Mundusmundi ~ Oct 13 2001
What students find especially difficult to reconcile is the body of evidence supporting humanity's gradual evolution out of the jungle to a more civilized state, with the independently unconfirmed account of our original ancestors as negligent tenants evicted out of the posh paradise of Eden Estates. This is not meant to castigate religion; merely to point out, as my mentor once did to me, that one cannot bring literal-minded notions of the supernatural into a legitimate historical discipline. (Well, one can, but then one would be the author of Chariots of the Gods.)