MINISTER FOR Science Conor Lenihan will not now launch a book in Dublin which describes evolution as a fantasy and a hoax, after the author asked him to withdraw in the wake of controversy on the web.
The Minister was to launch The Origin of Specious Nonsenseby John May at Buswells hotel tomorrow, with actors playing the parts of Charles Darwin and King Kong.
But Mr May said last night he had asked Mr Lenihan not to launch the book “because I am so embarrassed that the Minister for Science has been so insulted” and “eviscerated” on a political website. “He doesn’t even believe in my central argument,” the author said.
Mr May is due to give a talk at the launch on How Evolution Made Monkeys Out of Man.
Mr May is also offering €10,000 to anyone who can prove evolution at a biochemical level. He describes himself on the website www.theoriginofspeciousnonsense.com as “like Abraham Lincoln, self-educated, and might be viewed as a polymath, left school young and commenced my real education”.
Speaking to The Irish Timeslast night, he said Mr Lenihan had agreed to launch the book some weeks ago, but had since requested that his description as Minister for Science be deleted from publicity material about the launch.
Mr May said this had been done “immediately”. He said Mr Lenihan had agreed to launch the book as “I am a friend and a constituent”.
But he was so “embarrassed” by the insults against the Minister that he had asked him to withdraw.
Speaking from Galway earlier last night, Mr Lenihan said while he “remained to be convinced” by Mr May’s arguments, he would be attending the launch in a personal capacity and as he believed “diversity of opinion is a good thing”. However following Mr May’s request he has withdrawn from the launch.
In publicity material for the launch of his book on the theory of evolution, Mr May accused “Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel C Dennett, et al” of having “sacrificed reason on the altar of Chance, Mutations, Randomness . . .” Mr May called on “the world’s atheists, scientists, evolutionists plus tens of millions of their duped followers” to stop pretending they had “any facts whatsoever to support the greatest deceit in the history of science”.
Evolution was “a fantasy of farraginous, farcical, fatuous, feculent, facile facetiousness and my book shall lead the charge against this UNSCIENTIFIC HOAX [his emphasis] worldwide”.
Last night he described himself as “spiritual” but, like his six children, “free from the infection of organised religion”.