psychoceramics: Ed Conrad and the fossilized phallus

[Bruce Ediger <bediger @ csn.net>]

Ed Conrad is one of Ted Holden's buddies.  They're both believers in some
variant of Velikovskianism, which is essentially the theory that all myths
of all cultures (but particularly Old Testament myths) are more-or-less
totally true.  All we have to do is to figure out the meanings of the
pre-scientific stories.  One way of explaining the Old Testament stories
is to suppose a series of planetary-scale cataclysms that cause floods,
the sun to stand still in the sky, manna from the heavens and so forth.

Ed Conrad is a typical cult-archaeology buffon.  He regularly rants about
how the scientific establishment suppresses evidence, treats him poorly,
loses his specimens in mail rooms, etc etc.  He also has a collection of
"fossils": not only pieces of skulls, femurs and jaws of 12-foot-tall humans,
but also fossilized or petrified whole soft organs.  Here's a typically
absurd sample of Ed's claims.

Note that a bigger, manlier petrified phallus should be given more credence
than a smaller one.

=========
From: edconrad @ prolog.net (Ed Conrad)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,alt.fan.publius,alt.catastrophism
Subject: Re: The most important fossil?                   
Date: Tue Sep 17 20:40:53 MDT 1996
Organization: ProLog - PenTeleData, Inc.
Message-ID: <51nnh6$m--@n--.ptd.net>
 
m--@g--.ucalgary.ca (Andrew MacRae) wrote:
 
>       HA!  I can do better than Ed's belly-laugh any day.  For example:

>http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/t_origins/carbbones/phallus.jpeg
 
>       Top that, Ed!  And if this is not evidence for catastrophe
>befalling some ancient man, I do not know what would be.
 
Hey, Andrew, I had trouble calling up a picture of your phallus, so I
don't know what it looks like. But I'll bet your phallus isn't quite
as big -- or quite as manlike -- as the petrified one I REALLY have
found along with the hemisphere of a brain, the gall bladder
(containing a gall stone) and other human remains between anthracite
veins.
And, trust me,  I'm not pulling your phallus -- 'er, leg!