36 Modern “Christian” and Secular Myths You Should Know

Yes, I believe all of these are myths, in one way or the other, either as specific assertions or as blanket statements. At least, I will attempt to make the case that they are, based on biblical, historical, linguistic, archeological, and, in some cases, scientific evidence. Think about each one and see if some of them surprise you in light of others. Stay tuned for a blog post on each.

1 - Jesus was a Christian
2 - Jesus Founded Christianity and the Church
3 - America is a Christian Nation
4 - Jesus is a Myth
5 - Jesus is Irrelevant
6 - The Bible is Infallible
7 - We Should Obey the Bible
8 - The Bible is Altogether Unreliable
9 - English Translations of the Bible are Trustworthy
10 - The Bible Has No Spiritual Authority
11 - The “Kingdom of Heaven” is About the Afterlife
12 - Jesus Predicted the End of the World
13 - The End Will Come When the Gospel is Preached to the Remaining Unreached Ethno Linguistic Groups of the World
14 - Jesus is Coming Back
15 - Only Christians are Saved
16 - Atheists are Evil
17 - You Deserve to Go to Hell
18 - Jesus Took the Punishment for Our Sins
19 - Jesus Taught a Literal Hell
20 - Universalism Means God Won't Judge Us
21 - Paul Was a Misogynist
22 - There Were No Women Leaders in the New Testament
23 - Monogamous Heterosexual Marriage is God’s Standard
24 - God Condemns Homosexuality
25 - Sex Outside Marriage is Always a Sin
26 - Sex is Not a Moral Concern
27 - Science Has Proved There is No God
28 - Progressive and Liberal Christians Are Heretics
29 - Conservative Christians are Bigots and Religious Nutcases
30 - God Commands that Believers Belong to a Local Church
31 - Believers Should Tithe to a Local Church
32 - All Religions are the Same
33 - All Religions Besides Christianity are False
34 - God Hates Divorce
35 - Evolution is Not Biblical
36 - Intelligent Design is Not Science

Science vs Religion - Go Where the Evidence Leads

I Survived the Christian Right
Ten Lessons I Learned on my Journey Home

Lesson 8: Science vs. Religion - Go Where the Evidence Leads – Us vs. them attitudes are in the science vs. religion and creation vs. evolution debates. Typically, the people debating are the extremists, who only see things in black and white. There can be no mixing of their cherished positions. Fundamentalist young-earth creationists who believe in a 10,000 year-old earth based on a literal interpretation of the Bible are pitted against fundamentalist evolutionists, like the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris as opposed to reasonable atheists like Michael Ruse), who mock all theists for believing in the myth of God and the fairytale of religion. Yet 67 percent of Americans say it is possible to believe in both God and evolution. [48] The media often reinforces these polarities by distorting any moderate views. For example, they rarely differentiate non-literalist old-earth creationists (who include reputable scientists and technically, theistic evolutionists who believe God created the first life forms) and lump them together with the antiquated ideas of the Dark Ages. Given these realities, here are the lessons I learned:

Evolution is not the enemy. First, it’s possible to reconcile evolution with a biblical worldview. Francis Collins does it persuasively.[49] Don’t let staunch atheists who have an axe to grind tell you evolution proves there is no God. They delude themselves.[50] Nor should you allow staunch creationists to argue evolution is incompatible with the Bible. They hold to a rigid literalism.

Evolution is not immune to criticism. Evolution is usually portrayed as one specific unified theory held by all reputable scientists. There are in fact several competing theories and many ways to look at the scientific data. Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldridge proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium that critiqued the Darwinian view of continuous gradual evolution. Gould said the absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions of biological design was a nagging problem for gradualistic evolution.[51] Eldredge said the fossil record screams loudly that what Darwin theorized—slow, steady, evolution—is not the case.[52] Molecular Biologist Michael Denton critiqued orthodox Darwinism in his landmark book[53] and subsequently made the case for a form of guided evolution.[54] Biologist Dean Kenyon, who pioneered evolutionary self-organizational theory, later repudiated it and embraced a design hypothesis.[55]

Intelligent design is neither the enemy nor immune to criticism. Intelligent Design (ID) theory is commonly represented as a fundamentalist wolf in sheep’s clothing. The facts don’t warrant this. ID theory is misused by the Christian Right to bolster their exclusivism[56] and therefore deemed guilty by association. It should be examined critically, but remarkably diverse intellectuals support the idea. These include agnostic mathematician and Darwinism-critic David Berlinski[57] and the former most renowned atheist in the world, Antony Flew, who announced to a shocked world that intelligent design must have been involved in the origin of the coded chemistry in DNA.[58] Moreover, ID is not incompatible with evolution. Tenured professor of microbiology Michael Behe, a leading ID proponent, holds to the evolutionary tenet of common descent.[59] Finally, critics who claim ID is not a real scientific theory probably have not carefully evaluated the case.[60]

Question the rhetoric of the extremists and look carefully at the evidence for both theistic evolution and intelligent design. Go where the evidence leads.

