From Chapter 22—The Fine Art of Self-Deception. © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
There are some religious beliefs and expectations that have such a long record of total failure that one is left to wonder why they haven’t been abandoned by now. A case in point: The return of Christ. For 2,000 years Christians have been predicting Christ’s imminent return. Every prediction has failed, but that hasn’t dissuaded others from reinterpreting the Bible and making new predictions. Historical-critical scholars are right when they say the ancient apocalypse genre of literature wasn’t about the distant future. It was about providing hope that God would soon destroy the evil and injustice in the contemporary world. Jews have been waiting for nearly 3,000 years for the first appearance of their Messiah. There have been several alleged Messiahs who gained a sizable following among Jews for a while, but their true Messiah still hasn’t made an appearance.
The thousands of years of waiting for the second coming of the Christian Messiah and the first coming of the Jewish Messiah are short periods compared to how long humans have been expecting some god, any god, to arise from the gaps in human knowledge. God-of-the-gaps theology is still very much alive in the modern world in spite of a batting average of exactly zero, with fewer and smaller gaps being available now where a hit might occur.
Conservative Christians often say that the Bible is as relevant today as it ever was. Unfortunately for the Bible’s relevance to modern life, it fails to correct a single aspect of any erroneous worldview about the natural world that was commonly held at the time of its writing. When the Bible finally wraps up with the plea for Lord Jesus to “come quickly” (Revelation 22:20):
- Earth still had not been reshaped from a flat, round disk into a sphere.
- The universe and Earth were still only a few thousand years old.
- Earth remained in an unmovable position at the center of a universe that revolved around it.
- The Judeo-Christian world was still oblivious to vast civilizations in the Western and Southern Hemispheres.
- Bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxic fungi were still mysterious implements in the toolboxes of demonic spirits.
- Every generation of every biological species still emerged from the exact same genetic recipe God used to create them in Genesis.
- The life sustaining symbiotic relationships between different organisms in an ecosystem was still an unknown concept.
- The inseparable biological link between humans and chimpanzees was a yet to be discovered fact.
- It remained unknown that human life on Earth was possible only after numerous cosmic and biological contingencies (accidents) had set the stage.
- Also unknown was the fact that Earth and all life herein exists only because of the explosive death of innumerable stars, millions and billions of years ago, that created and scattered the heavier chemical elements.
- And much, much more.
