Re: Sarfati story, Hind limbs on modern cetaeans & email manners

Ed,

Very informative post! Your experience is very consistent with anyone who
has tried to engage Sirfarti (aka "Socrates") at theologyweb.com. As a
point of information, he has been banned or exiled or whatever from that
site for the past four or five months due to rude behavior -- and that's
no mean task, given that it's run by YEC fundamentalists.

Thanks!

Roger

> Hi,
> I'm new to the list, or rather was on it years ago and just rejoined. I
> noticed a discussion about the young-earth creationist, Sarfati (or was it
> "Socrates" at tweb? -- are they different people or one and the same?) and
> his email manners, two or three months ago in the ASA forum. I have my own
> story to add concerning Sarfati:
>
> About a year ago I read several articles at aig.org (Answers in Genesis
> website) that attempted to debunk evidence for cetacean evolution, but one
> article in particular attempted to debunk the claim that modern day
> cetaceans had been found with hind leg rudiments. According to the AiG
> author he could find no evidence of such things in the scientific
> literature. All that AiG had been able to find was a photo of a diseased
> pelvis of a Right whale, and the author claimed there was no evidence that
> the diseased bone in question was actually a pelvis, nor any evidence that
> the small protrusions extending from it on either side were rudimentary
> femurs.
>
> So I did some research of my own and obtained a few articles on hind limb
> rudiments that are occaisionally found on modern day cetaceans, and I
> posted the findings and photos and dissection drawings of a healthy Right
> whale's pelvis, femur and tibia bones, at
>
> http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/babinski/whale_evolution.html
>
> My webmaster was proud of the page she had put together and emailed
> Sarfati at AiG and asked him to respond to the evidence since the article
> questioned several AiG articles.
>
> Sarfati's "response" to my webmaster included him referring to me as
> "Blabinski" (instead of "Babinski"). Sarfati wrote, "Blabinski manages to
> miss the point of the [AiG] article," and added, "it's laughable from my
> perspective as a Ph.D. scientist (earned from a secular university) to
> hear non-scientists like you and Blabinski try to lecture me on
> science..." [Ironically, the sources I quoted were scientists who had
> studied cetaeans far more deeply than Sarfati had, but Sarfati continued
> to attack my credibiliy, as if that allowed him to reject the evidence out
> of hand. - Ed.] Sarfati wrote, "What qualifications does Babinski have?
> Actually, I know the answer to that -- zip, nada, zilch." [I have a
> Bachelor's in Biology from Fairleigh Dickenson University in New Jersey. -
> Ed.] Sarfati continued, "He's an affable enough person during emails, but
> his main claim to fame is as an editor of a book of "anti-testimonies" by
> assorted apostates. And he writes other junk... I haven't the slightest
> confidence that these reports are any more than more of the same wishful
> thinking... This time-wasting apostate deserves nothing but obscurity." He
> ended with, "I trust that you will also appreciate the immense busyness
> operating here; we have about 25,000 visitors to our site every day, and
> I'm finishing a book. So I hope you will understand that we can't possibly
> respond to all claims disseminated by every God-hater inhabiting the
> darker hovels of the Internet..."
>
> I sent Sarfati an invitation to look at the evidence, photos, dissection
> diagrams for himself. He has not yet said what he makes of the evidence
> for hind limb rudiements found on modern day whales. In fact, in the
> dissection of the Right whale at my site, Struthers found the hip bone
> connected to the leg bone, connected to the shin bone, by ligaments, as
> exists in ALL modern day Right whales, hidden inside their flesh:
> "Nothing can be imagined more useless to the animal than rudiments of hind
> legs entirely buried beneath the skin of a whale, so that one is inclined
> to suspect that these structures must admit of some other interpretation.
> Yet, approaching the inquiry with the most skeptical determination, one
> cannot help being convinced, as the dissection goes on, that these
> rudiments [in the Right Whale] really are femur and tibia. The synovial
> capsule representing the knee-joint was too evident to be overlooked. An
> acetabular cartilage, synovial cavity, and head of femur, together
> represent the hip-joint. Attached to this femur is an apparatus of
> constant and strong ligaments, permitting and restraining movements in
> certain directions; and muscles are present, some passing to the femur
> from distant parts, some proceeding immediately from the pelvic bone to
> the femur, by which movements of the thigh-bone are performed; and these
> ligaments and muscles present abundant instances of exact and interesting
> adaptation. But the movements of the femur are extremely limited, and in
> two of these whales the hip-joint as firmly anchylosed, in one of them on
> one side, in the other on both sides, without trace of disease, showing
> that these movements may be dispensed with. The function point of view
> fails to account for the presence of a femur in addition to processes from
> the pelvic bone. Altogether, these hind legs in this whale present for
> contemplation a most interesting instance of those significant parts in an
> animal -- rudimentary structures." [Struthers, p. 142-143]
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