After some preliminary paragraphs excoriating evolution?

Does "After some preliminary paragraphs excoriating evolution" mean "after started with some paragraphs that strongly condemned evolution"?

Background info:

Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious
defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking
after himself. Bear in mind, through all this, that the Editor being
abused and threatened so viciously is a gentle and charming young
woman.
Perhaps because I don't live in America, most of my hate mail
is not quite in the same league, but nor does it display to
advantage the charity for which the founder of Christianity was
notable. The following, dated May 2005, from a British medical
doctor, while it is certainly hateful, strikes me as more tormented
than nasty, and reveals how the whole issue of morality is a deep
wellspring of hostility towards atheism. After some preliminary
paragraphs excoriating evolution (and sarcastically asking
whether a 'Negro' is 'still in the process of evolving'), insulting
Darwin personally, misquoting Huxley as an anti-evolutionist, and
encouraging me to read a book (I have read it) which argues that
the world is only eight thousand years old (can he really be a
doctor?) he concludes: