Week 1: Introduction – Chapter II

[Kerstin]

Introduction
I have a love/hate relationship with introductions, even those written by the author himself. Well-meaning as the intention might be to get a foretaste of the contents of the book, more often than not you get disoriented and it feels a bit like who came first, the chicken or the egg, because you simply don’t have the full grasp yet. This introduction felt a little like that. Maybe if I read it at the end of the book again I might get it.

So what is he saying by way of introduction? Even though he hasn’t mentioned Jesus Christ in any meaningful way, it is fair to say that the title of the book, The Everlasting Man must be connected to and/or be Jesus. He even is on the cover of my edition.

Chesterton intends to explore human nature and history from a Christian perspective in contrast to the evolutionary one. And even though the book was written in response to H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History, Charles Darwin and The Origin of Spiecies looms large as the originator of the theory of evolution. Anyone who as spent even a little time with Darwin knows that his theory was challenged right from the start. Many contemporary scientists thought his idea of spontaneous mutation a little wacky. Nevertheless, the longevity of his ideas is due in part because it deliberately excludes religion. If species spontaneously come into being and evolve without a Creator, what’s the use of said Creator? You can trace man from monkey to caveman to college professor all neat and tidy. For atheists, and especially atheists who happen to be scientists, that’s irresistible, and it is almost eerie to what extent this view has permeated the post-Christian world we live in. This in a nutshell is our backdrop.
Chesterton promises us the following, that “He who holds the Christian and Catholic view of human nature will feel certain that it is a universal and therefore sane view, and will be satisfied.” … “I do desire to help the reader to see Christendom from the outside in the sense of seeing it as a whole, against the background of other historic things; just as I desire him to see humanity as a whole against the background of natural things.”

Part I: On the Creature Called Man

Chapter I: The Man in the Cave
Chesterton starts this chapter with a bang. He says that most of anthropology is dehumanizing:

”Only I do not believe of being dehumanized in order to study humanity. I do not believe in dwelling upon the distances that are supposed to dwarf the world; I think there is even something a trifle vulgar about this idea of trying to rebuke spirit by size.”

I had never thought about in this way, that much of scientific study on the human person and the way we present it is dehumanizing – but it is. He goes on,

“There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word [evolution] and even about the very idea. … Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’… For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one”

And I love the way he goes in “for the kill”:

”But this notion of something smooth and slow, like the ascent of a slope, is a great part of the illusion. It is an illogicality as well as an illusion; for slowness has really nothing to do with the question. An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one.”

Chesterton moves on in a rather comical way how we are to believe early cave-man to be a brute dragging his wife by her hair. But when we look at what “cave-man” actually left us to discover of him, we find art. Some of it unbelievably sublime like the paintings in Lascaux, France. He doesn’t name a specific place, but this one popped right into my head. Only man produces art, or as Chesterton put it.

”Art is the signature of man.”

When comparing man with the rest of Creation, he is a rather strange creature unlike any other. “The very fact that a bird can get as far as building a nest, and cannot get any farther, proves that he has not a mind as a man has a mind; it proves it more completely than if he built nothing at all.”

Chapter II: Professors and Prehistoric Men

“The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it. … For instance, I have pointed out the difficulty of keeping a monkey and watching it evolve into a man. … Strictly speaking of course we know nothing about prehistoric man, for the simple reason that he was prehistoric. The history of prehistoric man is a very obvious contradiction in terms. …What they mean is that there are traces of human lives before the beginning of human stories; and in that sense we do at least know that humanity was before history.
Human civilization is older than human records.”

Chesterton writes that only the human mind could perceive something as mystical as religion, and that evolutionists “are trying to explain it away.”

