---

This is from Martin Gardner's column "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" in _Skeptical Inquirer_, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Summer 1991), p. 355: Although he prefers to call himself an evangelical, Mims is a Southern Baptist fundamentalist. He is not a "young earther" who thinks the universe was created about ten thousand years ago. He allows that individual species were created at intervals over long periods of time, the "days" of Genesis not to be taken as 24-hour time spans. Adam and Eve had no navels, Mims told me over the phone, for the simple reason that they had no parents. He was not sure whether Eve had hair and had not realized that hair bears as much evidence of past events as belly buttons. (Hair is dead tissue that grows from its roots, like teeth and fingernails, in small increments. If God could provide Adam and Eve with hair, teeth, and nails that had no past history, he could just as easily give them navels with no past history.) He admitted being puzzled over the question of whether the first trees had rings.

---

The views and opinions stated within this web page are those of the author or authors which wrote them and may not reflect the views and opinions of the ISP or account user which hosts the web page. The opinions may or may not be those of the Chairman of The Skeptic Tank.

Return to The Skeptic Tank's main Index page.

E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank