Thor's Day: The dinosaurs are coming! The dinosaurs are coming!

Among the Creationists

By Bob Boldt

[Editor’s note: In June 2010, the author attended a sermon and two talks by a Dr. G. Thomas Sharp given as part of the Summer Vacation Bible School at the First Assembly of God Church in Jefferson City, Missouri.
    In submitting this account, the author reminded us that today is Charles Darwin's birthday. Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, 50 years before the publication of his landmark book, On the Origin of Species, which plays no small role in the following account.]

I pulled into the Assembly of God parking lot at seven forty-five Sunday morning with plenty of time to attend the eight o’clock worship service. I couldn’t help but notice the five-foot by twenty-foot banner stretched across the wall of the church to the left of the main door that read, “Our Lost World – The Truth about Dinosaurs.” Beneath this imposing headline was a full-sized graphic of a Tyrannosaurus Rex-looking creature, with ferocious serrated teeth-filled mouth agape, apparently in full pursuit of some off-banner prey.
    With my abundantly yellow-post-it-marked Bible in hand and a tape recorder in my pocket, I donned my best evangelic smile, passed through the equally beatific congregants in the lobby, and took my place down front at a seat in the first row. Spread out across the front of the sanctuary was an abundant assemblage of all manner of beautifully reproduced fossil artifacts ranging from a respectably sized skeleton of “Pebbles,” eight-foot tall, a Jurassic adolescent Albertosaur, to the skull of a Piltdown man. It was a collection that would have done any Museum of Natural History anywhere in the country proud.

    I was there as a result of an email from a friend alerting me to a series of lectures to be given by Dr. G. Thomas Sharp, founder of the Creation Truth Foundation in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This event was scheduled to take place as part of the Vacation Bible School at the First Assembly of God megachurch in Jefferson City, Missouri. The Assembly of God’s most famous member was John Ashcroft, former Missouri governor and infamous former Attorney General to George W. Bush.
    Dr. Sharp, whose doctorate was in the philosophy of religion and science, was awarded his degree by a Florida seminary. As I was to find out, his observations were no mere watered down Intelligent Design (ID) academic dissertation, but a full-blown, old-timey, fire and brimstone Creationist diatribe.
    The worship service, prior to Dr. Sharp’s sermon, consisted of a series of inspiring hymns and musical numbers that were really quite moving. I had resolved to participate in the activities with a full and open heart. I did not go there to stand aloof, but to give myself fully to the moment. This was not difficult, as my early religious experience included services not unlike those at the Assembly of God. I had no intention of imposing a critical attitude on the proceedings, in either thought or expression. I had my tape recorder, which would allow me to later analyze the proceedings in detail.
    This subterfuge served me in two ways. First, it allowed me to give myself up wholly to the spirit of the proceedings without the necessity of breaking the mood with assiduous note-taking. My tape recorder also allowed me to quote Dr. Sharp with absolute confidence as to the accuracy of my reporting. I apologize in advance to the good doctor if I have taken some liberties with his material in the interests of clarity and brevity. I firmly believe in allowing my opponents to make the strongest possible arguments for their position.
    Almost immediately, I realized the wisdom of my decision to do my reporting undercover, disguised as a mild-mannered, Bible-toting evangelical. I was seated in the front row-center, fully visible to the entire congregation and featuring in almost every camera angle projected on the giant video screens to the left and right of the sanctuary.
    In fact, I was the only one in the front row. This sort of put the spotlight on me. For a while I wondered if this was because the congregation might know something that I didn’t, like veterans of a Gallagher performance. There were no surprises however, although I did put on quite a show of vehement singing, “a-men”-praising, and Bible-thumping. I actually had a lot of fun and found that, by the time Dr. Sharp was introduced, I was as filled with the Holy Spirit as the most zealous congregant.

Dr. Sharp took the podium. He looked to be a lean, fashionably attired gentleman with a penetrating gaze and a grey, well-trimmed, professorial goatee. He immediately took charge with a familiar, authoritative air that would have served him equally well in church or classroom.
    His message would not be unfamiliar to any viewer of the countless Christian broadcasting television and radio stations across the country:

We in America need to get back to the Christian roots upon which this country was founded. Essentially we must either become a Christian theocracy where fundamentalist Biblical literalism governs, or the people will perish.

