6 Modern Myths About Christianity & Western Civilization

by Philip J. Sampson

Book Overview

When did you last encounter a myth? Maybe watching a movie, touring a museum or browsing the sci-fi section of your local bookstore? To contemporary men and women, myths seem mere relics of a premodern era--legendary stories of capricious gods, heroic deeds and lost cities. The physical and social anxieties that gave rise to myths have been dealt with more productively in our century by science, government and art. Right?"Not at all," says Philip...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 083082281X
• ISBN13: 9780830822812
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: IVP
• Length: 197 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

We need more books like this!

What most people don't realize is that history is being re-written to make Christians (or "xtians" as hate mongers spell it) into the bad guys of history. Apologetics is the new frontier of Christian ministry, and this book should be on every Christian's reading list. I think you should buy two copies and give one to your local library. I'll stop short of saying if every Wiccan were made to read this book, it would probably be the end of their religion!

Valuable book for defending Christian worldview

Sampson has provided a valuable historical treatise for defending the historic integrity of the Christian faith from modern myths. He points out how key issues regarding Christian history have been distorted by non-believing scholars. Their efforts have been so successful, they have become modern myths accepted without thinking.Get it. Read it. You'll love it.

Enlightening Sober History

The overall theme of the book is fighting myths of Christianity with sober historical facts. He does not ignore the not-so-friendly aspects of those doing bad things in the name of Christianity. For instance he mentions the people killed in witch burnings is appalling and admits there were some missionaries that did more harm than good. But he does let readers know legitimate and relevant information of history that paint a rather different overall picture than what many popular myths have insinuated. Some of the historical information he presents might raise an eyebrow or two. Below are a couple of examples.Some myths of Galileo made it appear that this scientist had the scientific facts on his side and that the Church was against heliocentric theory, ignoring the scientific evidence, for religious reasons, thereby making this a simple "science vs. religion" dispute. To give a taste of what he says, what the author puts into light is that the secular scientists of that era were actually against heliocentric theory, the evidence supporting heliocentric theory had not yet arrived, and that the Church really didn't care much about defending geocentricism at all, pointing out that it had let Copernicus publish the idea before Galileo was born and that many of Galileo's supporters were in the Church rather than among secular scientists. The motives behind the Catholic Church forcing Galileo to renounce heliocentricism and the lenient punishment are also explained, though the explanation of motives could have been done more thoroughly. While the Catholic Church is not portrayed as perfectly saintly, the notion of the whole conflict centering on "science vs. religion" is refuted fairly well.The witch craze is put into perspective with some surprising facts. The number of witch trials was lowest precisely where the Church and the Inquisition were involved. The Church was also more skeptical of witch accusations than one might expect (the more radical ones anyway, such as claiming to have slept with Satan), and the author provided examples to illustrate that point. In the so-called burning times, the substantial majority of towns and villages never experienced a single witch trial. While he acknowledges that the number of people died in Europe, North America etc. (most recent estimates total to about 150 to 300 people per year, a total of 40,000 to 100,000 overall; he mentions that some exaggerations of the numbers have been falsely stretched into the millions) is a terrible enough catalog of human suffering, he puts it into perspective with the far greater amounts of bloodshed in recent history. For instance, the Battle of Somme in 1916 killed a million people in five months, twenty five thousand the first day. The point is reinforced with several more notable historical facts of the twentieth century.What is somewhat disappointing is that he goes into a little, but only a very little, into how these myths emerged. I would like to have learned more abo

Valuable and fascinating!

No need to hesitate. Buy this beautifully researched, insightful book.The author looks at 6 primary beliefs that define the modern world, tracing their development as fictions cultivated by 18-20th century Enlightenment humanists who distorted their opponents beliefs and history, even fabricating quote attributions in the process. The goal was to replace Christian understanding of God, reality and man with naturalist beliefs, derived from Greek paganism, thus move authority from God to man (specifically, them).Because of the author's gentle style, some readers new to the debate over humanism vs. religion & science may find it valuable to first read "Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom" (Morey), to understand the underlying assumptions driving the Humanist project. "Inventing the Flat Earth" (Russell) is another outstanding book that focuses on a single issue: the fabrication of the idea (in the 1820's) that medieval people thought the world flat, so as to discredit the church and construct a Dark Age to be be corrected by Enlightened moderns.Included in "6 Myths":#1) Remember plucky Galileo, who stood against the might of the church armed only with the flame of reason and a telescope? Tortured by the Inquisition and condemned as a heretic for showing humans lived on an insignificant speck orbiting a common star nowhere special in the Universe, a realization that devastated a now-undermined church? Well, nothing in the above humanist story is true.Copernicus proposed the Earth revolved around the Sun decades before Galileo. It was widely discusssed, but evidence was lacking. The Roman Catholic Church provisionally accepted the view of Aristotle, that everything revolved around the Earth, pending other information. Geocentrism was a Greek idea, not a Biblical one. While people debated heliocentrism, a matter of no significance in the Bible, (the main opponents of heliocentrism were other astronomers with pride vested in understanding of concentric spheres, NOT clergy), Galileo got in trouble for implying the Pope, who had gone out of his way to befriend Galileo, (even penning an ode to him in 1620), was a simpleton. Further, Galileo asserted that the Bible was written for the common man and did not need a church to interpret. This was strikingly similar to arguments of the earlier John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation, to which the Roman Catholic Church WAS acutely sensitive, contributing to Galileo's arrest.The choicest morsel here is one that always baffled me: the notion that heliocentrism somehow devastated the church by removing Man from the center of creation. This shows total ignorance of Biblical Christianity which ACTUALLY says all things were made NOT for humans, but for the Son of God. Their value arises from God's delight in them. When the Enlightenment lapsed back into Greek idiom, it confused mankind being given "dominion" (leadership responsibility) with the Greek understanding: "domination". The idea that nature's reaso

Myth Busting Book

Phillip J. Sampson, Phd. in social sciences, has written a very readable book on six anti-religious myths that permeate modern society about Galileo's condemnation by the Christian church, about Darwin's evolutionary theory, about Christian religion legitmating the ruination of the environment, about missionaries oppressing indigenous peoples, religious repression of the human body, and persecution of witches. For example, Sampson shows that 70 years prior to Galileo, Copernicus had the same idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Copernicus was supported by the church, as was Galileo, and both were honored by Catholic popes. Galileo suffered a short detention and mild, but honorable, reproof from Pope Urban VIII for calling the Pope a "simpleton." Likewise Darwinism is shown to reflect "survival of the fittest" capitalism more than science. And the notion that Judeo Christian religions legitmated the exploitation of the environment is shown to be a Greek, not a religious idea. Sampson convincingly shows that such stories do not fit the historical facts and are modernistic narratives meant to repress competing religious narratives and alternative worldviews. Unfortunately Sampson doesn't fully tell us why he believes such myths persist and how they are legitimated. This is a book for those who do not want to get their history or stories from movies or television.