for a movement that culminated in the loss of many millions of lives, and untold suffering for hundreds of millions of people.
SETI AND DNA
Walter I. Sivertsen
Four specific criteria for recognizing intelligence as the source of a coded signal from outer space have been delineated by Carl Sagan. When those criteria are applied to the genetic code, one may logically conclude that there is an intelligent source for the code. To conclude otherwise is to abandon the criteria that are so vital to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.