An Amazing Book

Most Britons would not choose to take the Bible with them to a desert island, even as a reminder of the idiocy they had escaped; which of course disproves all those foolish, faith-based, evidence-free claims that we are becoming a secular country. A poll commissioned by the Church and Media Network has found that only thirty-one per cent of respondents would pick the Bible for one of their Desert Island Discs books; and even some of those would relish it less for its religious significance than for its literary qualities or its copious sex and violence. The chair of the Church and Media Network found it "encouraging" that the number of Britons who "still value the Bible as an important work" now constitutes a minority, and helpfully provided a breakdown of its contents and an advertisement for its life, love, hope, triumph, despair and lots of other things that can be found in the Bible as in the average soap opera. Doubtless it was only the zeal of his enthusiasm which caused him to omit any mention of the human sacrifices and genocidal glories in the Old Testament, or the demented Jew-baiting and eschatological rantings in the New.