”The first is the fact that original sin is really original. Not merely in theology but in history it is a thing rooted in the origins. Whatever else men have believed, they have all believed that there is something the matter with mankind. This sense of sin has made it impossible to be natural and have no clothes, just as it has made it impossible to be natural and have no laws. But above all it is to be found in that other fact, which is the father and mother of all laws as it is itself founded on a father and mother; the thing that is before all thrones and even all commonwealths. That fact is the family. … It has been said already that if this story cannot start with religious assumptions, it must none the less start with some moral or metaphysical assumptions, or no sense can be made of the story of man. And this is a very good instance of that alternative necessity. If we are not of those who begin by invoking a divine Trinity, we must none the less invoke a human Trinity; and see that triangle repeated everywhere in the pattern of the world. For the highest event in history, to which all history looks forward and leads up, is only something that is at once the reversal and the renewal of that triangle. Or rather it is the one triangle superimposed so as to intersect the other, making a sacred pentacle of which, in a mightier sense than that of the magicians, the fiends are afraid. The old Trinity was of father and mother and child and is called the human family. The new is of child and mother and father and has the name of the Holy Family. It is in no way altered except in being entirely reversed; just as the world which is transformed was not in the least different, except in being turned upside-down.”

[Irene]

I am always a bit uncomfortable with polemics. This book is an argument for a religious understanding of human development, an argument against specific writers of his day. For me, reading a book like this is a bit like hearing one side of a phone conversation, one voice in a debate. If I were more interested in this conversation, I could pick up Wells to try to hear what he has to say in response. But, I am not that interested. I did find the image of the club wielding caveman a bit humorous. Was that really the scientific image of prehistoric society at the time this was written? For me, that image is the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons, not a scientific thesis. By the time I am introduced to anthropology, I was presented with a sophisticated image of prehistoric peoples with art, tool making, social bonds and the suspicion of rather developed rituals. I also found the claim that anthropology dehumanizes its subject surprising. I don't have a great deal of exposure to anthropology, but what I do have has never struck me as dehumanizing.

[Manny]

Irene I don't know if in its day it would have been considered polemics. I suppose so, since he's rebutting a particular argument, but I think today it would be considered apologetics. There's certainly overlap between polemics and apologetics. Actually I would consider this predominantly apologetics with some polemics. Polemics would be a direct rebuttal while apologetics would be a defense of principles. This first chapter perhaps has a bit more polemics than the others, I think, and that would make sense given it's conception is a reaction to Wells work. But really he's defending the Christian understanding of man more than attacking Wells. At least that's how I see it.

As to the club wielding caveman - Haha! I loved it when I read it - I'm not sure he means it literally. Chesterton is an entertaining writer, not a scholarly writer, and thank God for that. I don't mean to insult anyone, but I've read a fair amount of scholarly material and other than lighting a light bulb over someone's head who is already basically on board, it doesn't move people. The club wielding caveman is a rhetorical device - synecdoche, I think - that uses an image or concept for a greater thought. It's also a parody, which I think shows you Chesterton's rhetorical skills. He's one of the best of his day. I don't know if Wells used that image but I think Chesterton is using it as a device to represent caveman's supposed brutishness and life living by tooth and nail force. Living by the “law of the jungle,” in other words.

[Manny]

From the Introduction, I thought this was a brilliant point on why the atheists judge Christianity erroneously:

"Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard. He does not judge Christianity calmly as a Confucian would; he does not judge it as he would judge Confucianism. He cannot by an effort of fancy set the Catholic Church thousands of miles away in strange skies of morning and judge it as impartially as a Chinese pagoda." (p. 2-3)

[Irene]

Maybe this is more apologetics than polemics, but from what I have read so far, and that is what my comment is based on, it feels more like polemics. Much of that comes from the introduction.

[Kerstin]

I agree, this is more of an apologetics text.

To me the dehumanizing argument really resonated. We've been told so many times life evolved out of some sort of primordial soup and evolved into higher forms of organisms through mutations - never mind that the statistics on this don't work out over the mere 150 million years we've had life on earth. This theory and its derivatives are a deliberate device to exclude God as our Creator who made us in his image. Man is nothing but a highly organized clump of tissue. Now that's dehumanizing.

