I thought I would take the time to write an article that deals with the absurd statements that Michael Gungor has uttered and wrote. God willing, perhaps Michael will come across this blog and read my responses and thus educate himself by eliminating the ignorance he accumulated from his time in university. Michael Gungor is neither a Bible scholar nor a scientist, and yet he speaks and writes as
though he knows more than people who have spent their lives studying
the inerrancy of Scripture. If Michael were in the least bit like the Bereans in Scripture, when he was in university he would have been able to study the subject thoroughly and be able to support what he was taught growing up. But, where ignorance is bliss, he blindly assumed that what the church taught was in error and that the "science" he was taught was accurate and true. Oh, how foolishness abounds.
Do I believe that God literally drowned every living creature 5,000 years ago in a global flood except the ones who were living in a big boat? No, I don’t.
Why don’t I?
Because of science and rational thought.1
First, Michael Gungor clearly has a poor concept of what "science" is, because the evidence of science informs us that there was indeed a global flood, as I addressed here, and Scripture gives us the details of that event. Second, Michael Gungor apparently has no clue what rational thought looks like. He is making a fallacious statement with which he has no credibility to back up. He is not a scientist nor is he a biblical scholar. His statements are made in complete ignorance to the facts of both fields of study.
We can prove that there are no “corners” of a flat earth (like some other pre-scientific writers in the Bible seemed to think). We can prove through the fossil record that the diversity of life gradually arose over millions of years and that there was never a global flood that made everything go extinct except for a single pair of every animal species 5,000 years ago. With archeology, DNA evidence, and common sense, we can prove that all human beings did not come from two individuals 6,000 years ago.2
Here, Michael Gungor puts on full display the extent of his ignorance. If ignorance is bliss, Michael Gungor is in paradise. When the Bible, or any other piece of literature, refers to "the four corners of the Earth," no one in their right might reads that and understands it to be speaking of a flat square. To make such a statement is incredulous, ridiculous, and absurd. Even a grade-school child in geography class can tell you that the Earth consists of four hemispheres: Northern, Southern, Western, and Eastern. The equator divides the Earth into Northern and Southern hemispheres. The Prime Meridian and the International Date Line divide the Earth into Western and Eastern hemispheres. Ergo, "the four corners of the Earth." Apparently Michael Gungor does not know as much as a grade-school child does. How embarrassing!
Michael Gungor also displays his complete ignorance of science by referring to the "fossil record." First of all, the fossils we have do not prove that life gradually arose over "millions" (or even "billions") of years. That statement is utter nonsense. All fossils prove is that these animals once lived and are now dead. Second, as any paleontologist will admit and tell you, the "fossil record" is missing all the supposed intermediary fossils that would back up the bogus claims of Evolution. Here are just some of the many quotations I could provide:
“I will lay it on the line, there is not one such [transitional] fossil for which one might make a watertight argument.” –Dr. Colin Patterson
“Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation which is unthinkable.” –Sir. Arthur Keith
“Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing. I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation. One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.” –George Wald
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going.” –Francis Crick
“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time.” –David Raup
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of palaeontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” –Stephen J. Gould
The simple fact is, Evolution is not science. It is a fairy tale not based on empirical evidence. It is philosophy and it is religion, but it is not science. Not only does Michael Gungor have no sweet clue what common sense is or looks like, but it is blatantly obvious that he has never done a single shred of homework before making his asinine statements. DNA evidence fully supports the fact that we are descended from two ancient individuals:
Archaeology, along with history and science, has verified the accuracy of the details of the Bible repeatedly throughout history. Again, if Michael Gungor had done the least bit of research in order to shed his blatant ignorance, he would know and understand this. There is no excuse for making such blatantly incorrect statements.Despite what the classroom textbooks say, in a cover article from Newsweek 1988 entitled “The Search for Adam and Eve,” palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “It makes us realize that all human beings, despite differences in external appearances, are really members of a single entity that’s had a very recent origin in one place. There is a kind of biological brotherhood that’s much more profound than we ever realized.” [Emphasis mine.] According to the article, scientists “…trained in molecular biology … looked at an international assortment of genes and picked up a trail of DNA that led them to a single woman from whom we all descended.” [Emphasis mine.] … “There weren’t even telltale distinctions between races.” Duh! That’s because there is only one race. The human race. Then, in 1995, Time Magazine had a brief article saying there was scientific evidence that “…there was an ancestral ‘Adam,’ whose genetic material on the chromosome is common to every man now on earth.” [Emphasis mine.] Again, duh! Geneticists have proven the Bible accurate and reliable once again, proving the fact that there was an Adam and an Eve and that we are all descended from them.
