Constance wrote;
"Yes, surrendering does make us different from mammals".
You have completely misunderstood what the author had written in the article. The author quoted Hitchens as stating; "Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals."

You completely ignored the "other" in front of mammals in the quote.

Hitchens was not writing about surrender in any 'fighting animal' fashion. Surrender often means giving up your own use of something and, in the context used, surrender means failing to make full use of something; in this case failing to make full use of the reasoning power of the mind.

But John, one thing I do agree with you with is Abbott's take on Murdoch - the Dirty Digger as he was once known, and that which he still is.

Daffy Duck, you correctly make a link between Adam and Eve and Christ's resurrection - they do indeed both stand or fall together. The Bible teaches both that there was a time-space historical first Adam and that Christ is the time-space historical Second Adam.
As you probably know, Adam is taught in Genesis (the first book of the Bible)as falling into sin which permeates all men and women from that time forward (see tonight's news on tele for proof that sin exists). A promised Messiah to save us from sin is the theme of the Old Testament; all of which Christ claims to have fulfilled in the New Testament. The logic of the resurrection is: sin exists, God is holy and cannot commit sin, God's holy character requires a penalty to be exacted for sin. Only a perfect sacrifice mirroring the gory blood sacrifices of the Old Testament animal sacrifices can secure atonement (again foresahadowed in the Jewish Day of Atonement still celebrated to to this day). Therefore, a perfect once-for-all sacrifice had to be made. Christ, being in nature both God and man was able to meet the perfect requirements of the law and provide that atoning work. Christ being perfect was therefore unable to stay dead as death is the ultimate penalty for sin. Therefore, he had to rise from the dead.
That's Bible logic in a nutshell.
What do you think of that Daffy Duck?