    I did have a nervous moment or two when problems developed with the wireless mic Dr. Sharp was wearing. Fundamentalists, it seems, live in a world full of literal magic where Satin is constantly placing obstacles in the path of the faithful. Problems of this sort are never viewed metaphorically, but literally. When an annoying hum began to plague the PA system, Dr. Sharp’s piercing eyes darted suspiciously around the congregation and he said, only half in jest, “It looks as if Satin is doing his work here this morning. He’s always looking to trip us up.” All laughed – I a little nervously. I sent a rapid, fervent little prayer to the god Mercury that no one would spot my ruse and unmask my true agency as “Satan’s emissary.” Finally, Dr. Sharp was given a hand mic and proceeded.
    As I said, the material that morning was no real surprise. What did emerge from the sermon was a series of strange tales of magic and supernatural agency surrounding the founding of the United States. This was a surprising litany of superstitions that would probably make even a member of the Illuminati cringe.
    “What they teach your children in American History classes is watered down, untrue, and positively un-Christian,” intoned the good Doctor.

The United States of America is blessed among all others because it was founded on Christ and could not have existed without His direct intervention. That is something you will never hear in a history classroom anywhere in the public schools of this country.” He went on. “Did you know, for example, that George Washington, while an officer in the British army under General Braddock during the French and Indian war, was regarded by the Indians as being under the protection of the Great Spirit because none of the American Indian sharpshooters were able to bring him down? In fact, their chief told Washington, when they met years later, that he ordered his riflemen to cease firing on him because he was literally under the protection of God.

    I could go on and on with the stories Dr. Sharp used to enthrall his audience concerning the supernatural providence that is our sustaining heritage – a heritage Dr. Sharp asserts we have turned our back on.
    The bullet-proof George and the Indian chief story has been debunked as being mostly apocryphal. It is unlikely that any Indians in the battles referenced could tell one British soldier from another. There is no credible account of any chief reporting the supernatural protection for Washington. The man himself, however, did say the following in a letter to his brother:

By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!

Of course, history teaches us that George Washington never told a lie.

Later that evening, at the Sunday lecture, I was in my chosen seat for a dissertation on the headline topic: “The Truth about Dinosaurs.” Before the 7 p.m. lecture, a warm-up talk was given to the children in the Vacation Bible School who had been assembled in the sanctuary before being herded off to their Sunday school classrooms for later indoctrination.
    Matt Meyers, one of Dr. Sharp’s non-degreed associates, was an enthusiastic witness for the Lord and Creationism. His zeal in presenting his message was enthusiastically received by his young audience. The horde of at least 50 children looked to range in age from three to ten years. He was trying, in the simplest language possible, to convey to them the concept of Special Creation, why Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent, how they got all those animals into Noah’s ark, why they were all terrible sinners, and how, presumably, only Jesus could save them from the fires of Hell. This was no small order.

    I didn’t mind all the charming fairy-tales about the Garden and the Ark, but I was a little disturbed by the talk about sin and such. I think Matt was trying to relate it to the only sins the children might be familiar with – the worst of which was the proverbial cookie-jar theft or breaking older brother’s Game Boy.
    Trying to get a bunch of innocent pre-teens to feel bad about themselves by the harsh rules of Mosaic Law seemed bizarre, to say the least. I wondered whether Mark would like to have a large stone hung about his neck and find himself cast into the uttermost parts of the sea as his reward for attempting to make these little ones feel Adam’s guilt. I shuddered to think what course of instruction would be delivered in the longer indoctrination session that would take place after the children left the sanctuary. I found myself wishing I could follow the children to their next session, where the real message of the evening was to be delivered. After all, they are the real prospect for Christianity, the ones who must finally carry Christ’s’ message into the future.
    As soon as the children were cleared, the rest of the congregation moved forward to fill the seats at the front of the sanctuary. Dr. Sharp was introduced and assumed the podium, this time to do battle against the ungodly forces of Darwinism and materialistic science.

In 1997, in the earlier part of my ministry, when it was just my son and myself, we were bouncing down the road in an old 1991 Ford, going to a program at a Christian school somewhere. And I said to him that it just dawned on me that one of the biggest deterrents to Biblical reality today is dinosaurs. I told my son that when we get back to Oklahoma, I want to take a day and go visit our friend, Joe Taylor, the Christian paleontologist, about renting his dinosaurs. And so, when we got back, I told Joe about my idea and he agreed to rent me his dinosaurs for $1,500 a month. Next, I got on the phone and called from Miami to Phoenix and set up programs at Christian schools and churches. In that three-month period from November to December we saw over 22,000 people.

