From David Wall:
I recently forwarded copies of some comments by the American Atheists on the "Mysterious Origins of Man" program to the Skeptic and Skeptics_talk lists. I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow that post ended up on alt.paranormal and related news groups.
I received the following e-mail as a result. I thought perhaps some of you might enjoy it:
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 23:41:51 -0700
From: [deleted]Hey Dumbo,
Why cant people like you go crawl back into your cave with your fictitious dinosaurs and your idea of "evolution". Man was created by the hand of God not spawned of some ape. Fecal matter like you stink up this world.
Sincerely,
[deleted]After chuckling a bit and showing the message proudly to various people, I wrote the following response:
To: [deleted]
Cc: [another address for the same person (see below)]Thank you for your considerate and thoughtful message. Devout Christians such as yourself are truly an inspiring example of the ideals espoused by Christianity. Torquemada would be proud of you. Since you expressed an interest in the subject, I would recommend David Attenborough's Life on Earth for your reading list. It is somewhat dated by now, but it has many pictures, which I think you will find helpful. Books by Richard Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould are also very good, but they are on a more advanced level for which you may not be ready yet.
Again, thank you for your kind note.
[sig]OK, so I wasn't very conciliatory. But it was fun.
David K. Wall (darkon@iac.net)
Added as I was doing the HTML for this: I cc'd the second address after I did a bit of poking around to see who this person was. I thought perhaps that getting an email to another account he hadn't mentioned might make him nervous. As it turned out, this was a early-teenager on his older brother's account. I soon received an email from the older brother apologizing for his little brother's behaviour, and thanking me for teaching the kid what happens when you walk into an intellectual battle unarmed. (quoted from memory, hence possibly inaccurate) On a less encouraging note, he recommended that I read Philip Johnson's "Darwin on Trial" (I had already read it, and consider it worthless).
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