Bible Is the World's Most Valuable And Influential Book; See The Top Ten List
The Bible has been voted as the most influential and valuable book to humanity. The conclusion is drawn after a survey done by The Folio Society.
The Bible also surpassed 'On The Origin Of Species' by Charles Darwin in popularity and reach to human society. It bagged 37 percent of members' votes while Darwin's book only obtained 35 percent.
As per the Independent, Darwin's book was chosen as it answers some fundamental questions on human existence while the Bible is used as reference around the world for guidelines of how to become a good human being.
The survey took into account 2044 British adults. The publisher asked the respondents to choose their top three books from a given list of 30 books. They were instructed to choose based on which books do they think have the most influence on the human race. The top position was given to the Bible while the second was bagged by Darwin's book.
The third most influential book based on the results of the survey turned out to be 'A Brief History Of Time' by Stephen Hawking with 17 percent of the votes, closely followed by Albert Einstein's 'Relativity: The Special and General Theory' with 15 percent.
Fiction did not find many takers in the survey with only two novels, namely, George Orwell's 'Nineteen-Eighty Four' and Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mocking Bird', making it to the list. A few popular books, such as Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' and Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five', surprisingly received no votes at all, as told by the Independent.
Mary Wollstonecraft's 'A Vindication of the Rights of Women' received 4 percent of the votes, as did 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Pride and Prejudice'.
Men put Darwin's book on top followed by Bible, Hawking and Orwell. On the other hand, women placed Bible on the top followed by Darwin, Hawking, Einstein and Harper Lee.
The complete list is as follows:
1. Bible: 37 percent
2. On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin: 35 percent
3. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking: 17 percent
4. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein: 15 percent
5. Nineteen-Eighty Four by George Orwell: 14 percent
6. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton: 12 percent
7. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee: 10 percent
8. The Quran: 9 percent
9. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith: 7 percent
10. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson: 6 percent
