richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

WHAT'S WRONG WITH RELIGION? 285
labour-intensive exercise, there was so little left of his bible that,
try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins
throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to
pick up the Bible without it being rent in two. I had to
make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either
the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or
evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible ... It was
there that night that I accepted the Word of God and
rejected all that would ever counter it, including
evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire
all my dreams and hopes in science.
I find that terribly sad; but whereas the Golgi Apparatus story
moved me to tears of admiration and exultation, the Kurt Wise
story is just plain pathetic - pathetic and contemptible. The wound,
to his career and his life's happiness, was self-inflicted, so unnecessary,
so easy to escape. All he had to do was toss out the bible.
Or interpret it symbolically, or allegorically, as the theologians do.
Instead, he did the fundamentalist thing and tossed out science,
evidence and reason, along with all his dreams and hopes.
Perhaps uniquely among fundamentalists, Kurt Wise is honest -
devastatingly, painfully, shockingly honest. Give him the Templeton
Prize; he might be the first really sincere recipient. Wise brings to
the surface what is secretly going on underneath, in the minds of
fundamentalists generally, when they encounter scientific evidence
that contradicts their beliefs. Listen to his peroration:
Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a
young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is
my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my
professors years ago when I was in college, if all the
evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would
be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist
because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.
Here I must stand. 116
He seems to be quoting Luther as he nailed his theses to the door