RE: Fossil Insects

Donald Frack (dcfrack@sowest.net)
Wed, 17 Mar 1999 14:19:09 -0800

Karen,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: evolution-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> [mailto:evolution-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On Behalf Of Karen G. Jensen
> Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 1999 5:15 PM
> To: dcfrack@sowest.net
> Cc: evolution@calvin.edu
> Subject: RE: Fossil Insects
>
>
>
> Dear Mr. Frack,
>
> Thank you for the information you sent on Mesozoic insects.

You're welcome. I see that you found a creative boomerang use for the data,
considering I was responding to your claim about the lack of Mesozoic
insects. I was disappointed to find you citing Hughes _Palaeobiology of
Angiosperm Origins_. I assume you have (or have easy reference to) this
book. The very section you cite has a discussion indicating that what you
said to Steve isn't true.

Your "predictions" in your reply reek of ad-hocness (especially
"water-resistant"), your use of "kind" at the superfamily or suborder level
makes that term even more useless than that of most creationists, and the
actual fossil record of insects (as with other organisms), according to your
scenarios, leaves the amazing coincidence that fossils are sorted
stratigraphically, or, in your view, ecologically AND in phylogenetic order
(based on morphology).

I'm sorry to be blunt. I have been in discussions before where I wasted my
time correcting someone who was using an authoritarian tone on others, as I
perceived you were doing to Steve, then have that person shift the
discussion and respond, using information I provided to correct errors, as
"evidence" of something else. Then I find the person had references all
along that showed he/she was not stating things accurately. From this past
experience, such discussions become black holes. I wish you well in your
"research", but I don't find it worth discussing.

Don Frack