The submitter wrote: ATHEISM
Truth would divide
Satan’s kingdom
Dagon, the god of the Philistines, fell upon his face before the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant (1 Samuel 5:3-4). Likewise, atheism has fallen prostrate before Genesis.
How so? At the Scopes trial, 1925, atheists and modernist clergy traipsed out in a court of law five so-called part-ape, part-human trophies: Neanderthal man, Piltdown man, Java man, Peking man and Nebraska man.
According to Genesis, history and, more recently, real science, all of John T. Scopes’ gods have been smashed and broken into two categories: error and fraud. Could this be Dagon deja vu? What else would Satan, who lusted to be worshipped, offer us? He could not offer the truth, for then his kingdom would be divided.
Was there some recent (or not so recent) discovery of fraud in relation to the Scopes trial? Is this letter based on facts that I’m unaware of or is this a bit of a rant?
This is the Scum (Slum) News. Are you really surprised?
It’s just this goober’s way of saying “Evolution is falkse because it said so in the Bible. I know American legal history, therefore I have credibility. But the Scopes trial was obviously fraud and error because it contradicts the word of god.”
The guy is a rabid anti-intelligence Xian with a serious chip-o’-the-cross on his shoulder. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Java, Peking and Neanderthal man are all legit, so far as I know, although IIRC they are not now supposed to be as primitive as they once were (Neanderthal Man, in particular, looks much better in museum replicas than he used to eighty years ago).
Nebraska Man I’ve never heard of, but I don’t suppose any hominid other than Homo sapiens ever roamed the prairies of Nebraska, so I’d guess he’s bogus, or just a biologically modern man mistaken for a more primitive one.
Piltdown man was of course a fraud. I think what he’s refering to with the rest is that they are no longer considered ‘part-human, part-ape’ if they ever were. Neanderhal is considered by some to be a modern human subspecies and if not then he’s grouped with the others as side shoots from the human family tree, not ancestors. I assume this still holds true, but it’s been years since I studied this and bloody paleontolgists and taxonomists change their minds every 5 minutes.
No, I’m not surprised and I’m not really worried about it, either. I find the letters to the editor of The Sun News, especially the ones about religion (from both Christians and equally incoherent atheists) to be a source of endless fascination. Usually, though, I can make a decent guess about what their references mean. I’m dying to write one myself - a whole diatribe about how they’re all illogical, complete with a breakdown of all the weak debating techniques they’ve used - but then I imagine the responding letter stating something like, “Oh, poor misled heathen, I’ll pray for you so you don’t burn in hell” and I give up.
Is this guy’s reference to the Scopes trial related to something recent in the news? I’m not very familiar with the details of the trial, so what evidence was given has now been refuted?
The Nebraska man fossil consisted of a tooth and was never introduced as evidence in the Scopes trial although it was considered. The tooth was later found to be from a species of wild pig.
Short version: in 1922, someone found a prehistoric pig’s tooth in Nebraska and decided it belonged to a hominind, Nebraska Man, and blew it up into a Creationism vs. Evolution thing.
I have no idea whether any of those “part-ape, part-human trophies” were even included in the Scopes trial.
The “Nebraska man” was certainly not included in the Scopes trial, although the only fraud associated with it is the distortion that a few Creationists tell about it. A fossil pig’s tooth was discovered in Nebraska around 1922. It was originally tentatively identified as having come from a proto-human. However, the overwhelming majority of paleontologists rejected that conclusion. While the actual academic discussion was proceeding, a magazine article was published in which the editor threw in a picture of an “ape man” over some text that said that the painting “might” look like a proto-human “if” the tooth turns out to be from a proto-human. No scientist (even the few who thought the tooth might be hominid) had anything to do with the magazine illustration and no scientist ever drew what they claimed was the hominid from which the tooth was taken. By the time of the Scopes trial, the “Nebraska man” tooth had already been placed back with its porcine brethren as far as the scientific community was concerned.
Piltdown man was a hoax. It was never accepted unanimously by the scientific community even before the hoax was revealed.
Neandertal certainly existed (but contemporaneous with early humans, not as an ancestor).
Java and Peking man have each had some shuffling as they have been re-inspected: Peking man has been re-classified from Sinanthropus pekinensis to homo erectus, and Java man has been re-classified from Pithecanthropus erectus to homo erectus, putting them in the same group. A number of Creationists have simply labeled them “apes” and refused to look at any scientific evidence to change their mind.
The letter-writer is a loon. By claiming that Nebraska man was used at the Scopes trial, he is also a liar. (Even the Creationists usually note that “Nebraska” didn’t show up at Scopes, although they try to write the story that there was some nefarious plot to hide the “pig” information when in reality, it was a standard, self-correcting scientific investigation.)
No, I’m not surprised and I’m not really worried about it, either. I find the letters to the editor of The Sun News, especially the ones about religion (from both Christians and equally incoherent atheists) to be a source of endless fascination. Usually, though, I can make a decent guess about what their references mean. I’m dying to write one myself - a whole diatribe about how they’re all illogical, complete with a breakdown of all the weak debating techniques they’ve used - but then I imagine the responding letter stating something like, “Oh, poor misled heathen, I’ll pray for you so you don’t burn in hell” and I give up.