48 CBS News poll, October 23, 2005
49 Collins, Francis, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
50 Berlinski, David, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions
51 Gould, Stephen J., Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging? Paleobiology, vol 6 (1), p. 119-130 (1980)
52 Eldredge, Niles, Confessions of a Darwinist, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2006
53 Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
54 Denton, Michael, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe
55 I heard Kenyon speak at a Discovery Institute event in Seattle, WA in the summer of 2007
56 The Christian Right-influenced school board of Dover, PA forced teachers to make a pro intelligent-design statement in classrooms, despite the advice of the Discovery Institute not to do so.
57 Berlinski, David, The Deniable Darwin
58 Flew, Antony, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, page 95 and 123
59 Behe, Michael, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, page 182.
60 Meyer, Stephen C., Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, pages 403-415

Getting Intelligent Design Straight

I finished a draft of the chapter on Last Days Delusions, but true to form, I just have to start another chapter before cleaning the last one up. I love multi-tasking, hence the way I read 5 books at a time and write the same way. I was having a conversation with my father--a kind of ID-controversy guru--and asked him about Michael Behe (a leading ID proponent) and some of the things he said in his newest book, The Edge of Evolution. Behe is roundly attacked by staunch evolutionists, but guess what? What I suspected is true. He is officially a theistic evolutionist! Not of the Darwinian variety, of course, since that is what ID theorists critique--and in my mind, rightly so. Nevertheless, I found an interview of him on the Internet (during my conversation--I just love how quickly we can find stuff these days), and he said common design is not as good as an explanation of common descent as an evolutionary model is. He's not a Darwinist, but he still believes in evolution! What's the difference? I explain that in the chapter in my book. Point is that most of his ID colleagues disagree with him. You can be an ID theorist and still be an evolutionist (for that matter, you can be agnostic too, like David Berlinski). The media doesn't get it.

So, why don't all the other theistic evolutionists (Ken Miller, Brown U., Francis Collins, Head of Genome Project) applaud people like Behe? It appears it's not evolution per se, that is the god of science, but Darwinism. I will explore this later.

Who's the Dodos? Intelligent Design Theorists of Evolutionists?

Randy Olson, an evolutionary biologist, made a documentary called Flock of Dodos. that makes the case that the success of Intelligent Design is merely from a slick PR campaign (by Seattle's Discovery Institute) and not based on real science. Olson says there is no crisis of evidence in evolution, but some people still don't believe in it because of a poor job of communication by scientists. The film (I've only seen the trailer and the ABC interview of Olson) attempts to discredit the ID movement by revealing who the real Dodos are--anyone who doubts in evolution.

One thing Olson did well in the interview is to differentiate between Creationists and ID proponents, something that isn't often done. Creationists start with a literal belief in the book of Genesis and try to bend science to fit it. ID theorists don't begin with Genesis but only with the scientific evidence for design in nature. Yet excerpts from the film reveal evolutionists mixing them all together--one of them says we should call out supporters of creationism or ID and tell them "you're an idiot."

Although, it appears to give both sides of the story, the film apparently leaves out much of the story. There IS dissent among scientists. 100 of them from universities signed the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. Is this scientist in the film calling the likes of these--including agnostic David Berlinski and intellectual giant William F. Buckley, idiots? This debate is not a new PR battle that started in 2000, as the film claims. Biologist Michael Denton wrote Evolution: a Theory in Crisis in 1986. Mathmetician Berlinski, wrote The Deniable Darwin in 1996. UC Berkeley's Philip Johnson put Darwin on Trial in 1993. If one takes a truly objective look, the theory of evolution is in crisis. Even a Dodo can see that.

Intelligent Design Theory Revealed

With the Dover, PA case, Intelligent Design (ID) theory is in the news. A local school board tried to legislate (the operative word is "legislate") that science teachers read a disclaimer to students that evolution is not universally accepted and that ID theory offers an alternative scientific perspective. Eventually the school board was voted out. But what is the real issue at hand here? On the one hand, knee-jerk reactions from staunch evolutionists were that this was a back-door attempt to introduce religion and "creationism" into the classroom. On the other hand, the appalling response from conservative Christian Pat Robertson was that Dover, Pennsylvanians should not bother calling on God should a future disaster come their way since they denied Him with their vote! Really now, why do extremist views get all the press?

First of all, ID theory is not a new brand of creation science. Anyone who understands the debate knows this. Creation science is based on a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis and tries to support a young earth, a worldwide flood, and a literal six-day creation timeframe among other things. ID theorists don't support these assertions at all. Authentic ID theorists and the related and growing critics of evolution are not presupposing a literal reading of the Bible, but rather are simply pointing out the real problems with neo-Darwinism and specifically the mechanism that drives evolutionary theory--random mutations and natural selection. Yea, but aren't they closet fundamentalists pushing their agenda through a new means? Hardly. A case in point is David Berlinski, avowed agnostic, and one of Darwinism's harshest critics, who debates along side ID theorists against macro-evolution (check link in title).

Second, the Dover school board probably did include Christians who wanted to use ID theory to fight evolution. Their mistake, I believe, was trying to legislate rather than encourage science teachers who choose, to bring the scientific literature that critiques Darwinism into the classroom. There is real discrimination to those who attempt this (one teacher in Bellingham, WA did this a few years ago and got the boot).

Finally, who does Pat Robertson think he is? Those who voted against the school board aren't necessarily against ID theory, but perhaps against legislating its promotion. Others probably are not well informed about it with all the hype and half-truths out there. And even if they are well informed, what happened to the grace of God?