Immanuel Velikovsky

Absolutely. There is no doubt that Velikovsky was monumentally wrong in his fundamental thesis. By chance a handful of his 'predictions' matched reality, but this does not mean he was even slightly right - on those points he was simply lucky.
I am trying to recall things I read four decades ago, but I think he even managed to confuse hydrocarbons with carbohydrates. Or maybe that was me.

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I believe I may be the one who introduced this technique to sciforums. I think it was in the dialogues with Happeh - an exotic individual who thought you could identify masturbators by the angle at which they held their heads.:shrug:

 

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He did. He tried to use the fact that hydrocarbons had been detected in comets to explain why a close passage of Venus (as a comet) produced the manna from Heaven in the Bible.

 

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They don't realize that banning me and censoring me makes my ideas even more powerful, compelling, and persuasive. These kids grew up on 1984 and Kurt Cobain. There is nothing cooler to them than reading banned literature and forbidden ideas and rebelling against outmoded mainstream orthodoxy.

 

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How long ago - according to Immanuel Velikovsky - did the earth settle into its current orbit?

 

You tell me. I thought you've read all his work and are an expert on the topic so you should be able to provide a direct quote.

However, I wanted to focus on the 3 claims in the OP.

 

First things first: The OP starts with a false claim.

So, let us examine OIM's false claim. OIM adroitly uses multiple logical fallacies in the OP. First off, Trippy was obviously referring to Velikovsky's key claims:

• That Earth was once a satellite of a "proto-Saturn" body,
• That this proto-Saturn entered a nova state, triggered Noah's Flood,
• That Venus was ejected from Jupiter in recent times,
• That periodic close contacts with Venus caused the Exodus events ...
• ... including making the Sun stand still.

So, did OIM address any of these very specific and very extravagant claims? Of course not; these claims are completely indefensible. Instead OIM chose to focus on three lesser and very vague claims made by Velikovsky.

For the sake of argument, let's assume those lesser claims are correct. Do they add a scintilla of credence to his more extravagant claims? Of course not. The extravagant claims do not follow from these lesser claims. Velikovsky, as a master charlatan, knew full well that one of the best ways to promulgate a huge lie was to wrap it in lesser truths.

On to the claims.

First off, this claim is so vague as to be meaningless as posed by OIM as to be meaningless. Secondly, Velikovksy simply latched on to an existing and growing controversy in science. The idea is not his. Thirdly, it poses a straw man argument. Scientists in 1959 were well aware of large changes in climate such as ice ages, drastic changes in the Earth such as earth quakes. Fourthly, the specific catastrophic claims made by Velikovsky are false. His specific claims depend on interactions between the Earth and Venus and Mars. Such events never occurred.

Even crackpots get some things right: Venus is hot. Does this mean Venus sprang from Jupiter a few thousand years ago? Of course not. He got one fact right but completely missed the boat in the explanation.

Debunked here: http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pseudosc/vlkovsky.htm

Velikovsky's supporters refer again and again to Velikovsky's address to the Princeton Graduate College Forum on October 14, 1953, in which he predicted, eighteen months before the actual discovery, that Jupiter should emit radio waves. Remarkably, they never quote what Velikovsky actually said during what is supposed to have been one of his greatest moments. Ferte' refers to the discovery of radio emissions from Jupiter, "supposedly a cold body encased in thousands of miles of ice." Evidently Velikovsky expected Jupiter to emit radio waves for the same reason Venus does--because it is hot. Any object above absolute zero will emit radio waves, so a "prediction" of this sort is a safe, so-what prediction. Jupiter actually emits radio waves because charged particles from the Sun are trapped and accelerated by Jupiter's magnetic field. Velikovsky no more foresaw this discovery than anyone else. In no sense of the word did Velikovsky make a real prediction. Here again we find a total absence of anything resembling a rigorous, step-by-step proof, or any evidence that Velikovsky and his supporters understand what a real proof is. A real prediction that Jupiter should emit radio waves would include a specific mention of the physical process responsible, as well as observational or theoretical reasons why that mechanism should be present on Jupiter.​

 

If it's meaningless then how can it be wrong?

So you agree with a crackpot...lol.

Debunked here: http://www.varchive.org/cor/einstein/540616ve.htm

 

Are you saying that D H does not agree that Venus is hot? If you are saying so then it is you who are being dishonest.

 

OIM, you are once again making a fallacious argument. Suppose someone claims that "1+1=2" and "100+100=10000". Just because 1+1=2" is universally accepted as true does not validate the other claim. Just because someone else acknowledges that "1+1=2" is true does not mean that that other person has somehow lost credibility in his rebuttal of the extravagant claim.

That is analogous to the situation here. To argue that Venus isn't hot is a ludicrous position. Just because I agree that Venus is hot does not mean I agree with everything Velikovsky had to say, and that is exactly what you were implying.

 

I said I want to discuss the 3 claims in the opening post. Not that I want to discuss anything else that someone may have said that was wrong. If you want to discuss another topic, start your own thread.

 

whatever gave you that idea?

 

I suspect brain damage.

 

He's gone, Ophiolite. Check the ban list.

 

Thanks DH. It was about time. Aspects of his arguments could have been occasionally interesting if he had dropped the deceitful debating tactics. I'm sure there will be another kook along soon.