    The congregation was settling back in a state of relaxed attention, waiting eagerly for the really good stuff. Dr. Sharp went on. Pressing a key on his laptop, a slide of Tyrannosaurus Rex appeared on the two large projection screens on either side of the sanctuary.

For the last 30-40 years, dinosaur-mania has just eaten up the Western world. Particularly in the United States, there has been billions and billions spent on dinosaur exhibits and museums. It’s an absolute phenomenon! Kids between 3 and 10 years of age just get absolutely mesmerized by dinosaurs. These kids can name nearly every dinosaur on display up here, and their parents can’t. You know what that said to me? Somebody’s teaching them. And mom and dad’s not doing the teaching. It also says to me that there’s a huge amount of bondage going along with this information – a huge amount of bondage that is directly a crippling, stumbling reality with regards to the Gospel.
    You say, “How could dinosaurs be a deterrent to the preaching of the gospel?” I’ll tell you: They tell these kids that these dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago and became extinct. Now they don’t know why they became extinct but they became extinct. The reason that we see in the textbooks, that is no longer even agreed upon by the scientific community, is the asteroid theory. In the same rock layers where we find dinosaurs we also find turtles and lizards and snakes and crocodiles.
    Well, we still have turtles and lizards and snakes and crocodiles, but these big reptiles are gone from the earth. So they didn’t know how a catastrophe could be so selectively used to just take out the big guys and take out the big marine creatures and leave all the little ones alone to reproduce up to today. As a matter of fact, Edwin Colbert from the American Museum [of Natural History], who was the curator of the big dinosaur hall there, he said, “We’ll never know why the dinosaurs became extinct because it’s a mystery.”

    The congregation was warming to the topic. A few “a-mens” tentatively broke their silence. There was open laughter at these scientists who had always been held up to them as so smart and couldn’t even explain something as important to our understanding of the past as extinction.

So I went to the university – I’m writing a new book called “Rocks, Fossils & Dinosaurs”; it’ll be out in about six weeks – to see if I could find anything about dinosaur extinction theory and I found fifty – all the way from a meteor strike to methane poisoning. I won’t bother to tell you where these so-called reputable scientists came up with as the source of the methane. (laughter). It’s amazing what unbelievers have to believe in order to be unbelievers.

    This last one nearly brought the house down. Even the most skeptical Bible-thumper now realized that Dr. Sharp was one of their own. When the laughter finally subsided, he went on.

They don’t know where the dinosaurs went. And the reason they don’t is because the Apostle Peter said they willfully ignore the flood. Willfully ignore the flood! OK! Scientists say dinosaurs predate humans. But the Apostle Paul says, No, no, no! That’s not possible. You don’t have gigantic lizards that are meat-crushing, bone-consuming – you know monsters – spilling blood. You don’t have them on earth millions of years before man got here. There’s no death on earth before Adam’s sin.
    Paul said in Romans 5:12, “Therefore through one man’s sin, sin entered the world and through sin death entered the world.” Where do you think death came from? That’s the bottom line in this controversy. If death came from dinosaurs, then death didn’t come from sin. But if there’s no death on the earth ’till Adam’s sin, then dinosaurs couldn’t exist before Adam got here. Paul said in First Corinthians 15:12, “By man came death. By man came resurrection from the dead. Man brought death.”

    His paraphrase may actually be a little off here. The passage seems to deal more with the raising of the dead than man bringing death to the world. But who am I to argue with so august a Biblical scholar as Dr. Sharp? I quickly checked my handy Bible. 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 reads:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ – whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

(While we are on the subject, I might note that this is one of my favorite New Testament passages, being as how it deals with the imperative that one accept patently absurd, supernatural occurrences without question as fact – solely on faith. This places all Christians who accept such nonsense as people willing to live without rational merit. I suppose I should take Paul’s advice and pity them. I would find it easier to do if they did not seem to cling so tenaciously to their ignorance.)
    Dr. Sharp went on.

Charles Darwin said in the last paragraph of this book, “Through death and suffering the most phenomenal development and possibilities that we can conceive are possible.”

