The Gospel Message Summarized 

The Gospel or “good news” message has been refined over centuries.  In the Books of Genesis, the Old Testament explains how the world and man came to be and why there is evil in the world. 

There is a simple prayer for salvation and it goes something like this: 

Lord Jesus, I confess that I am a sinner and in need of salvation. I believe that You came to earth to seek and to save people who are lost in their sins, and I believe that you died on the cross as the substitute for my sins.

Millions of people have prayed this simple prayer, or one like it, and have been led to Christ.  And it has given meaning and hope to many believers….but is there any truth to it? 

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”.

Is This A True Story? 

Many Christian fundamentalist and 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 up to 38 percent 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”.

At the time Jesus taught most people were illiterate and believed in a flat earth.  Is this view of the world true given our modern understanding of science?  What is the difference between spreading misinformation and lying? A problem is that the Gospel carries a threat for non-believers.  It is not unlike yelling “fire” in a building.  This threat was almost impossible for a common person to disprove… until recently. 

Scriptures Often Ignored! 

Basing morality and ethics on a text written over 3000 years ago by can be problematic.  The old testament makes the distinction between killing and murder.  And there are a number of instances where killing and owning slaves is justifiable.

A Jealous God Taking Vengeance to the Fourth Generation!
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments – The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17 KJV)

Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. – The Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:6-21 KJV)

Honor Killing:
If the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you. – Deuteronomy 22:13-21 – NIV

On Owning Slaves:
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly. – Leviticus 25:44-46 ESV

On Striking Slaves:
“When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money. – Exodus 21:20-21 ESV

On Homosexuality:
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. – Leviticus 20:13 ESV 

On Killing Adulterers
“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. – Leviticus 20:10 ESV

There are Many Creation Stories!

Since the early days of civilization, humanity has pondered the origins of the universe. Fortunately for us, through oral tradition and writing, we can learn about these creation myths. Often, these myths are vastly different, from a universe birthed from chaos to a universe that wasn’t created at all. On the other hand, many of these stories have surprising similarities even when they’re separated geographically from Asia to North America. Here are 25 Creation Stories From Around The World

In 1838, Charles Lyell Publishes Principles of Geology 

Lyell’s writings established Uniformitarianism and that the age of the earth is vastly older than previously considered. Lyell’s foundations enabled Charles Darwin to think in terms of vast geological ages. 

In 1859 Darwin Proposed Evolution by Natural Selection 

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.

In 1956, the Earth is Verified to be 4.5 Billion Years Old  

In 1956, Clair Patterson determine the age of the earth to be about 4.5 billion years old using uranium–lead isotope dating on several meteorites including the Canyon Diablo meteorite . The quoted age of Earth is derived, in part, from the Canyon Diablo meteorite for several important reasons and is built upon a modern understanding of cosmochemistry built up over decades of research.

In 1959, Proto-Human Fossils Were Discovered in Africa 

In 1959 Mary Leakey uncovered a fossil hominin at Olduvai Gorge in Africa that was given the name Zinjanthropus (now generally regarded as a form of Paranthropus, similar to Australopithecus) This proto-human is believed to be about 1.7 million years old.

In 1972, Homo habilis was discovered, translated as “handy human,” because it seemed he was able to use tools. This fossil was dated at about 2 million years old. 

By 2003, DNA Evidence Demands a Verdict!

DNA is the gold standard for evidence in court.  But it wasn’t until 2003 that the Human Genome Project ( HGP) was declared complete. Retrovirus markers in DNA code provide overwhelming evidence for common ancestry of humans with other apes.   They are analogous to a coffee mug stain on a sheet of paper that is replicated via a photocopier.  We share the same markers with other primates, namely Chimpanzees, up to an estimated 6 million years ago.  This evidence is about as definitive as it gets in proving common ancestry. 

Reviewing the Truth Claims of Christianity

Christian fundamentalists and or evangelicals assert one or all of the following truth claims:

Claim 1: The Bible is the literal,  inerrant, and or inspired word of God

Claim 2: God created man, the world and all living things …as early as 10,000 years ago. 

Claim 3: Adam and Eve lived in a Garden of Eden and disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

Claim 4: Jesus was born of a virgin 

Claim 5: Jesus is a son God 

Claim 6: Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead 

Claim 7: Jesus was as a vicarious blood sacrifice for the sins of man. 

Claim 8: Those who do not accept Christ as lord and savior are condemned to an eternity in hell 

Claim 9: Christ will come again to judge the living and dead…

Can the Bible Be Counted On As True?

As mentioned earlier, up to 38 percent of Americans surveyed believe that man was created by God less than ten thousand years ago. Many believe that the bible is the highest or ultimate authority. 

Evolution via natural selection is an alternative story to the one of creation highlighted in the bible. It is well supported by fossil record and DNA genome mapping evidence. 

It is an existential threat to fundamental Christianity:

• 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. 

Spreading fear and misinformation is a form of lying. 

Why Do So Many People Believe?

Nearly 6 billion people believe in a god of some kind.  About 2.5 billion of these are Christians and 1.2 billion are Muslim.  The interesting question is why?  Ironically, there is strong evidence that belief in “agency” carries with it an evolutionary advantage.   

Evangelicals are Deconstructing Their Faiths…In Record Numbers

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. 

Where Do You Go From Here?

When finally I shook free of Christianity, it was like being born again. I began to see all of life differently. The things that had once seemed important now seemed trivial. And things I’d never seen the meaning of or the essence of I began to appreciate for the first time. – Charles Templeton

Charles Templeton (October 7, 1915 – June 7, 2001) was a Canadian media figure and a former Christian evangelist who preached to audiences in the thousands with Billy Graham. Known in the 1940s and 1950s as a leading evangelist, he became an agnostic and later embraced atheism after struggling with doubt. 

Primal Reverence

Somewhere this planet has a show-stopper for you that takes your breath away and makes you tug on other people’s sleeves to make them see what you see: the whirling autumn leaves with their wedding song of death and beauty; the heartbreaking call of the loon, or the wolf, or the whale; the nuzzling of newborn creatures after the labor of birth, or the struggle of the monarch out of the chrysalis into unfamiliar wings. For me, it is waterfalls. I could stand all day, dumbstruck by the vision of such endless abundance, the living energy of creation poured out unceasingly before my eyes, seeming to promise a truth that something in the world, and therefore something in me, is never and can never be exhausted. It makes me want to weep, want to dance, want to fall on my knees and be one with whatever that is, in everlasting praise.

Let me promise you: As clearly as I am capable of knowing what I know, none of that has anything to do with Jesus. Or Buddha. Or silly people who want to burn assorted writings, or equally silly people who take violent exception to the burning of their favorite texts. The primal experience of reverence in and for the natural world precedes theology of any variety. It is an organic human experience that requires no supernatural explanations. Like everything else about the human condition, our aesthetic sensibilities are a product or a by-product of the evolutionary pressures that have shaped us for reproductive success in our particular ecological niche. If they have any advantage in themselves, why would it not be to help us appreciate our home planet, and find sustenance in its beauty? The visceral response of reverence is as real and as functional to the kind of creatures we are as our hunger, our fear, our sexual impulses, our protection of the young. And just as our hunger and our fear can make us cruel and dangerous, just as our sexuality and our parental concern can be perverted into destructive self-serving, so can our innate capacity for reverence be twisted into oppression and misery.