If you read what I wrote a little more carefully, you’ll see we actually agree about what Dr Dobson said. I list the belief “that Dr James Dobson has accused Spongebob and Patrick from the popular Nickelodeon cartoon of being homosexuals” as one of the myths. Dr Dobson said no such thing, as you’ve pointed out; but I met quite a few Christians who believed he did (and accepted his supposed “claim” without further investigation). But I probably could have made that a bit more clear.

Of course, Dr Dobson has famously made many actual claims, usually about homosexuals and homosexuality, that are almost as bizarre, including twisting results from studies (for instance, he has repeatedly claimed that gay couples are more likely to have multiple partners than straight couples, but the study he cites to support this explicitly discounts gay couples in long-term relationships).

As to Harry Potter, I encountered many Christians with those opinions on it, and even stranger ones. The only such Christian whose opinion I could at least halfway respect (if only for its consistency) also despised both Lord of the Rings, and Narnia (which of course has a “good wizard” casting spells in the Dawn Treader, etc).

Both the Dobson/gay Spongebob thing (especially) and the Harry Potter thing have faded somewhat with time, so it may be harder to find people with such opinions today, than it was several years ago, but examples such as these were cropping up pretty consistently in my church days.

The friend whose website I mentioned earlier was probably my first interaction with an evolutionist who was also a dedicated disciple of Christ (he’s also a member of Mensa, for what that’s worth). I don’t know very many people who are as motivated by truth as he is. My friendship with him has helped me to be more open-minded about an issue that was previously divisive to me.

I definitely intend to research the issue further at some point. Although it’s not AS imperative as I used to believe, it’s still important, and I don’t really like not knowing (or being unable to support) where I stand.

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.” – Benjamin Disraeli

I think this was a fairly honest and interesting comment you’ve written, and I don’t think a thought-by-thought response to it would serve a purpose. I’ll just respond to one thing that stuck out at me.

(I admittedly haven’t done enough research into the pro-evolutionary side to adequately defend or deny it).

It may be undiplomatic for me to say this, but my experience is that this is true of 99.999% of anti-evolutionists, as well. I’ve literally never encountered someone—and I’m not just talking about physically meeting someone, I’ve never even read anything written by such a person!—who disbelieved evolution, while actually knowing what claims are actually made by evolutionists. Anti-evolutionist literature invariably argues (very successfully, of course) against things that are barely even a caricature of evolutionary science. Against claims that no one is attempting to make. It’s very easy to make the opposing side’s position look ridiculous, when you are allowed to invent what that position is (straw man arguments). When I was an anti-evolutionist, I felt quite firm in my position because of these very undeniable and airtight arguments, and believed myself informed on the subject, though I’d never read more than a word or two written by the opposing viewpoint. Why should I, when I’d already been told what their claims were? Obviously, my side was made up of Men of God, who wouldn’t lie to me about such things (…).

You’ve indicated that you’ve come to recognize that evolution’s truth or otherwise is no longer of any real bearing on your belief in the essentials of Christianity, which might make you less inclined to investigate the matter further, since regardless of the results your essential beliefs will not be affected; but I’d urge you to look into it more if you have the chance. Really, the best place to start as far as I’m concerned is this index of creationist claims from the old alt.talk.origins archives. It was the first place that I actually found to be helpful once I began to be interested in examining what the arguments for evolutionist actually are. I suspect that you’ll be able to find virtually all the arguments that you’ve heard against evolution, on that page or somewhere near it, and you can examine for yourself what the responses of evolutionists are, and whether they’re as preposterous as they’ve been made out to be.

I also find that Richard Dawkins’ books are a wealth of useful information, once you’ve learned a little about the difference between the claims of evolution, and the “claimed claims” of evolution. He is, of course, an unapologetic atheist, and this shows in his books. I got a lot of value from The Selfish Gene and, especially, The Ancestor’s Tale; I actually didn’t care as much for The Blind Watchmaker and The Greatest Show On Earth, which are the books that he actually wrote specifically for theists and anti-evolutionists, respectively (neither of which did I manage to finish), although I might point out that The Blind Watchmaker actually starts out spending several chapters on emphasizing his agreement with certain often-repeated arguments that are supposed to be refutations to evolution—particularly, the argument that the odds against various complex mechanisms coming into being out of pure random chance are too great by far to be accepted by any reasonable person—just one example of the many claims that are frequently argued against by evolution’s opponents, but have never actually been made by evolution’s proponents (though of course random chance undeniably has an important role to play for evolution).

As for some of the questionable practices of Answers in Genesis, I’ve become increasingly aware of some of these less-than-honest representations. There are a few very unfortunate factors that play into this, but the two biggest problems are these:

1. The primary purpose of organizations like AiG is not to defend the scientific truth, whatever that might be. Its purpose is to defend what they’ve already decided is the truth, and built an entire organization upon.
2. They have a regular newsletter/magazine to produce, which means they have to have content, even when there isn’t really much to talk about.

The latter problem is similar to the “24-hour news cycle” syndrome that the news media has, where they present a story because they HAVE TO and not because there’s necessarily an actual story worthy of reporting. The combination of these two problems (especially the former) leads to an almost “Watchtower Society” situation, where they have trapped themselves into a corner where they don’t really have any ability to say “turns out we were wrong about some major stuff here” or “there is some stuff we don’t really know” because doing so would be to admit that they don’t have the whole picture.

Since I myself am a Christian, none of this is stuff I like to admit, but the truth is what it is. In my case, I’m starting to realize that whether evolution is correct or not is less paramount than I used to think. Whether one believes that the 7 day description is accurate to the last detail or is a more figurative/simplified description doesn’t actually change whether God created all life or whether man is in need of salvation. The message of the Bible is spiritual, and I think it can be a problem if we invest too much energy on making it about something else.

My point isn’t to say whether or not evolution is correct (I admittedly haven’t done enough research into the pro-evolutionary side to adequately defend or deny it), but just that Christians need to be more careful about choosing our battles… And, as you have pointed, we should be even more careful about ensuring that our purpose is truth.

A good friend of mine is both a devout Christian and strong believer in evolution. You might be interested in checking out his website: http://www.proof-of-evolution.com

Reformated very slightly by the admin for easier reading.