Post by bjorn on Oct 16, 2008 21:38:43 GMT
My fav Skeptic, the theist (though not Christian) Martin Gardner, is playing the common Coulter crushing sport, which - some would say - is too easy really to be considered a Sport.
He is especially not amused by her Darwin dissing.
And has some questions he seems to believe most Christians avoid. I guess like I do the Eurovison Song Contest.
Here it goes:
As these issues have been discussed rather thoroughly (not to mention almost to the death) by various authors (not the least by Belloc in his reply to Mr. Belloc Objects, a book Gardner obviously has not read, A Companion to Mr. Wells's "Outline of History" (Sheed & Ward, 1926)), I find it a bit telling that Coulter doesn't discuss it, and doesn't even seem aware that it may be a problem.
So, what should one say these days to avoid the impression that Christians just walk away from the issue?
Keep to Belloc's point that "The Catholic doctrine of Original Sin has nothing to do with the stages of man's material culture. The fact that man now in Europe uses iron in places where he once used stones for his implements, has no possible connection with the doctrine of Original Sin. The traces of beings not men but, as are apes, man-like, exceptionally discovered, and belonging presumable to a remote past, can no more affect the Catholic doctrine of original Sin than Pasteur's discovery of fermentation being due to micro-organism affects the truth that men can and do get drunk" (A Companion page 32). "
Or start on an elaborate discussion of anthropological data and the origin of man and what constitutes a man? Not to mention insisting that if the The Fall cannot be traced archeologically or physically, then it cannot have happened.
Making a point or a pun (not to mention an exclamation mark) of whether "Adam and Eve were raised and suckled by a mother who was a soulless beast!" is anyhow missing the point.
He is especially not amused by her Darwin dissing.
And has some questions he seems to believe most Christians avoid. I guess like I do the Eurovison Song Contest.
Here it goes:
Let me focus instead on the transition from apelike mammals to humans. Coulter repeatedly accuses the Darwinocranks of being embarrassed by a lack of fossils that show transitional forms from one species to another. Such paucity is easily explained by the rarity of conditions for fossilization and by the fact that transitional forms can evolve rapidly. (By “rapidly” geologists mean tens of thousands of years.) Moreover, transitional fossils keep piling up as the search for them continues.
Nowhere are transitional forms more abundant than in the fossils of early human skeletons and the skeletons of their apelike ancestors. Consider the hundreds of fossils of Neanderthals. H.G. Wells, in a forgotten little book titled Mr. Belloc Objects, defends evolution against ignorant attacks by the Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc. In Chapter 4, Wells has this to say about Neanderthals:
When I heard that Mr. Belloc was going to explain and answer the Outline of History, my thought went at once to this creature. What would Mr. Belloc say of it? Would he put it before or after the Fall? Would he correct its anatomy by wonderful new science out of his safe? Would he treat it like a brother and say it held by the most exalted monotheism, or treat it as a monster made to mislead wicked men?
He says nothing! He just walks away whenever it comes near him.
But I am sure it does not leave him. In the night, if not by day, it must be asking him: “Have I a soul to save, Mr. Belloc? Is that Heidelberg jawbone one of us, Mr. Belloc, or not? You’ve forgotten me, Mr. Belloc. For four-fifths of the Paleolithic age I was ‘man.’ There was no other. I shamble and I cannot walk erect and look up at heaven as you do, Mr. Belloc, but dare you cast me to the dogs?”
No reply.
Coulter is as silent as Mr. Belloc about Neanderthals and about the even earlier, more apelike skeletons. I doubt if they trouble her sleep; I doubt if anything troubles Coulter’s sleep. Does she think there was a slow, incremental transition from apelike creatures to Cro-Magnons and other humans? Or does she believe there was a first pair of humans?
Let’s assume there was a first pair. Does Coulter think God created Adam out of the dust of the earth, as Genesis describes, then fabricated Eve from one of Adam’s ribs? Or does she accept the fact that the first humans were the outcome of slow, small changes over many centuries? If the transition was sudden, then Adam and Eve were raised and suckled by a mother who was a soulless beast!
This is a bothersome dilemma for all Christians who believe in the crossing of a sharp line from beast to human.
Nowhere are transitional forms more abundant than in the fossils of early human skeletons and the skeletons of their apelike ancestors. Consider the hundreds of fossils of Neanderthals. H.G. Wells, in a forgotten little book titled Mr. Belloc Objects, defends evolution against ignorant attacks by the Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc. In Chapter 4, Wells has this to say about Neanderthals:
When I heard that Mr. Belloc was going to explain and answer the Outline of History, my thought went at once to this creature. What would Mr. Belloc say of it? Would he put it before or after the Fall? Would he correct its anatomy by wonderful new science out of his safe? Would he treat it like a brother and say it held by the most exalted monotheism, or treat it as a monster made to mislead wicked men?
He says nothing! He just walks away whenever it comes near him.
But I am sure it does not leave him. In the night, if not by day, it must be asking him: “Have I a soul to save, Mr. Belloc? Is that Heidelberg jawbone one of us, Mr. Belloc, or not? You’ve forgotten me, Mr. Belloc. For four-fifths of the Paleolithic age I was ‘man.’ There was no other. I shamble and I cannot walk erect and look up at heaven as you do, Mr. Belloc, but dare you cast me to the dogs?”
No reply.
Coulter is as silent as Mr. Belloc about Neanderthals and about the even earlier, more apelike skeletons. I doubt if they trouble her sleep; I doubt if anything troubles Coulter’s sleep. Does she think there was a slow, incremental transition from apelike creatures to Cro-Magnons and other humans? Or does she believe there was a first pair of humans?
Let’s assume there was a first pair. Does Coulter think God created Adam out of the dust of the earth, as Genesis describes, then fabricated Eve from one of Adam’s ribs? Or does she accept the fact that the first humans were the outcome of slow, small changes over many centuries? If the transition was sudden, then Adam and Eve were raised and suckled by a mother who was a soulless beast!
This is a bothersome dilemma for all Christians who believe in the crossing of a sharp line from beast to human.
As these issues have been discussed rather thoroughly (not to mention almost to the death) by various authors (not the least by Belloc in his reply to Mr. Belloc Objects, a book Gardner obviously has not read, A Companion to Mr. Wells's "Outline of History" (Sheed & Ward, 1926)), I find it a bit telling that Coulter doesn't discuss it, and doesn't even seem aware that it may be a problem.
So, what should one say these days to avoid the impression that Christians just walk away from the issue?
Keep to Belloc's point that "The Catholic doctrine of Original Sin has nothing to do with the stages of man's material culture. The fact that man now in Europe uses iron in places where he once used stones for his implements, has no possible connection with the doctrine of Original Sin. The traces of beings not men but, as are apes, man-like, exceptionally discovered, and belonging presumable to a remote past, can no more affect the Catholic doctrine of original Sin than Pasteur's discovery of fermentation being due to micro-organism affects the truth that men can and do get drunk" (A Companion page 32). "
Or start on an elaborate discussion of anthropological data and the origin of man and what constitutes a man? Not to mention insisting that if the The Fall cannot be traced archeologically or physically, then it cannot have happened.
Making a point or a pun (not to mention an exclamation mark) of whether "Adam and Eve were raised and suckled by a mother who was a soulless beast!" is anyhow missing the point.
