Do you think Science and Religion can co-exist in a society?

[Fake Messiah]

I'm curious, if you consider Bart Erhman, or a number of other atheist scholars, who don't hold a high regard for the "mythers" as liars in this regard as well?"

First of all it's Ehrman. Ehrman is apparently an agnostic not an atheist. Ehrman did not provide the best defense of historicity, and the best critique of bad mythicism in his 2012 "Did Jesus Exist?" but in recent books "How Jesus Became God" and "Jesus Before the Gospels", he recognizes that much of what the field relies on as established facts aren't so established after all, and corrects some of the mistakes he made in DJE. in HJBG, Ehrman increasingly turns to the same arguments as mythicists. He acknowledges that the earliest believers "knew" Jesus was raised from the dead; not because (as apologists argue) no one would make such a claim unless they knew the tomb was empty, but because they had visions of Jesus from heaven. Ehrman also now sees that ancient Judaism was not an example of monolithic groupthink, but just as rife with alternate opinions and heresies as anything in Christianity.

On a side note, I find it interesting, that the principles and methods proclaimed by these "scholars", often don't follow into any other areas of historical studies and research. Don't you?

I don't find it interesting I find it spineless. The truth is that theological and Biblical universities are in the blatant violation of basic principles of scholarship, they're touting academic freedom while covertly quashing it, abusing tenure – especially to score financial donations. They don't act as scholars but bullies. Let me give you few examples:

Thomas L. Thompson made archaeological proof against existence of biblical patriarchs during 1970s and 1980s. Bringing them in Catholic Theological faculty in Tübingen he immediately got in trouble and from none other then Joseph Ratzinger himself. For decades Thompson was barred from holding any teaching position. He was alienated from friends and colleagues in the Catholic faculty with whom he had worked and shared his life with for years. He was publicly attacked at Catholic seminars and was not allowed to defend his position. Number of articles were criticizing and rejecting his work, competence and integrity. No university in the world would employ him so he worked odd jobs like floor wiper, janitor, house painter etc.

Mike Licona a well-known Christian apologist in his 2010 book, "The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach", briefly questioned the historical reality of incident that Jewish saints arose from the dead. Such blasphemy triggered a paroxysm of outrage from all sort of religious figures so much so that Licona resigned from both as a research professor at Southern Evangelical Seminary and as the apologetics coordinator for the North American Mission Board.

Peter Enns set off a two-year inquisition at Westminster Theological Seminary for saying that Bible is similar to other ancient texts, that there are conflicting theologies in OT and that NT authors plagiarized from OT. He was fired.

Few years ago Christopher Rollston, professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Tennessee's Emmanuel Christian Seminary, wrote an online article for the Huffington Post criticizing the marginalization of women in the Bible. He was fired from the college although he was a tenured professor.


Dr. Bruce Waltke was preeminent Old Testament scholar until he said that biological evolution could be true which made evangelical employers at the Reformed Theological Seminary to go ballistic. He was pressured to post a clarification where he dutifully reaffirmed his support for creationists and his belief that Adam and Eve were real and then was fired from Reformed Theological Seminary.

There are many more like few years ago when Fr Tom Brodie has been removed from his post after claiming Jesus never existed.
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