[Kerstin]

Manny wrote: "From the Introduction, I thought this was a brilliant point on why the atheists judge Christianity erroneously:

"Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But th..."

I liked this passage too. In this context my thinking usually goes in this direction: one can either reject something from the perspective of knowledge or ignorance. When it comes to rejecting the Church and the Catholic Faith most atheists (and others) reject from ignorance. They know enough disjointed pieces that make no coherent sense to them and the subject matter is dismissed without the slightest desire to fill in the gaps if they are pointed out.

[Manny]

Kerstin wrote: "I agree, this is more of an apologetics text.

To me the dehumanizing argument really resonated. We've been told so many times life evolved out of some sort of primordial soup and evolved into hig..."

The way I've looked at evolution, though I don't know if this is how Chesterton will fall on the issue, is that yes there is evolution but there is something significant missing from the equation. Something has guided the evolution. Under most circumstances, nature degenerates into chaos, but something as highly ordered as our genes and their development defies entropy, which is the movement toward chaos. Something guided it, no question in my mind. And yes, Chesterton's point that the difference between our closest ape is huge between him and man. it's not even close.

[Irene]

Yes, I can see how some explanations of evolution can strike a dehumanizing note from science. But I have never gotten a dehumanizing sense from anthropology. Admittedly, I have not read extensively in that field, so maybe I have been lucky enough to have come across the right thinkers.

[[deleted user]]

I really got sidetracked already on this one. After reading the intro and first three chapters, I started wondering what moved Chesterton to speak so forcefully and specifically against the ideas of HG Wells, though in the civilized manner of their time, calling him out by name several times. So I went to the dusty old copy of The Outline of History sitting unopened on one of my bookshelves for decades. Right off, I came to the conclusion that Chesterton was probably restraining himself to a certain extent.

The very first page, "... the idea that life appeared as a natural and necessary chemical and physical process, without the intervention of any miraculous factor, seems to be very repugnant to many religious minds. But that repugnancy is due rather to a confusion of thought in these minds ..." I'm still reading, interested in finding the "old man" that Chesterton called out.

I've read that they were good friends, it would have been interesting to share a pint and listen to one of their conversations.

[Kerstin]

I watched Bishop Barron's Pivotal Players' Chesterton episode again. And yes, he and Wells were friends and respected each other. He could enter a serious debate with someone he disagreed with and then afterwards go to the pub together for a glass of beer. Barron admires this and holds it up as an example how we can disagree on a subject matter and still respect a person.
On the other hand, Wells and Belloc had a falling out. Belloc's sharp tongue was a bit too much for him. Now, I don't know if you've ever read Belloc, but you have to strap on your seat belt, he is not for the squeamish, sensitive, or faint of heart. He will bluntly tell you how it is, take it or leave it.

[Manny]

Chesterton was also friends with George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, who was also a passionate atheist. Not sure how Chesterton was able to be friends with them. There had to be some outside interest that made them bond. I couldn't be friends with people whose only interaction was oppositional debate. I'm friends with people with completely different views about the important things in life, but we never harp on them or I think our friendships would end. We have some other mutual interest that occupies our interactions. I guess I'm more like Belloc! I have not read Belloc, but I do need to.

[Manny]

It strikes me as this paragraph as one of the keys to the first chapter:

