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What does "have their knuckles rapped for it“ mean?

 
 
Reply Thu 25 Apr, 2013 11:38 am
Does it mean "have them fight against it"?

Context:

If some of our crowd have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism disproves God, then I will find Mrs. Mclnerney [Gould's third-grade teacher] and have their knuckles rapped for it... Science can work only with naturalistic explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny other types of actors (like God) in other spheres (the moral realm, for example). Forget philosophy for a moment; the simple empirics of the past hundred years should suffice. Darwin himself was agnostic (having lost his religious beliefs upon the tragic death of his favorite daughter), but the great American botanist Asa Gray, who favored natural selection and wrote a book entitled Darwiniana, was a devout Christian. Move forward 50 years: Charles D. Walcott, discoverer of the Burgess Shale Fossils, was a convicned Darwinian and an equally firm Christian, who believed that God had ordained natural selection to construct the history of life according to His plans and purposes. Move on another 50 years to the two greatest evolutionists of our generation: G.G.Simpson was a humanistic agnostic, Theodosius Dobzhansky, a believing Russian Orthodox. Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs-and equally compatible with atheism.
 
View best answer, chosen by oristarA
Region Philbis
 
  3  
Reply Thu 25 Apr, 2013 11:41 am
@oristarA,

no, it means they should be punished.

it's a reference to the by-gone practice of strict school teachers doling out punishment by hitting the back of a student's hand with a wooden ruler...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uxrwrj3a_Fc/S97nG5b6bsI/AAAAAAAAA-o/830EXYgkXuw/s1600/Nun+with+Ruler+dreamstime_12895823.jpg
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Thu 25 Apr, 2013 11:54 am
@Region Philbis,
Region Philbis wrote:


no, it means they should be punished.

it's a reference to the by-gone practice of strict school teachers doling out punishment by hitting the back of a student's hand with a wooden ruler...




Who are they? Do "they" refer to "Some of our crowd who have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism disproves God"?
Their knuckles got hit by the teacher's ruler?
They should be punished because they claimed that Darwinism disproves God?
Region Philbis
  Selected Answer
 
  2  
Reply Thu 25 Apr, 2013 11:59 am
@oristarA,
Quote:
If some of our crowd have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism disproves God, then I will find Mrs. Mclnerney [Gould's third-grade teacher] and have their knuckles rapped for it
yes, "some of our crowd" should be punished for their "untoward statements"...
0 Replies
 
contrex
 
  1  
Reply Thu 25 Apr, 2013 01:08 pm
Missing information in red:

Stephen Jay Gould, the famous evolutionary biologist from Harvard University, an atheist, wrote:
“Science simply cannot by its legitimate methods adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it: we simply can’t comment on it as scientists. If some of our crowd have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism disproves God, then I will find Mrs. Mclnerney and have their knuckles rapped for it.”

By "our crowd" he means "atheists".

Condensing: If some of our crowd have made untoward statements ... then I will ... have their knuckles rapped for it.

0 Replies
 
oralloy
 
  1  
Reply Thu 25 Apr, 2013 01:25 pm
@oristarA,
oristarA wrote:
What does "have their knuckles rapped for it" mean?


It means a minor penalty or reprimand, given for a minor offense.

Like was mentioned above, it originates from a teacher swatting the knuckles of a misbehaving student with a ruler, but the usage today does not mean literally being struck with a ruler.
0 Replies
 
 

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