As much as I appreciate Dr. Sharp’s attempt to accurately, if crudely, paraphrase Darwin, I cannot bear to let this characterization stand without offering the eloquent words of Charles Darwin himself. Although technically correct as to the meaning of Darwin’s words, Dr. Sharp willfully ignores the beauty, elegance, and, yes, the reverence of Darwin’s text. I would describe these words as nothing less than poetry, an eloquent hymn to life! If you can read these words without a tear forming in your eye or a lump in your throat, you have no heart:

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. [On the Origin of Species, Chapter 14, “Recapitulation and Conclusion”]

    A few of the parishioners looked a little confused by the Darwin quote and seemed to be wondering exactly what he was saying. Dr. Sharp went on to clarify:

In other words, the evolutionists think death is a developmental mechanism that brings advancement and change. With the death of one inferior species it gives rise to a more fit species for survival. So death is a developmental mechanism.
    But the Bible says: No! Death is not a developmental mechanism. Death is a judgment against sin. So as a result, the dinosaur story subtly militates against the authority of the Gospel right under our nose and is taking thousands and thousands and thousands of young people right out of our church because nobody walked up and answered the question.
    How can you have a scientific model that claims – that absolutely denies the Biblical point of view about all these issues? How can that be? And nobody in the Bible-reading church says anything about it except, “God did it some way, only we’re not sure how.” That just doesn’t cut the mustard! So this becomes a super important tool of the social/liberal engineers in the dumbing-down process of your children to take them away from the Bible and their faith in Jesus Christ.
    That’s why we got in the dinosaur business.

So on he went for four more nights, expounding these ideas. I really had patience only for one more lecture. After a while, the material did begin to repeat itself. Armed with the belief system Dr. Sharp would have us buy – the unquestioned assumption of literal Biblical infallibility – we can and must do battle with the ungodly forces of evolution.
    Using that assumption and a pretty good imagination honed on a lot of reading of the Bible, sci-fi, and fantasy fiction in my childhood, I found that I could actually make this stuff up faster than the good doctor. Had I stayed for the whole series, I would certainly have found out: How the pre-fall world worked – with no death and with each species being fruitful and bringing forth after its own kind; how that would not have left old Adam waist-deep in toothless, vegetarian alligators in a couple of generations; how man was a special creature whose similarity to the DNA of other primates represented not an evolutionary derivation but a coincidence of common intelligently designed elements complete with some distinctly unintelligently designed features that could most likely only have been inherited from some pre-human ancestor; how carbon-14 dating is fraudulent because it contradicts a literal reading of Genesis; and where to look on the electron microscope photos of the flagellum for the “all rights reserved” registered trademark inscription from the YHWH Better Mousetrap Corporation.

What I found most interesting of all in reviewing the transcript of my recording, in addition to how absolutely barking mad all this is, was a point of agreement I was able to find with Dr. Sharp.
    I totally agreed with his statement that Biblical Science (BS) is based solely on the supposition that the Bible, every word of it, is literally true. I don’t agree that the Bible is true. I only agree with Dr. Sharp that Biblical Science has been posited solely to justify Biblical reality. The only function of this BS is to explain how the Bible has been made manifest throughout Earth history.
    Where I most seriously disagreed with him was on his understanding of the methods and philosophy of actual science. He said that the two systems, science and Biblical Science, are basically dueling paradigms that can be characterized as two totally different, totally incompatible systems of values. He said that science, as modern civilization has come to know it, is wholly of Satan (I kid you not). It celebrates two great “mysteries of iniquity”: the heresy of the Big Bang (“In the beginning was matter,” or something can arise out of nothing) and the heresy of the origin of life (that life can come out of non-life). For Dr. Sharp, the capper of this Satanic belief system is that science would have us believe that there is no such thing as human destiny, individual or collective.

Now, before continuing, I am going to have to clarify exactly what I mean by a Christian. It is my belief that the fundamentalists are really the only true Christians. So-called mainstream Christians, or secular Christians, who preach the Social Gospel and revere the ethical teachings of Jesus, are not real Christians, or at least people aren’t who do not take seriously the literal commands attributed to Jesus and the other Old and New Testament contributors. Those who hold that the miracles, the myths, and the other supernatural aspects of the Old Testament and Jesus’s life are to be taken metaphorically are not real Christians. For me the only real Christians are those who can actually say the Apostles’ Creed with a straight face:

1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth;
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord;
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell;
5. The third day he rose again from the dead;
6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead;
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost;
9. I believe in the holy catholic church (small c): the communion of saints;
10. The forgiveness of sins;
11. The resurrection of the body;
12. And the life everlasting. Amen.

