Neanderthal Catechism

The Naturalist's Backward-Looking Tale of Homo Sapiens

Those of us who grew up with a catechism learned that answers to questions like "What is man?" might include that man is a being created by God, "male and female, after his own image," whose "chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever" (Westminster Catechism).

The catechism taught nowadays in tax-funded schools and popular media is quite different. It gives the "science" answer: Man is a bipedal, anthropoid ape, whose randomly directed history is turning up among the bones and stones and detritus, an ape whose mind differs only in degree, not in kind, from that of other apes.

Just as a fish doesn't "notice" water unless the...