Mourning Kurt Wise's Mind

American Geologist Kurt Wise:
To Quote Richard Dawkins (and Kurt Wise) from The God Delusion (p 284-285, in hardcover):

"He took a bible and went right through it , literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific world-view were true. At the end of this ruthlessly honest and 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.’ "

So here we have a person who spends literally years and tens of thousands of dollars getting what could be argued as amongst the finest of educations available in the modern world…and when faced with what he perceives as a fundamental incompatibility between the tenets of his fundamental Christian upbringing, and his science education, he is compelled to abandon…..reason in exchange for faith.

Its sad. But is it unexpected. Humanity is a species of story tellers. We tell stories to entertain ourselves. We tell stories to explain the mysteries of the universe. We tell stories constantly and infinitum. Is it a surprise that we could adopt a dogmatic belief in our stories and pass these back on to further generations…resulting in the sad situation faced by Kurt Wise?

Is this an example of credulity of thought? Is it an example of inflexibility of mind? Is it simply an example of faith prevailing over reason? What really rankles me is that this man abandoned a fine education in science for faith, and that in some circles this act would be viewed as laudable rather than laughable.

When will we stop believing in our self-created bed-time stories and abandon this irrational need for a protector sky-daddy to keep away the bogey-men of the universe?