    Again, I am not referring to those nominal Christians who routinely repeat this absurd credo in a pro-forma manner as one half-heartedly reciting a fraternity pledge or a Masonic oath, offering their bodies to be drawn and quartered or subjected to other horrific torments for disobedience. In my mind, the Apostles’ Creed must be believed literally, and wholeheartedly, without exception or doubt. Only such a person can be considered a true Christian. Most of my friends who call themselves Christian could not seriously assert such a fantastic set of 12 absurdities, and hence, for the purpose of this definition, are not “true” Christians.

Is there any hope for Christianity then? Certainly not for the Creed-believers or the Biblical literalists or the evolution-deniers. It is my hope that Secular Christianity and perhaps even the Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches may one day completely eschew the cult of the Magical Jesus and embrace the ethical and spiritual aspects of Christian teachings as a contemplative and practical set of values not unlike the way most Buddhists accept the teachings and the spiritual practice of The Buddha. I have no plans to hold my breath until this occurs, however.
    In contrast to these nominal Christians, there are the true-believers who hold a faith in Biblical Science (BS), the self-evident truism revealed through the ineffable authority of the Bible: The Mystery of God is revealed in his only son, Jesus, who, like the Hindu trinity (Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva) before him, is creator, preserver. and destroyer of souls and worlds. In the beginning was God = Jesus. Life can only come from life. Death is a punishment for sin. And of course, my favorite: the assurance that all are enclosed in the magnificent Divine plan for human destiny, no matter how crappy life may seem to you at the present moment.
    I would like to set aside my critique of these BS assumptions and the psychological needs that drive them with such fanatical force for a moment, in order to examine the exact nature of the indictment Dr. Sharp levels at science.
    In my admittedly incomplete experience of his ideas, it did seem that he spent an inordinate amount of time expounding on science’s inability to come up with definitive explanations for certain phenomena. He especially seemed to take delight when they developed conflicting or contradictory hypotheses, or better yet, reversed themselves completely on an established, supposedly well-tested theory. For him, this was an example of scientists’ ungodly reliance on the vagaries of human experience and the errors that our sin has made us heir to.
    Dr Sharp said, after a discussion of the changing theories concerning T-Rex – predator or carnivore,

…so (should) we change our belief system on the basis of secular science that doesn’t know for sure? I don’t. I’m not gonna let secular science change my point of view about scripture. The word of God is the word of God.

    For Dr. Sharp, his Biblical Science (BS) is based on the unchanging, absolute word of God as revealed through Scripture and is not subject to error – even when it prognosticates about material that ought to be subject to the domain of the purely physical sciences.
    What those full of the BS fervor fail to realize is that science is driven by error – unlike Biblical Science, which seeks absolute certainty.

Where I think I have the most serious disagreement with Biblical Science (BS) is over the motivation they attribute to the scientists themselves. In the dualistic worldview of BS, there is only the battle between Good and Evil, Jesus and Satan. As a result, they contend that the only agency that has created and sustained science is Satan. This is supposed to explain scientists’ resolute adherence to non-supernatural agencies in explaining phenomena, science’s positing a universe based solely on material forces, and its insistence on measuring and recording only objectively observable evidence, especially in the life and earth sciences.
    I am going to leave subatomic physics entirely out of this discussion. I have noticed that the fundamentalists are usually wise enough to do the same. Dr. Sharp seems to regard the materialistic objectivity that characterizes science as scientists’ personal position – as if somehow they know better, that they somehow realize the incontrovertible evidence for the flood and the Divine agency in the creation of the universe and life, but willfully ignore it. He dismisses their refutations of Intelligent Design’s concept of irreducible complexity as motivated solely by their pride and a stiff-necked unwillingness to bow to God’s irrefutable authority. He seems to take special umbrage at scientists’ refusal to either affirm or deny the existence of God – not realizing that, according to the rules, such an acceptance or denial would violate all the hard-won principles of the scientific method that have been universally agreed upon by the best minds of humanity for at least a hundred years.

