"If you dress like that & get raped & I'm on the jury,..."

Already driven. Despite what you said, then didn't say, then said again, Christian fundamentalists didn't incorrectly refute the theory that humans descended from monkeys.

The semantics over the use of the words 'define' and 'identify' are all yours.

Again, this isn't a competition. Only one of us is talking about who's "more right" and "intellectually superior," and it ain't me. I just wanted to you to clarify who you were referring to, but now I'm sorry I asked...

"They [fundamentalists] incorrectly define the theory as 'being descended from monkeys'."

vs

"I've never said that fundamentalists 'defined' the theory incorrectly or otherwise."

vs

"I've already noted 'they' as 'fundamentalists' twice."

Nice pastor, blaming the victims.

Would he say the same thing to children who get molested? I could imagine a pedo saying to the judge "Gees, your honor, I couldn't help myself as the kid was dressed so provocatively..."

Thanks for totally evading the point, which surprises me not at all. Your continued attempt to 'prove' that fundie deniers of evolutionary theory are more correct than the theorists is not far short of just plain hilarious. And a good laugh is always worth something.

I'd agree that it is easy to misrepresent the majority of fundamentalists in this instance (they have plenty of other dumb queries to 'disprove' the modern evolutionary synthesis that one can pick on) but some creationists, such as O'Connell (1969) and Bowden (1981), have indeed claimed that the Peking Man fossils were actually those of monkeys.

[url www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/monkeypeking.html[/url]

More infamously we have William Jennings Bryan, representing the prosecution at the infamous 'Monkey' Scopes trial. (1925) The centerpiece of Bryan's argument, on the fifth day of the trial, was an extended misreading of Darwin's theories of evolution, in which he lamented that American schoolchildren were being taught that they descended from monkeys, quipping: “Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys.”

Well, you did ask. I found these prime examples after a cursory Google search. As I say, the stereotyping of all fundamentalists from a few outliers is probably unwise, but it is wrong to say that such a gross misrepresentation either in mockery or all sincerity never exists. After all studies have found fundamentalists typically have been educated to lower levels, and can be less intelligent on the whole than (say) atheists.



Not Bryant for sure for it was created for the Early Man volume of the Life Nature Library, published in 1965, and drawn by the artist Rudolph Zallinger. (However apparently Thomas Henry Huxley's frontispiece to his 1863 book Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature was intended simply to compare the skeletons of apes and humans, but its unintentional left-to-right progressionist sequence has according to the historian Jennifer Tucker "become an iconic and instantly recognizable visual shorthand for evolution") I doubt if one can attribute the spread of such an image to one person exactly though, more the spread of a memorable simplistic meme in popular culture.



I don't see that one necessary excludes the other (as we can see from my two examples).

It would 'behoove'* you (are you descended of bovines, perchance?) not to attempt pedantry, as you're not particularly gifted at it.

*And yes, before you attempt another jaunt in pedantry, I recognize that 'behoove' is the American spelling of British 'behove', but for rather obvious reasons, I find the British one preferable.

Bottom line is, fundies hew to the reductionist notion that, according to science (as they understood it and misinterpreted it), humans are descendants of apes--or monkeys, or what have you--a notion which they cling to despite advances in evolutionary theory on the matter. The only herring of any shade that's been thrown around these precincts is the rather mouldering one you continue to toss in trying to contend that fundamentalists don't say it.



The only 'sneaky plot twist' here is your ongoing attempt to twist my statement that fundamentalists deny the now-outdated 'humans from apes' theory by claiming that humans, by virtue of being especial and sui generis creations of God, couldn't be. You're once more trying to make the initial erroneous argument that I said fundamentalists introduced the theory. I've repeatedly said fundamentalists reject the 'humans from apes' theory on the basis of their incorrect interpretation of it, as well as on the basis, in their belief system, that man cannot be an animal and therefore could not have had animal descent or animal relation in the natural world. You keep trying this gabit in the hopes that it's going to effectively obscure the point I was making. Keep trying, because you haven't done very well with that gambit thus far.

As far as 'personal jabs' go--I don't know you personally, so that's not possible. And if you feel personally jabbed, that's more to do with your own attitudes regarding your own amour-propre than with anything I've penned here--which haven't referenced you personally at all, other than in the manner of first-person address. If you'd prefer I addressed you in the second- or third- person, the better to spare potential bruised feelings, well, I'd be happy to oblige.

Yes, perhaps in addition to what she said. Although without a context it is hard to know whether that observation would have been needed.


You certainly don't have to explain it to me, I recognise a plural when I see one. It is also a fallacy of faulty generalisation.



You said "If I believe that God (or a god or gods) doesn't exist, am I still a theist? Of course not. But apparently someone can believe humans descended from monkeys and still be a Christian fundamentalist." which I think a false equivalence, made clearer as you say now:

which unfortunately also sounds like a Scotsman.

Clearly a theist can not be one who lacks belief in god(s) as you say but as my two examples showed, a fundamentalist can misrepresent evolutionary theory and still remain one who is dedicated to a more literal interpretation of scripture or the demand for strict adherence to certain theological doctrines. That is, those last two are not dependent on getting a major scientific theory wrong.

And yet still it's not wrong to deny that humans descended from monkeys no matter who you are or why you deny it.

And major swathes of the Christian community (including, yes, fundamentalists) denied the then-current theory that man evolved from ape, but they denied it based on their own misinterpretations of Darwinian theory which they took to mean as stating that man was a direct lineal descendant of apes. Even the evolutionary science of that time was not making that reductively simplistic a claim.