But I have begun this story in the cave, like the cave of the speculations of Plato, because it is a sort of model of the mistake of merely evolutionary introductions and prefaces. It is useless to begin by saying that everything was slow and smooth and a mere matter of development and degree. For in the plain matter like the pictures there is in fact not a trace of any such development or degree. Monkeys did not begin pictures and men finish them; Pithecanthropus did not draw a reindeer badly and Homo Sapiens draw it well. The higher animals did not draw better and better portraits; the dog did not paint better in his best period than in his early bad manner as a jackal; the wild horse was not an Impressionist and the race horse a Post-Impressionist. All we can say of this notion of reproducing things in shadow or representative shape is that it exists nowhere in nature except in man; and that we cannot even talk about it without treating man as something separate from nature. In other words, every sane sort of history must begin with man as man, a thing standing absolute and alone. How he came there, or indeed how any thing else came there, is a thing for theologians and philosophers and scientists and not for historians. But an excellent test case of this isolation and mystery is the matter of the impulse of art. This creature was truly different from all other creatures; because he was a creator as well as a creature. Nothing in that sense could be made in any other image but the image of man. But the truth is so true that, even in the absence of any religious belief, it must be assumed in the form of some moral or metaphysical principle. In the next chapter we shall see how this principle applies to all the historical hypotheses and evolutionary ethics now in fashion; to the origins of tribal government or mythological belief. But the clearest and most convenient example to start with is this popular one of what the cave-man really did in his cave. It means that somehow or other a new thing had appeared in the cavernous night of nature, a mind that is like a mirror. It is like a mirror because it is truly a thing of reflection. It is like a mirror because in it alone all the other shapes can be been like shining shadows in a vision. Above all, it is like a mirror because it is the only thing of its kind.

Perhaps that's the central point of the whole book, that man is "truly different," a "new thing" that had a "mind like a mirror because it is truly a thing of reflection." Man is "the only thing of its kind." "Man is the image of God."

[Manny]

I have to say, I'm also enjoying Chesterton's prose. He's such a joyful writer. I personally love to start sentences with the conjunction "but," but I notice Chesterton not only loves to start sentences with it, but loves to start paragraphs! That paragraph that I quoted above is at least the third in the chapter he starts with "but." That's actually quite amazing.

[Kristen]

This is my first Chesterton read and I know already that it certainly will not be my last. I was not expecting so much humor and his brilliant use of snark. And I mean snark in a good way. Of course when atheists and evolutionists get a hold of snark, I want to wrestle them to the ground.

I loved his argument in Manny's comment #13. That section really stuck with me too.

If we evolved from apes, how come there are still just apes? Not a superset of high-achieving apes, or some strain of artistic apes, or ape architects, or ape engineers, but just apes?

The evolutionists and atheists are unfortunately more comfortable with an argument that, I agree, dehumanizes humanity itself rather than having to live with the notion of a power far greater than themselves. Sad.

[Manny]

Speaking of snark: "the wild horse was not an Impressionist and the race horse a Post-Impressionist."

Hahaha! Too funny. :)

[Kerstin]

Kristen wrote: "If we evolved from apes, how come there are still just apes? Not a superset of high-achieving apes, or some strain of artistic apes, or ape architects, or ape engineers, but just apes?

Exactly! He scrutinizes different perspectives of an argument and hones into the weaknesses with a precision that's astounding.

[Kerstin]

Manny wrote: "It strikes me as this paragraph as one of the keys to the first chapter:

But I have begun this story in the cave, like the cave of the speculations of Plato, because it is a sort of model of the m..."

In this context this sentence of the paragraph you quoted sticks out too:

"This creature [man] was truly different from all other creatures; because he was a creator as well as a creature."

and then he ties in with birds building nests, but

"For the very fact that birds do build nests is one of those similarities that sharpen the startling difference. The very fact that a bird can get as far as building a nest, and cannot get any farther, proves that he has not a mind as man has a mind; it proves it more completely than if he built nothing at all.

[Manny]

Yes, I agree Kerstin. Man is a creator is a very important distinction that separates us from the other creatures.

[John]

Irene wrote: "I am always a bit uncomfortable with polemics. This book is an argument for a religious understanding of human development, an argument against specific writers of his day. For me, reading a book l..."

