EVOLUTION OF APOLOGY

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The fact of the matter is that those who argue that the Bible is an allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic book belong to a generation that has merely retreated from the position of their predecessors. Apologists for religion have changed over the years, just as apologists for other pseudoscientific disciplines have incorporated new interpretations for more recent evidence that debunks their disciplines. The first ghost photographer was found to be a fraud when living people started showing up in his pictures, but this doesn’t discourage the field from forming new explanations for subsequent ghost photographs.[i] The first spirit-rapper confessed that the otherworldly sounds in her sessions were the popping of a joint in her big toe and not communications from the dead, but this doesn’t discourage the field from continuously pressing the validity of subsequent ghost whisperers.[ii] The first footage of Bigfoot was admitted to be a hoax by the man who made the suit and the man who wore the suit, but this doesn’t discourage the field from forming new explanations for subsequent films.[iii] The first verifiable crop circles were made by two men who confessed to having invented the whole idea in a pub, but this doesn’t discourage the field from forming new explanations for subsequent crop circles.[iv] Abductees alleged that the first space aliens told them that they came from Mars and Venus, but once scientists determined those worlds to be inhospitable to life, abductees talked of subsequent abductors hailing from far away solar systems.[v] In this same manner, once science destroyed a literal reading of the Bible, the book retreated into the realm of symbolism and other such explanations.

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[i] William Mumler used double exposures in the 1860s to make ghostly images appear in otherwise normal photos. The trick can be easily replicated.

[ii] Margaret Fox admitted the hoax in 1888, forty years after she initiated the phenomenon.

[iii] The American public’s familiarity with Bigfoot is attributable to the grainy Patterson-Gimlin film produced in 1967. The family of Ray Wallace, the man who started the North American Bigfoot craze in 1958 by faking footprints, confessed that he was involved in the making of the film. Philip Morris, a North Carolina costume maker, admitted in 2002 to having made and sold the costume to Roger Patterson for a “prank.” Bob Heironimus, the man who wore the costume in the film, eventually came forward as well.

[iv] Doug Bower and Dave Chorley confessed in 1991 that they had been performing the prank since 1976, long before the fad entered into the mainstream. The practice of producing increasingly complex crop circles is now a common hobby in England.

[v] The popular grey aliens were unknown until NBC broadcasted the abduction story of Betty and Barney Hill. Now they account for 75 percent of US abductions, compared to 20 percent or less elsewhere. Before the emergence of the greys, aliens were alleged to be anything from blobs of hair to metallic asparaguses, commonly hailing from within our own solar system.