Finally, unlike Dr. Sharp, I have no desire to convert him to my position if he is not inclined to respect the reasoned arguments of his critics. It is ironic that after more than eight decades since Scopes and over three centuries after the death of Galileo, we are still plagued by attempts to use the tyranny of theological absolutism to enslave the minds of our children.
    Apparently it is of great concern that many young people are falling away from the faith of their parents due to their exposure to the larger secular society. Prior to Dr. Sharp’s Sunday sermon, a member of the First Assembly of God’s Youth Ministry got up and revealed some disturbing news: it seems that Fundamentalism has been losing as many as 70% of its children to some form of secular, non-Christian world view by the time they are 15 years old. The number was even higher for those who went on to college. Of course, it is axiomatic within the Christian fundamentalist community that all the woes of our world are perceived as solely the fruit of the noxious weed of secular humanism, whose roots are nourished from the poisoned soil of Paganism, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment.
    Now, I personally couldn’t care less what a small, fanatical, intellectually bankrupt cult within the larger, largely secularized Christian community wants, believes, or espouses to their children. What I am primarily concerned with here is that this small group has influence far beyond their numbers, not just within the Bible Belt, but within many of our institutions of higher learning and even within state and federal governments.
    Years ago we thought that the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decision had pretty well put an end to their influence in the public schools. Judge Jones’s reasoned decision had definitively exposed Intelligent Design as nothing more than Creationism’s Trojan horse and summarily characterized it as a “brilliant inanity.” The decision cost the already financially strapped Dover, Pennsylvania school board more than a million dollars in fines, court costs, and legal fees. Since then it has appeared that no subsequent advocate of BS has had the temerity or foolishness to risk a similar assault on the minds and souls of the children in our public schools. Undaunted by this disaster, the forces of Creationism have regrouped and begun assaults on a number of new fronts.
    Here in Missouri we have been graced by the dower countenance of Mr. Ben Stein hawking his film Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed. He had been invited to screen his film under the capitol dome in an attempt to drum up enthusiasm for a languishing bill the Republicans were trying to force through the legislature under the euphemistic title, “The Intellectual Diversity Act.” Critics claimed its goal would have exactly the opposite effect on intellectual diversity on college and university campuses in Missouri. I have heard that the film advocated, among other things, that the proponents of Intelligent Design be protected from “unfair” persecution and sanctions.

Outside the First Assembly of God's sanctuary, where the bones of the ancient dinosaurs were piled up around the altar of God like some sort of sacrifice, was a lobby full of books expounding the concepts of Creationism and advocating, among other things, a literal reading of the Genesis time line.
    Along with the lineup of adult books such as Darwin’s Black Box, by Michael Behe; Evolution, by Michael Denton; Icons of Evolution – Science or Myth?, by Jonathan Wells; etc., were two full tables containing children’s books presenting Biblical literalism, Divine cosmology, Creationism, and other BS concepts lavishly illustrated and simply elucidated for small minds. Most of the books for children and young adults were somewhere in the attractive price range between two dollars for the Creationist Coloring book and fifteen dollars for more elaborate texts for high school students.
    I wondered at the kind of cognitive dissonance these youngsters would undergo trying to reconcile this BS with the material being taught in their biology classes. I cannot imagine their church’s teachings holding their own against the far more compelling, persuasive, and rational material being presented by the secular world.

The most troubling aspect of this whole conflict is the struggle of a small but powerful Christian cult for dominance, not only over other competing theological belief systems, but over science itself. Now, I couldn’t care less as to the contents of their belief system. What frightens me most is the apathy of mainstream Christians and the science community itself toward these fanatics. Rational people tend to laugh off these Creationists and ID advocates. After attending Dr Sharp’s lectures, I am in no laughing mood.
    This BS, the theology upon which it is based, and the growing militancy of its supporters are well-organized, well-financed, and supported by a media network that extends their message and influence in a powerful and insidious way. You may call the members of this cult mad, but you will seriously underestimate their influence if you think they are stupid. I have stated that my purpose in this essay is not to rebut fundamentalist positions, but to try to alert those in the mainstream as to the real danger here.
    I have a confession to make: I am a believer in Intelligent Design. Even though I would never stand in the ranks of Michael Behe or others, I have a tendency to believe that, at the heart of Being, there is an intelligence, perhaps even a compassionate, intelligent consciousness. The big difference between my position and the position of Dr. Sharp is that I realize that my conjecture has no place in a science discussion. Anyone who understands the principles of the scientific method knows that the subject of cosmic origins and the origins of life may never be definitively answered. Science indeed has a cognitive bias. This bias is not the result of any Satanic motivations, but is central to its whole authority. Science can only look at materialistic causation and empirical, measurable data, and, according to its own rules, cannot take into account supernatural agents or causations.
    Biblical Science, on the other hand, tells us that the only compelling account of the origin of the universe, of the creation of life, and indeed of the whole mystery of nature is the Biblical narrative, i.e. the God = Jesus hypotheses. They assert that the Jesus hypothesis is the only possible explanation in the face of science’s lack of an immutable theory for these and other phenomena. Not only is an Intelligent Designer the only solution to this mystery, but specifically Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, is the only acceptable candidate. No other myths need apply.
    Without getting into a debate as to the reliability of a myriad of contradictory Middle Eastern texts here, I think we can find a host of other possible explanations for the origins of life in the universe – from Australian aboriginal creation myths to the speculations of scientists attempting to explain the concept of mutli-verses to flying-saucer researchers positing that we were seeded by aliens.
    I am awed by the mystery of not only the universe, but of my own consciousness itself. Is this consciousness perhaps just a subjective contradiction to the chaos of the material process? What can explain all this to a mind that has evolved its survival strategy by looking for meaning in a sea of non-meaning? Can I ever warm my heart to Camus’s “benign indifference of the Universe” or Beckett’s absent Godot? In the face of the wholly hidden mystery of creation I must use science as a guide, a starting point, a yardstick. This austere knowledge is only a starting point because life is not answered wholly by science alone, and may never be. There isn’t a scientist worth his salt or tenure who would ever assert the contrary.
    I don’t know whether I will ever understand these things, whether I will ever introspect enough, meditate enough, take enough ethnogens, or, yes, even pray to the gods enough so that someday I will have the grace to see Blake’s “…universe in a grain of sand or eternity in an hour.” One personal conclusion I have been able to ascertain for myself is that my answer does not lie in any cult of Jesus salvation. I do not rule out the possibility of events that might appear miraculous to those who claim belief in Him. I must, however, always severely question the overthrowing of the laws of nature by the dark forces of superstition.