I am curious as to why you are uncomfortable with polemics, the flip side of the same coin with apologetics. In fact, I think The Everlasting Man is a mix of both. A defense of the truth claims of Christianity (apologetics) and a sharp attack on the truth claims of H.G. Wells in The Outline of History. Chesterton was not the first to dispute Wells, as soon as the first part of Wells' work appeared Hilaire Belloc began publishing blistering criticisms of Wells. They were collected and published in 1926 as A Companion to Mr Wells's 'Outline of History'. Wells responded with Mr Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History" to which Belloc responded with Mr. Belloc Still Objects to Mr. Wells's "Outline of History". I think it is fair to say that Belloc's approach was much more pure polemic. Chesterton's approach mixes apologetics and polemics in what was, I think, a more effective refutation of Wells atheistic, man-centered view of history. C.S. Lewis credits Everlasting Man with his conversion to Christianity, and while I doubt he was the only one, his conversion alone has been responsible for the conversion of thousands to Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular (though Lewis himself never became Catholic).

Belloc's sharp-edged polemics are not my cup of tea, and I don't think they've generally aged very well. Chesterton, however, is often as fresh and powerful today as he was at the turn of the last century.

I wonder if we are making too much of the distinction between polemics and apologetics. Isn't any Christian apologetic effort at least an implicit polemic against the truth claims of atheism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.?

[Susan]

John wrote: I wonder if we are making too much of the distinction between polemics and apologetics.
I agree...I think it would depend how important something may be to you...no one needs to be disrespectful or nasty, however if in the definition of polemic, it says 'aggressive'...I would think one could tend to be aggressive in getting their point across, if one sees something as very important/consequential... I see where these ideas have gotten this world...any grandchildren I may eventually have will certainly not live in the world I grew up in; my own children are not living in the world I grew up in....it is not really just a matter of 'casual differences that are nice to discuss and think about'...there are real world consequences to all this, and a lot depends on which side has the predominant view... (and that is just the temporal aspect, not even getting to the eternal!)
I am listening to the Everlasting Man on audible and although he loses me quite a bit, I do enjoy it. I am grateful for you guys breaking it down more. It helps me understand it more throughly...I will be lost for awhile and then something he says often brings a smile to my face, or has me nodding in agreeable understanding.

[Irene]

John wrote: "Irene wrote: "I am always a bit uncomfortable with polemics. This book is an argument for a religious understanding of human development, an argument against specific writers of his day. For me, re..."

John, The reason I am a bit uncomfortable with polemics is, as I wrote in the post you cited, because I am only hearing one side of a conversation or debate. As I said in that post, I could, if interested, track down and read Wells. But, I am not that interested. Therefore, I can't be sure if Chesterton iss accurately representing Wells thought, if he is pulling anything out of context to give it a different meaning, etc. This is true of reading nearly any work of polemics. I am not saying that polemics is, in itself, not a worthy endeavor. It is simply that I generally feel some unease when reading it.

[Manny]

Oh yikes. I didn't realize we were doing Chapter two this week as well. I'm behind then. I'll finish Two tonight.

[Manny]

Susan wrote: "John wrote: I wonder if we are making too much of the distinction between polemics and apologetics.
I agree...I think it would depend how important something may be to you...no one needs to be disr...

I am listening to the Everlasting Man on audible and although he loses me quite a bit, I do enjoy it. I am grateful for you guys breaking it down more. It helps me understand it more throughly...I will be lost for awhile and then something he says often brings a smile to my face, or has me nodding in agreeable understanding. "

There is an excellent audio book version free at Libravox. I listen and read at the same time. Here:
http://librivox.bookdesign.biz/book/1...

The reader, David Grizzly Smith, has the perfect voice for Chesterton. Did I mention it's free!

[Frances]

Manny, this is wonderful! I've started listening to it. Thanks so much.

[Manny]

Frances wrote: "Manny, this is wonderful! I've started listening to it. Thanks so much."

My pleasure, and if you want to tie it up with an online text, this is very good:
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library...

[Frances]

Thank you, Manny. And thank you also for mentioning N.T. Wright. His book The Resurrection Of The Son Of God is considered a classic among theologians. But you probably knew this.

[Manny]

Frances wrote: "Thank you, Manny. And thank you also for mentioning N.T. Wright. His book The Resurrection Of The Son Of God is considered a classic among theologians. But you probably knew this."

