Calling this argument a strawman is an insult to scarecrows everywhere. if we ignore the fact that my article says 1630 not 1640, we still have to deal with the fact that your arguments in the first paragraph work only because you substituted the word “family” for my word “ancestor”. You then list several arguments that support my position, including arguments that are explicitly stated in the essay, and claim that they are criticisms of my position. I taught undergraduate philosophy for 20 years, and this was probably the most common mistake my students made: confusing an argument against a conclusion with an argument that supports it.

you look pretty young in your picture, so you probably have time to learn to think and write more clearly and improve in reading comprehension. There are some good points in your comments, but they have nothing to do with my article. They certainly aren’t objections to it, as I agree with most of them. Your heart seems to be in the right place, but your head is pretty muddled.