The Problem with Religious Moderates

[struggle4progress]

48. One ought to begin with the facts and proceed thence to the analysis, whereas

Mr Harris begins with his conclusion and here and there adds various matters he considers facts as proof thereof. The two most concrete examples, at the site linked by the OP, are the claims of Mr Harris that we today must regard the educated 14th century man a fool, on the grounds that he believed the earth to be flat and on the grounds that he would have supported trepanation. But in both instances, it is Mr Harris here who plays the fool, for not knowing science and for not knowing the history of science

That the world was spherical, was ancient knowledge and was accepted by many educated medieval persons, as I have indicated upthread

Trepanation was independently discovered worldwide in ancient times, as a treatment for head injuries, and would have been known to medieval Europeans through Galen and Hippocrates

On Injuries of the Head
By Hippocrates
http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/headinjur.21.21.html

I have already provided links upthread showing (1) trepanation can still be good medical practice under some circumstances; (2)
trepanation was practiced successfully, and sometimes even appropriately in medieval Europe; but (3) there does not seem to be much evidence that it was practiced frequently by the fourteenth century. So on trepanation, no matter how we read Mr Harris, he is blowing smoke