Yes, I should buy it, but I have a suspicion I'll never get to read it.

[Susan]

Manny wrote: Did I mention it's free!
Now you tell me :)

[Kerstin]

John wrote: "I wonder if we are making too much of the distinction between polemics and apologetics. Isn't any Christian apologetic effort at least an implicit polemic against the truth claims of atheism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.?

Absolutely. There comes a point when you have to stand up for what is true from the Christian perspective. In our culture that's rather counter-cultural :)

[Frances]

Excellent point. Kerstin. Just this week I read that the Disney film adaption of Madeleine Engle's Classic A Wrinkle in Time has removed all the Christian elements from the movie in favor of a theme of "universal love." The secular state is growing, and with it, an intended diminishment of Christianity.

[Manny]

Irene wrote: "John wrote: "Irene wrote: "I am always a bit uncomfortable with polemics. This book is an argument for a religious understanding of human development, an argument against specific writers of his da...

John, The reason I am a bit uncomfortable with polemics is, as I wrote in the post you cited, because I am only hearing one side of a conversation or debate. As I said in that post, I could, if interested, track down and read Wells. "

Irene your comment had me thinking all day on that, and on why it's really not that important to track back to what Wells actually said. It's the nature of polemics to not characterize the opposition's argument with accuracy, either intentionally or as a result of seeing the opposition's argument through the filter of one's views. Either way, in polemics, each side creates a sort of straw man of the opposition's views so that one can easily beat against it. I doubt very much H. G. Well had a fair representation of Christianity, at least one to satisfy us. That's why he's an atheist and we're not. If you ask me. Chesterton is quite gentle and easy going on Well's views given some of the atheist/theists debates I've seen or participated in. They can be nasty. So I don't think it's all that important to know what Wells actually wrote. At least not for a pleasure reading.

[Irene]

If that is how polemics is intended to work, than I suppose it is just not a genre I enjoy. If the author is creating a straw man as a foil to present his/her argument, than either I am prone to agree and don't find it all that exciting to have an author tell me what I already believe. Or if I am on the opposite side of the argument, then I become frustrated, even angry with what I see as an inaccurate portrayal of my perspective. So, whether I agree or do not, I generally do not like reading polemics. But, we all have our tastes and what speaks to us. Polemics certainly has its place and many do enjoy it.

[Manny]

Irene, this work is probably 10% polemics and 90% apologetics.

[Irene]

I guess I will have to wait to discover the shift in tone from one to the other. However, I also do not gravitate to apologetics. Reading someone defend what I already am convinced of does not excite me.

[John]

Irene wrote: "If that is how polemics is intended to work, than I suppose it is just not a genre I enjoy. If the author is creating a straw man as a foil to present his/her argument, than either I am prone to ag..."

I think I should weigh in here and note that I strongly disagree with Manny on this. While that may be the way polemics most often works in the world, the disharmony and discord we see there is a prime example that building up strawmen and demolishing them is a pointless exercise. The BEST case outcome is your opponent recognizes that you have not addressed his argument and feels free to ignore your criticism. For polemic to be effective, a person must be able to invest some level of sympathy and empathy with your opponent. You have to want to describe his strongest arguments honestly and accurately, so that when you defeat them, maybe, only maybe, he may be caused to think about his underlying assumptions. Since building up straw men is fundamentally dishonest, Christians cannot intentionally engage in it without going astray. One does not serve Truth with lies. The Everlasting Man is considered one of Chesterton's greatest works. It is surely worth reading on that account alone.

[Manny]

OK John, perhaps the term straw man was not an artful choice of words. Perhaps that implies a dishonesty. I'm not sure what the perfect word would be, but nonetheless one side of the polemic cannot accept the underlying assumptions of the other side. Was Chesterton happy with the way Wells had portrayed the Christian world view? I would suspect not. Let me re-quote from what I quoted up above:

It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard. He does not judge Christianity calmly as a Confucian would; he does not judge it as he would judge Confucianism. He cannot by an effort of fancy set the Catholic Church thousands of miles away in strange skies of morning and judge it as impartially as a Chinese pagoda." (p. 2-3)

I think it's pretty clear that Wells and the atheists have not.

