richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

CHILDHOOD, ABUSE AND RELIGION 333.
taining reading in themselves. They lose their power to amuse,
however, when we look at the content of the lecture itself.
Incidentally, when a curious reader wrote to Emmanuel College
to ask why the lecture had been removed from the website, he
received the following disingenuous reply from the school, again
recorded by Andrew Brown:
Emmanuel College has been at the centre of a debate
regarding the teaching of creation in schools. At a
practical level Emmanuel College has had a huge number
of press calls. This has involved a considerable amount of
time for the Principal and senior Directors of the College.
All of these people have other jobs to do. In order to assist
we have temporarily removed a lecture by Stephen
Layfield from our website.
Of course, the school officials may well have been too busy to
explain to journalists their stance on teaching creationism. But why,
then, remove from their website the text of a lecture that does
precisely that, and to which they could have referred the journalists,
thereby saving themselves a great deal of time? No, they removed
their head of science's lecture because they recognized that they had
something to hide. The following paragraph is from the beginning
of his lecture:
Let us state then right from the start that we reject the
notion popularised, perhaps inadvertently, by Francis
Bacon in the 17th century that there are 'Two Books' (i.e.
the Book of nature & the Scriptures) which may be mined
independently for truth. Rather, we stand firm upon the
bare proposition that God has spoken authoritatively and
inerrantly in the pages of holy Scripture. However fragile,
old-fashioned or naive this assertion may ostensibly
appear, especially to an unbelieving, TV-drunk modern
culture, we can be sure that it is as robust a foundation as
it is possible to lay down and build upon.
You have to keep pinching yourself. You are not dreaming. This