Quite frankly, I view exoteric Christianity in general and Biblical literalism, as preached from countless pulpits around the world, as being infantile – infantile, in that it holds to a simpleminded set of beliefs that are driven primarily by a fear of the death of the ego and a tenacious holding on to an ever increasingly fragile and threatened certainty in the presence of a rapidly changing and chaotic world.
    At a certain point Dr. Sharp asked each member of the congregation to place his or her finger on their breast bone and say, “I’m terminal.” Not even Christians are dumb enough to take Article 12 of the Apostles’ Creed literally. Even the most benighted parishioner may have noticed that the body, particularly an old, decrepit body, will hopefully not be materially resurrected. Praise the Lord for that! What Christians are promised are brand new spirit bodies made in the image of a young, vital Kim Kardashian or Kanye West (oops, he’s black!), with all our earthly attachments and the “good” addictions intact.
    Now, Christianity is not the first religion to promise a form of personal immortality and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The lecture by Dr. Sharp gave me few new arguments for Creationism or Intelligent Design. But what it did do was give me, for the first time, a clear idea of how so many of these concepts in fundamentalist Christianity are intimately linked, how they possess a kind of internal logic that the believers find so compelling, and how these concepts feed the very human need to believe in a personal immortality and have an absolute unshakable faith.

The field of Terror Management Theory deals with the study of the suppressed fear of death and the compensations connected with the strategies people have used to obviate these repressed concerns. One of the reactions is the development of a religious set of beliefs that guarantee a personal immortality. An interesting byproduct of this study is the observed violence that arises when these strategies are threatened or when subjects are reminded, in various subtle ways, of their own mortality.
    Dr. Sharp said that the primary element of focus in the two worldviews of Creationism and Evolution is death. If, according to the fundamentalists, “the wages of sin are death,” then the only hope for salvation is in the expiation that Jesus made for all humanity by his death on the cross. It then follows that since all humans are afraid of death and the Bible states that death came into the world through the sin (The Fall) of the first man and woman, and before Christ there was no redemption from the inevitability of sin and death, then finally it must follow that the only hope for remedy from this universal fear of death and the inevitability of imperfection, sin, suffering, and injustice in the world is the acceptance of Jesus as one’s personal Lord and Savior.
    Jesus’s benefits can only be activated by a perceived personal relationship with and commitment to this first-century Palestinian terrorist whose alleged teachings, except for an accident of history, would have been as lost to us as his true historical identity is lost to scholars. Now, what’s wrong with that? Nothing that a little faith and a lot of credulity cannot accomplish.