I would be very surprised to find a single respected and educated theologian or biblical scholar that believes that one MUST read Noah’s flood completely literally down to the last detail to be ‘orthodox.’ That’s crazy!3
“NO REASONABLE PERSON takes the entire Bible completely literally” (Emphasis Gungor’s).4
Apparently Michael Gungor has been living under a rock his entire life in order to make such asinine statements as these. There are hundreds of theologians and biblical scholars who would oppose Michael's foolishness. He is 34 years old and he has never heard of one?!? That alone would make me question his professed Christianity. But what really makes me question his profession of faith is the upcoming nonsense he has to say about Jesus.
Michael Gungor appeared on The Liturgists Podcast where he made even more outlandish statements. This first statement informs us when and where he gave up scriptural authority for the nonsense he now believes:
In college, I came up against some of the science, you know, showing the age of the earth, showing evolutionary principles, and it really kind of rocked me a little bit . . . I was raised in Christian school and I learned in my Christian school textbooks how carbon dating was flawed and the scientists of the world—the more mainstream scientists—were all very biased and were trying to sway the science toward atheism because they didn’t want to believe the Bible. . . . And then when I got into college and had to cite my work for my papers, and I was trying to argue that against my professors, I kept seeing that my sources were the biased ones . . . and that created a lot of tension for me.
When asked what he thinks of the claim that Jesus spoke of Moses’ writings as
though they were historical fact, so that to reject any of Moses’ words
as allegorical is to reject the divinity of Christ, Michael Gungor responded with this alarming nonsense:
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions based in a perspective that was handed to you from our culture, and the way we think in the modern world is very different than how people thought in the pre-modern world. To just see a few words that somebody said, that Jesus said, about Noah, and to assume that you can get into Jesus’s mind and know exactly how he thought about the whole situation, and how He considered history versus myth versus whatever—how do you know? And even if He was wrong, even if He did believe that Noah was a historical person, or Adam was a historical person, and ended up being wrong, I don’t understand how that even would deny the divinity of Christ. . . . The point is it wouldn’t freak me out if He was wrong about it, in His human side. But I still don’t see the issue. If Noah and Adam were mythical ideas, the point of what Jesus was saying still applies to me. . . . It has very little do, in my perspective, with Jesus trying to lay out a history of world to a historical-minded people. . . . Even if Jesus knew that Noah and Adam were mythical, but knew He was talking to people who thought they were real, that’s another possibility. [Emphases mine.]
Michael Gungor introduces two problems that make me seriously question the genuineness of his profession of faith. First, if Jesus were wrong, then He is not God. Jesus was fully God and fully man. As a man, there are some things He chose not to know (like His return). However, that does not mean He would defend wrong ideas or beliefs or that He could be wrong about things. If Jesus were wrong about the creation, Adam and Eve, and Noah and the flood, what other things was He wrong about? Salvation? Heaven and hell? Where do you draw the line? Michael Gungor has some issues he needs to sort out. Second, if Jesus knew Adam and Noah were only mythical figures but went along with them because of His culture and what His people believed, that makes Him out to be a conformist, a liar, and a deceiver. Just what sort of Jesus does Michael Gungor believe in?!? Clearly his Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible!
Furthermore, how can Michael claim that perhaps Jesus was merely conforming to the beliefs of the people of His culture even though He knew they were wrong when all four gospels bury us with evidence to the contrary? Jesus was considered a trouble maker, a rebel, because He frequently stood against the beliefs and practices of the people of His culture. Has Michael Gungor ever read the Bible? Jesus was a non-conformist. He was not afraid to stand up and tell it like it is. Why do you think they wanted to kill Him on so many occasions?
Jesus and His disciples accepted creation, Adam and Eve, and Noah and the flood as historical facts and treated them as absolutely true:
"And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it shall be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all." (Luke 17:26–27)
"By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith." (Hebrews 11:7)
"For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression." (1 Timothy 2:13-14)
Jesus' reference to and citation of creation, Adam and Eve, and Noah and the flood put His stamp of authority on the credibility of these people and events. To claim that Jesus was either wrong or that He deliberately deceived people when He knew better is to turn Jesus into a mockery and raise questions as to the Jesus you worship. Michael Gungor's statements make one thing crystal clear—the Jesus he worships is not the Jesus revealed to us in the Bible!
In an introduction to commentary on Genesis published in 1887, Franz Delitzsch made it clear that the Bible, as the literature of a divine revelation, cannot be permitted to be charged with a lack of veracity or to be robbed of its historic basis. Michael Gungor would do well to learn this.
In an introduction to commentary on Genesis published in 1887, Franz Delitzsch made it clear that the Bible, as the literature of a divine revelation, cannot be permitted to be charged with a lack of veracity or to be robbed of its historic basis. Michael Gungor would do well to learn this.
1 Michael Gungor, I'm With You.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.