Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay

Como regalo de cumpleaños (¡gracias amor!) acabo de recibir el libro The Greatest Show on Earth donde Richard Dawkins explica qué es y cuales son las evidencias que se tienen sobre la teoría de la evolución. Después de haber leído The Selfish Gene le tenía ganas a éste porque, como científico, Dawkins es genial y me fascina su forma de explicar lo que es nuestro actual estado de conocimiento sobre la vida, cómo se crea y cómo funciona.

Dawkins sin embargo, a pesar de que con muchas ganas lo intente, no puede contenerse las ganas de poner esta joya en el capítulo que abre al libro.

It is frequently, and rightly, said that senior clergy and theologians have no problem with evolution and, in many cases, actively support scientists in this respect. [...] The Archbishop of Canterbury has no problem with evolution, nor does the Pope (give or take the odd wobble over the precise palaeontological juncture when the human soul was injected), nor do educated priests and professors of theology. This is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an anti-religious book. I've done that, it's another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again. [...]

What we must not do is complacently assume that, because bishops and educated clergy accept avolution, so do their congregations. [...]

To return to the enlightened bishops and theologians, it would be nice if they'd put a bit of effort into combating the anti-scientific nonsense that they deplore. All too many preachers, while agreeing that evolution is true and Adam and Eve never existed, will then blithely go into the pulpit and make some moral or theological point about Adam and Eve in their sermons without once mentioning that, of course, Adam and Eve never actually existed! If challenged, they will protest that they intended a purely ‘symbolic’ meaning, perhaps something to do with ‘original sin’, or the virtues of innocence. They may add witheringly that, obviously, nobody would be so foolish as to take their words literally. But do their congregations know that? How is the person in the pew, or on the prayer-mat, supposed to know which bits of scripture to take literally, which symbolically? [...]

Think about it, Bishop. Be careful, Vicar. You are playing with dynamite, fooling around with a misunderstanding that's waiting to happen — one might even say almost bound to happen if not forestalled. Shouldn't you take greater care, when speaking in public, to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay?

Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth

Eso me recordó mucho al, entonces abad de la Basílica de Guadalupe, Guillermo Schulenburg cuando dijo que Juan Diego no existió. ¡Y la que se le armó!