Now why should I care what happens to this small cult, who by their own admission, cannot even keep their own children within their belief system? As I said before, they are attempting to influence by lies, intimidation, and force a dominance over our secular culture here at home and abroad.
    The very means they attempted to employ to get Intelligent Design introduced into the public schools of this nation are symptomatic. Rather than presenting their bizarre hypotheses to the science establishment through the peer review process, they attempted to make an end run around science by introducing ID directly into the nation’s public school classrooms. Fortunately this was recognized by the law as nothing more than a ploy by the religious right in this country to introduce BS into the science curriculum.
    In watching the historic spread of Christianity, I have reached the conclusion that these people have no shame and no morals whatsoever. When you possess absolute certainty that God is on your side, any action, any atrocity is permissible – forgivable. God’s ends justify any means.
    From its inception, the early Church and Christianity, in its exoteric manifestations, have always appealed to the most spiritually bankrupt appetites in the human psyche. The only way they have ever been able to achieve dominance over human consciousness is by force and intimidation. This is evidenced from the earliest destruction of the Gnostics and other heresies to the modern demonizing of science, all other religions, and secular humanism.
    These are extremely dangerous people, and we who oppose them should never underestimate their intelligence, or their guile. I am not for denying them their belief system, the right to raise their children in their faith, and their right to legally enter the level playing field of the public arena. The only reason they have been able to achieve the inordinate amount of influence for their pernicious ideas is because good people in the mainstream religious community, journalists, politicians, educators, scientists, and other academics have kept silent in the face of their influence.
    I am not advocating suppression here. Perhaps the most extreme thing I am advocating is a kind of intellectual quarantine. These people should be kept, insofar as it is legally possible, wholly within their own sphere of influence. This has already been taking place in the science community and, to a less successful extent, on our college and university campuses. They have been unable to make headway in having their ideas accepted as possessing any scientific testability or fostering any fruitful area of investigation.
    All I am advocating here is that a similar attitude be accepted by the culture at large. In spite of the disastrous verdict of the Scopes trial, Creationism used to be, up to now, something of a laughing stock in the popular culture. It is our duty today, if we value the triumph of reason over irrationality, to return this archaic belief system to the dustbin.

One area where we do need to critically examine the influence of fundamentalist Christianity is in its world mission program. In spite of real aid and comfort that many missionaries provide to the third world, there is an understanding that this aid is only the “carrot” aspect of their mission. The second, and most important, “stick” aspect of Christianity’s stated world mission outreach was, is, and always will be cultural genocide. This clash of theologies is also a source of potentially violent political and cultural disruption in already volatile areas of the world such as the Middle East and Muslim countries, where the presence of Christian missionaries is tantamount to pouring gasoline on a fire. In addition to a cultural and intellectual quarantine at home, I believe steps must be taken to at least encourage a cutback on Christian foreign mission programs abroad – if not a total ban altogether.
    The evil of absolute power was aptly demonstrated for the modern world by the rise of the Third Reich. Am I asserting here that Christianity can become as evil an entity as National Socialism? The historical record has born out that the atrocities committed by people as assured of redemption, salvation, and faith as the good Dr. Sharp is have been proven every bit as heinous as Hitler’s.

    I have heard that many a Christian warrior during the Vietnam conflict had inscribed on his helmet (only half in jest) the inscription: “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.” I didn’t realize that the actual theological rationale for this dictum had its origin in the conflict to purge the Church of the Albigensian Heresy in the victorious 13th Century Cathar Crusade: “Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoset,” or “Kill them all. God will know His own,” has been a dictum of conquest throughout Christian history and is probably of greater relevance to contemporary militant Christians than the Beatitudes. I am sure it allows many a Christian soldier in Afghanistan to sleep soundly in light of the dreadful number of civilian casualties we continue to inflict on those poor people.
    I know with as close to an absolute certainty as I am capable of possessing, that if Christianity once again is ascendant, their horrific history will repeat itself.
    As we move into a world that is increasingly co-dependent, there is little room for religions like Christianity, which make claims for exclusive validity and beliefs that would attempt, by force or intimidation, to convert others to their views. Intolerant, exclusivist religions like Christianity, Islam, and even Orthodox Judaism should be tolerated only insofar as their beliefs remain isolated and restricted to the population of believers. But in no way should their intolerance be encouraged or tolerated by the world community. They should languish in their own self-imposed isolation from the rest of humanity whose sins they so condemn.
    It is my belief that, left to its own devices, Christianity is destined to wither and become a quaint anachronism. Would that someday the homoerotic, sadomasochistic crucifixion image of Jesus Christ might become just another obscure myth, perhaps celebrated as a “Crown of Thorns Suffering Jesus” Halloween mask – a reminder of a belief system whose only remembered significant historical accomplishment was to frighten little children and the credulous.

Copyright © 2015 by Bob Boldt