In a fascinating piece on his website, my friend Matt Ridley is sceptical that anything so well-written as the King James Version could really be the work of a committee. And indeed, he follows Brian Moynahan's Book of Fire in arguing that the KJV (or at least the well-written bits) is actually the work of one man, William Tyndale, executed in 1536 (strangled in public while tied to the stake at which his body was then burned). In Ridley's words, Tyndale was "Murdered – for translating the bible – at the behest of the very church, which 75 years later adopted so much of his text without acknowledgement." All that the King James committeemen did was collate and edit Tyndale's translation.

Incidentally, Matt doesn't mention it but he has a family interest in the theological disagreements of the period, as his own forebear Bishop Nicholas Ridley was burned at the stake in 1555, along with Bishop Hugh Latimer, who uttered the memorable martyr's valediction while they were burning: "Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

(Please, if you comment on this, don't derail the thread by banging on about Matt's views on other, and totally irrelevant, matters. Thank you.)

Richard

Comment 129 by xmaseveeve :

Ridiculous posturing from Michael Gove. Disgusting and pointless waste of money, albeit from patronising, charitable charlatans flaunting their pitiless piety. Odious, outrageous move.

Brilliant reaction from Richard Dawkins. He picked up their grenade and casually chucked it back, saying they forgot to pull out the pin. Michael (dim and not even nice) Gove.... I'll edit myself here... oh, you missed some good insults.

Rebuild society? This government couldny put a nut in a monkey's mooth.

Thank you xmaseeve, you really get what I was trying to do. And thank you Susan Latimer for seeing it too, with your usual perceptiveness.

Richard

Oh please, I of course never said read it from cover to cover. I used the unkind phrase 'verging on the barbarian' only for people who had never read a single word of it, not even the word "Matthew".

Richard

Do you know that over 99.9% of all claims in science has been wrong?

When you read something like that, you don't even need to investigate it. You KNOW it has been simply made up (Christian apologists are so used to swallowing stuff that has been simply made up, it's not surprising if they think nothing of making up new stuff whenever it suits them). The third decimal place is specified, which seems to suggest a very precise statistical survey of some kind. But what survey could conceivably be made of "all claims in science"? How would you decide what constituted a "claim in science"? Something published in a peer-reviewed journal? Something said in a pub by somebody who called himself a scientist?

If you really believed that only 0.1% of scientific claims were correct, you would never trust a plane to fly, never trust a ship to float, never have a vaccination or take an antibiotic, never trust a telescope or a microscope or a doctor. When somebody makes a stupid remark like this, the best you can say is that they have probably picked up a smattering of the history of science, say a couple of erroneous theories like phlogiston or ptolemaic epicycles, and somehow distorted that into "99.9%".

The statement was made by the same Christian apologist who claimed, and failed to produce evidence, that I called the bible "filthy literature". I now think it is not worth responding to him by name (why give him the satisfaction?) But it is perhaps instructive to call attention in general to ways in which you can tell, from internal evidence alone, that a claim is not to be taken seriously. In particular, note the bogus appeal to accuracy of that third decimal place.

Richard

Comment 35 by ConsciousMind : Why would Richard Dawkins want all children to read the bible, I thought he said earlier that children should not be exposed to, what he refers to as "filthy litterature". Have you changed your mind Richard?

Please either document your statement that I referred to the bible as "filthy literature" or apologise.

Richard