Would Wells be happy with the Chesterton's characterization of the caveman clubbing women about? I haven't read Wells' book, but I suspect that is not exactly what Wells said. So neither side is exactly recreating their opponent’s argument as the other wishes.

If the debate is a debate over evidential facts, then one lays out the facts and measures the quality of the evidence. But most intellectual debates are between two different worldviews. There is barely any evidence to assess worldviews. One can't layout the evidence very well to show that a Christian God is the true nature of divinity as opposed to the Hindu gods. Both lay claims in amorphous facts, and the atheist is in an even more untenable evidential situation because he has to prove an outright negative, the absence of divinity. So in a polemic, one does not accept the underlying assumptions because by accepting your opponent’s assumptions you will have to follow your opponent's logic and if his logic is sound, you will have to reach his conclusion, a conclusion you obviously don't agree with. In a polemic one has to show the absurdity of your opponent's underlying assumptions.

So let's look at here. I haven't read Wells' book but I assume his assumption is that man is essentially an animal. So Chesterton takes that assumption, and shows its absurdity by extrapolating that primitive man would have to be a beast, and how that beast of a creature does not meet the evidence of someone who had the refinement, if not the cultivation, of a person who painted art.

Is that a strawman argument? I guess it depends how you define strawman. I don't only define it as a fake argument that can be made to look like you've defeated someone. I define it as a re-shifting of your opponent's worldview so that it does not fit in one's worldview. I don't have a word for that, only to say it's not how your opponent would see his argument, so it is a strawman of sorts, but call it what you will.

I don't know if I made myself clear.

[Manny]

If the point of the first chapter was to show that primitive man was not the animal that the atheists have made him out to be, the second chapter I think establishes that primitive man was (1) unique, (2) has a soul, and (3) had as its basic unit the family in which it reflects the divine order.

Pertaining to #2:

The only possible conclusion is that these experiences, considered as experiences, do not generate anything like a religious sense in any mind except a mind like ours. We come back to the fact of a certain kind of mind was already alive and alone. It was unique and it could make creeds as it could make cave drawings. The materials for religion bad lain there for countless ages like the materials for everything else; but the power of religion was in the mind…But their own proof only proves that the men who were already men were already mystics. They used the rude and irrational elements as only men and mystics can use them. We come back once more to the simple truth; that at some time too early for these critics to trace, a transition had occurred to which bones and stones cannot in their nature bear witness; and man became a living soul.

Pertaining to #3

We can say that the family is the unit of the state; that it is the cell that makes up the formation. Round the family do indeed gather the sanctities that separate men from ants and bees. Decency is the curtain of that tent; liberty is the wall of that city; property is but the family farm; honor is but the family flag. In the practical proportions of human history, we come back to that fundamental of the father and the mother and the child. It has been said already that if this story cannot start with religious assumptions, it must none the less start with some moral or metaphysical assumptions, or no sense can be made of the story of man. And this is a very good instance of that alternative necessity. If we are not of those who begin by invoking a divine Trinity, we must none the less invoke a human Trinity; and see that triangle repeated everywhere in the pattern of the world. For the highest event in history, to which all history looks forward and leads up, is only something that is at once the reversal and the renewal of that triangle. Or rather it is the one triangle superimposed so as to intersect the other, making a sacred pentacle of which, in a mightier sense than that of the magicians, the fiends are afraid. The old Trinity was of father and mother and child and is called the human family. The new is of child and mother and father and has the name of the Holy Family. It is in no way altered except in being entirely reversed; just as the world which is transformed was not in the least different, except in being turned upside-down.

Wonderful how he turns the overlay of the two triangles, one inverted, one not, into the mystical symbol of the pentacle.

