The Gospel or “good news” message has been refined over centuries.  It explains why there is evil in the world also explains how Jesus Christ is our savior. 

Creation 

In the book of Genesis God is the creator of our world.  He created the heavens and the earth in 6 days… resting on the seventh.  God created man, Adam in his image and Eve from Adam’s side.

The Fall 

Man lived in a Garden of Eden free of any cares but disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge. Man would be subject to death and living in a broken world. Men could honor God through blood sacrifice (typically a bull or lamb.) But “original sin” or imperfection still kept men from communion with God. 

Redemption 

According to Christian doctrines, the message of the new testament is that Jesus was born and lived the example of a sinless life.  He was crucified under the Romans as an ultimate sacrifice. Jesus Christ is sometimes referred to as “the lamb of God”.

Many evangelists accept the bible as the literal and inerrant word of God and give it the highest authority for truth.  A recent Gallup survey found that 38 per cent of adults in the United States held the view that “God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years”.

We all have the right to believe whatever we wish.  In fact, most Americans have false beliefs or cognitive biases.  About 2% of the population are convinced that we live on a “flat earth”.  But when distorted views of the world are used to discriminate against minorities and or create misinformed public policy… it is a problem! 

The Christian Gospel creates a duality.  It gives people a great carrot of believing ( Heaven or Eternal Life) and a big stick for not believing ( Hell).  Believers are promised that their sins are wiped away by the blood sacrifice of Jesus. Nonbelievers are condemned to live in an eternal lake of fire. 

Interestingly, even among Christian denominations followers believe in Hell differently.  Most evangelicals favor the “burn forever” view where Univeralists believe that Jesus saved all men and no one is eternally damned.  Christianity has set up a “squeeze” scenario in which there is a terrible hell and Jesus is the only way to salvation. 

The Gospel carries a threat for non-believers not unlike claiming that the building you are in is on fire or harbors a bomb. In the past, this threat was almost impossible for a common person to disprove.  A literal gospel is misinformation that has the potential to impact people’s lives in both positive and negative ways. 

Most philosophers, Scientists and theologians acknowledge that there is a problem with evil in this world.  There are natural disasters, disease, plagues, pandemics, war, genocide and other horrors that kill millions of people (including innocent children) per year.  In a recent year over 6 million children under the age of six died prematurely. Many pregnancies result in miscarriages or spontaneous abortions. 

Moral evil is huge issue. There are corrupt self-serving politicians and despot leaders (think Hitler and Stalin) that have facilitated massive human  suffering and death. Everyday sins and unethical behavior such as lying, stealing and murder are real issues.

The creation story in the bible is similar to other creation myths in other cultures . It has been our way as humans of explaining “where  we come from?”.

Today we have good evidence that the universe is much older and bigger than possibly imagined.  Planet earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. These large numbers are beyond comprehension. Man, as a species, appears to have evolved from earlier forms of primates. In fact, very recent genome mapping shows that our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos and that we share a common ancestor about 6 million years ago. 

DNA is the gold standard for evidence in court.  The Innocence Project has documented over 365 DNA exonerations in the United States. Twenty-one of these exonerees had previously been sentenced to death. The vast majority (97%) of these people were wrongfully convicted of committing sexual assault and/or murder.

But it wasn’t until 2003 that the Human Genome Project ( HGP) was declared complete.  A chimpanzee genome project was later started in 2005 and sequenced 24 individuals by 2013 the same year scientists mapped the DNA of an extinct species of human extracted from the toe bone of a 130,000-year-old Neanderthal found in a Siberian cave.

Retrovirus markers in DNA code provide overwhelming evidence for common ancestry of humans with other apes. And this provides overwhelming evidence against a literally interpretation of the bible and Gospel message.   

Evolution via natural selection is an alternative story to the one of creation highlighted in the bible. It is an existential threat to Christianity in general and fundamental Christianity in particular. 

• If there is no creation there is no fall. 
• If there is no fall there is no need for redemption;
• If there is no need for redemption there is no need for a redeemer. 

In 1859 Charles Darwin published “On the Origins of Species” which put forward the idea that species evolved from other species via a process named “Natural Selection”.  In 1871 he published “The Descent of Man” that looked at  how man evolved from earlier species of primates. By 1925 the tension between the Creation Story and that of Evolution culminated in Tennessee with the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial. John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, was accused of teaching evolution  in violation of a Tennessee state law.

The evidence for evolution by natural selection is overwhelming.  By 2013 we are comparing genomes of humans and chimpanzee.  Retrovirus markers are proof of shared ancestry. 

Deconstructing one’s faith takes courage..not unlike that of persecuted early Christians in Rome. There are millions of evangelicals  re-evaluating their core beliefs in light of the evidence.  In some cases they have lost everything except their personal and intellectual integrity.  
Disbelief in a Literal Interpretation opens up doors to alternative, perhaps healthier ways to view the world.