I have now had time to read Lord May's retiring annual address as president of the Royal Society. I had read the brief comments from the BBC website on the address and my interest was aroused. The entire text of the address is now available and all Christians need to express their outrage about this address.
Lord May indulges in the usual ritual evangelical fundamentalist creationist intelligent designist bashing and about these sort of people having no real understanding of their own religion and being anti-science and seeking to bring the world into a new dark ages but he also goes several steps further.
The crucial quote comes as Lord May attacks biblical literalists and fundamentalist christians as equivalent to extreme terrorist groups in Islam. In this crucial quote he points the finger of blame for all Islamic terrorism at.....the last book in the Holy Bible - the book of Revelation.
The quote is apparently from a book by Scot Atran quoted by M. Brooks in the New Scientist.
(Meeting of minds. New Scientist, 8 Oct 2005, pp. 44-46.)
Here it is:
“People attribute Islamic fundamentalism to Islam, but I think it has as much – or more – to do with Christian fundamentalism. You’ll find no apocalyptic visions in Islam; it comes from the Book of Revelation.”
Did you hear that everyone! Britain's top scientist in Britain's top science institution at its most prestigious lecture in the year states that the Book of Revelation through St. John, the glorious exalted visions that close the Christian scriptures....is the cause of Islamic terrorism via evangelical Christians!
In other words (in Lord Mays opinion presumably) if we want to deal with terrorisom at its roots we need to reduce the numbers of evangelical Christians and cut the last book out of every bible.... perhaps, Lord May, we should go the whole way and burn the whole book!
Is the bible a book that brings a society out of the dark ages or a book that takes a society into darkness?
2 comments:
A great post. And well spotted. This is the kind of pseduo-Christian thinking that brings the modern church into such, well-deserved, disrepute in the modern world.
You rightly say it is up to those of us who recognise un-reasoned gobble-de-gook dressed up in spiritual clothes to 'out' it publicly, ensuring the world knows not all Christians are as woeldly illogic and biblical illiterate as Lord May.
Jeffahn,
I commented on this address because it was a public ocassion in the UK where ID was mentioned and it struck me what an outrageous quote this was and I thought I ought to point it out.
Just because ID is a scientific argument does not mean that religion does not matter. What we say about people's religious views matters a great deal. He should have known better.
Post a Comment