1.0   The ET gold rush

    If there was a miscarriage of justice with Alvarez's asteroid theory, it just got worse when Raup and
    Sepkoski put their combined weights behind extraterrestrial culprits. These 'experts' were quick to
    jump on the bandwagon and give the theory a boost just to peddle their own pet peeve. Raup and
    Sepkoski came up with the awe-inspiring discovery that a major extinction event happens about
    every 26 million years. They insinuate that this periodicity is due to sources outside of the Earth.
    Alvarez's asteroid was merely one among many impacts. What these influential authors did was
    generalize the impact mechanism and apply it to all geologic epochs.

    Of course, this turn of events opened up a gold rush, and this helps explain why ET theories have
    become so popular. If we had ten more years at our disposal, we would get to the point where if
    your theory of extinction does not include some kind of ET impact, it simply doesn't get published
    by the peer reviewers. What Raup and Sepkoski did was open the door of Paleontology to an entire
    generation of relativistic idiots. Every mathematician now has an opportunity to dig and sift in a field
    he knows nothing about. He doesn't need to. The scientific establishment demands equations, and
    who if not Einstein's idiots are the masters in this field.

    The result is that we are no longer looking for extinction here on Earth through microscopes. The
    idiots of the establishment are now looking for evidence of extinction through telescopes and in
    calculations. The paleontologists lost complete control over their qualitative field as a result of the
    idiotic asteroid theory and the generalization provided by Raup and Sepkoski.


    2.0   Selectivity, always selectivity

    Again, the first major hurdle of any ET impact theory is selectivity.  Not a single current theory,
    especially if it is founded on extraterrestrial sources, can explain why it is always the OLD species
    of plants and animals that die and not the NEW breeds. Not a single ET theory can tell you why the
    dominant animals of a given epoch grow larger over time consistent with Cope's Rule. In fact,
    catastrophic ET theories cannot explain any relevant issue usually associated with extinction events    
    (e.g., speciation, anoxic events, continental drifts, sea level rise/decline), not to mention more recent
    (Pleistocene/Holocene) extinctions. The idiot proposing ET sources is condemned to use a different
    mechanism for the extinction of each species. But he has no problem with this since he doesn't have   
    to learn the fundamentals of biology or ecology or justify anything. He just has to talk about asteroid
    mass and size or quantity of animals wiped out or percent acidity in the oceans.

    The numskull may defend himself arguing that we do not necessarily have to have a cookie-cutter
    theory that we can apply to all species and epochs. In his tiny mind, impacts make for an interesting
    world because they are grandiose events widely staggered in time. A volcano doesn't erupt and we
    don't experience an earthquake every day. And certainly we don't have Tunguska-like events every
    week or every year. When these colossal events take place, they are absolutely daunting. So what
    would you rather watch? A movie showing how the population pyramid of the Neanderthals
    overturns over a period of 10,000 years or a single catastrophic, extraterrestrial event with flashy
    props and a triple-X love scene?

    Most people simply cannot help themselves. They absolutely love and cannot live without fantastic,
    awe-inspiring theories. They love the rush, the goose bumps running down their necks. They love
    running naked through the streets yelling 'Eureka,' believing they have just discovered a law of
    nature. Saying that a species died of thirst or vanished because its time had come is just not stuff
    for the big screen.

    The truth is exactly the reverse. Ad hoc theories are guaranteed to fail (except those involving
    civilized Man, which is the only special case because we kill for reasons other than to eat). Whether
    in the air, on land, or in the sea, we will explain the disappearance of all ancient species the day we
    zero-in on Mother Nature's cookie-cutter for background and mass extinctions. ET theories are for
    people with little understanding of the issue involved and with a propensity to believe in magic and
    ghosts. They are ready made for gullible, impressionable idiots who overindulge in Star Trek and
    are predisposed to accept fantasies and new ideas only for the sake of hearing something new and
    extraordinary. Such people erroneously believe that they have a fertile imagination when it is in fact
    exactly the reverse. Fantastic theories are for the simple-minded. They're too easy and certainly
    wrong. Extinction is a complex process. That's why no one has zeroed in on it in so many decades.
    The purpose of an extraterrestrial theory, like the theories that the pyramids and crop circles were
    made by aliens, is to shock the unsophisticated listener. Only an impact explains suddenness.
    What more is there to argue?

    Actually, the effect of fantastic, gargantuan events is to get the proponent's name in the book of
    records. People can now recognize your enormous contribution to 'science.' Your name appears
    in light as the first to propose such and such theory.  
D. Raup J. Sepkoski, Periodicity of extinctions in the geologic past, PNAS 81 (Feb. 1984) 801-805.

D. Raup, Mass extinction: A commentary, Paleontology 30, Part I (Mar 19, 1986) 1-13.
Periodic
Extraterrestrial agents?
Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist
Thank God that comet hit the
Earth last week and wiped out
the dinosaurs! Now we don't
have to worry about extinction
for another 26 million years!

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