[Manny]

I just have to quote another glorious snarky Chesterton observation. In noticing how animals don't have any noticeable religious rituals he says:

It is obvious, in short, that for some reason or other these natural experiences, and even natural excitements, never do pass the line that separates them from creative expression like art and religion, in any creature except man. They never do, they never have, and it is now to all appearance very improbable that they ever will. It is not impossible, in the sense of self-contradictory, that we should see cows fasting from grass every Friday or going on their knees as in the old legend about Christmas Eve.

LOL, cows fasting from grass every Friday!

[Irene]

Borrowed that one from Jonah.

[Manny]

Irene wrote: "Borrowed that one from Jonah."

I didn’t know but I went through Jonah trying to find it but couldn’t. Where is it?

[Frances]

Irene, look at Jonah 3:7. What do you think? That must be it, I think.

[Frances]

Manny, I am sorry. I misread the names. My email about Jonah 3:7 should have been addressed to you.

[John]

Manny wrote: "Is that a strawman argument? I guess it depends how you define strawman. I don't only define it as a fake argument that can be made to look like you've defeated someone. I define it as a re-shifting of your opponent's worldview so that it does not fit in one's worldview. I don't have a word for that, only to say it's not how your opponent would see his argument, so it is a strawman of sorts, but call it what you will.

I don't know if I made myself clear."

I don't think we are in fundamental disagreement, though we seem to have some difference in language. If I say to someone, "you claim 'X'," and their response is to agree, then if I go on to show that 'X' leads to absurdity, I have correctly stated their argument, but then gone on to show its weakness. It is obviously not how they have thought of their argument, but that in itself does not make it a straw man argument. But if I claim my opponent is saying 'X' and go on to prove that 'X' leads to absurdity, all the while my opponent is saying, "no, that's not right, I'm saying 'y'," now I am guilty of setting up a straw man argument. If I do so intentionally, then I have been dishonest. But it is also possible to engage in straw man arguments unintentionally, through misunderstanding.

[Irene]

Yes, Frances, I was referring to the fasting by the animals in response to the preaching of Jonah.

[Manny]

Irene wrote: "Yes, Frances, I was referring to the fasting by the animals in response to the preaching of Jonah."

OK, but I don't think the two (Chesterton's example and the author of Jonah) are the same. Chesterton I think was implying that no cows formulate a religious practice. The author of Jonah I think is suggesting a practice for the farmer to implement. I don't think he's saying that the cows will by their own volition practice Jonah's proclamation. I guess I could be wrong there but it doesn't seem like a logical interpretation.

[Manny]

John wrote: "Manny wrote: "Is that a strawman argument? I guess it depends how you define strawman. I don't only define it as a fake argument that can be made to look like you've defeated someone. I define it a..."

OK. Would be nice to have a term for that. I guess there isn't. I think it becomes a matter of perception. Chesterton might say Wells created a strawman and Wells might say Chesterton created a strawman. If there's a neutral referee to appeal to, then that would be convenient.

[Manny]

Irene wrote: "Borrowed that one from Jonah."

I pointed out a distinction above, but that's pretty impressive you recalled that from Jonah. You know your Bible!

Frances wrote: "Manny, I am sorry. I misread the names. My email about Jonah 3:7 should have been addressed to you."

Thank you Frances.

[Irene]

Manny, I don't think the Jonah bit is instruction to farmers to cease feeding their livestock. I think Jonah is full of humor and this is an example of Jonah's humor, animals fasting at Jonah's preaching. But, I don't want to get into a side conversation about how to exegete Jonah. If you read it as instruction to farmers, then there is no connection to Chesterton. But my reading does make the connection.

[Manny]

Irene wrote: "Manny, I don't think the Jonah bit is instruction to farmers to cease feeding their livestock. I think Jonah is full of humor and this is an example of Jonah's humor, animals fasting at Jonah's pre..."

Interesting. I haven't reached reading Jonah yet in my sequential reading of the OT. What you say is plausible. The whole story revolves around a strange, incredible story. Thanks.