On a man who evidently brings a full-fledged anti-Christian, even an anti-religious bias to the table?
Well, if this is the way you think you ought to conduct your own "intellectual business," then we must part company.
The way I read it, this passage reflects little more than Dunlap's ad hominum attack on Sir Matthew Hale. I don't see any substantive argument on the part of any substantive issue at work here. Dunlap is so busy trying to destroy his opponent that the issues that evidently divide them aren't even mentioned, let alone seriously engaged.
If you are at all interested in the truth of reality, it seems to me you have to look beyond or below the superficial appearance of things. A "fact" on the periphery cannot shed by itself any light on the substance of that in which it is involved as a peripheral item.
Think of an iceberg: What appears above the surface cannot suffice to explain the phenomenon of the iceberg. To know the complete "system" of the iceberg, you must penetrate below mere appearance, to the depths below.
That's a whole lot of work, right there. Evidently, Dunlap thought he could spare himself the pains simply by destroying his opponent.
We see this sort of thing all the time nowadays, in our own public discourse....
No, you missed the point of that excerpt- that such arguments are not “new”, and that it echoes the same opinion John Adams, Jefferson, among others, held:
“... the Common Law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.”
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824 (see Positive Atheism’s Historical section)
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the Common Law.”
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814, responding to the claim that Christianity was part of the Common Law of England, as the United States Constitution defaults to the Common Law regarding matters that it does not address.