Excerpts From the Preface:
Some time after I took a religious course in a university affiliated with a liberal Christian denomination I came to a personal faith in Jesus Christ. I remember very well many of the "intellectual problems" identified in that religion course as obstacles to such a commitment. And while the business of living detained me for quite a while, looking for solutions to those "problems" eventually led me to more than thirty years of study, first independently and then under the influence of several university courses.
The specific questions raised in that religion course were not that difficult to unravel. However, my curiosity always led to a little more reading just to tie up the new loose ends that my reading had revealed to me.... Two academic disciplines, history of religions and anthropology, agree that mythology that treats origins --- of man, of his environment, of his society --- often called cosmologies, are important as information in gaining an understanding of the particular society itself....
Perhaps the two things I learned from the efforts described above were these: one, there is no end to what might be learned or at least read and two, presuppositions are very important in determining what one will discover in such study....
Be warned: I am an evangelical Christian, but I am not claiming to speak for evangelical Christians. Nor am I attempting to somehow make my hypothesis one that will be acceptable to to all evangelicals...
Presuppositions determine more than what one is looking for. They also help one to recognize what he is looking for when it presents itself. I freely admit that my presuppositions have guided me through this journey. At the heart of it, this is why my understanding of the history of the development of the world's religions is radically different from what one finds in the text books of academia. This being said, the data that I have used is almost totally the result of their efforts. Not only that, they have also provided statements and observations along with that data that encouraged me and helped me over obstacles that would have otherwise might have stopped me...
In spite of its objective reputation, academia has its own presuppositions. Academics pursue those subjects that are of interest to them and ignore those subjects that are not. Thus, hypotheses not easily comprehended within their presuppositions do not even arise to be considered. It is for this reason that I consider it worthwhile to offer an interpretation of some of the data concerning religious phenomenon with presuppositions that are not materialistic, humanistic, or evolutionary. However, at the end of this study I do not claim that I have proved God revealed himself to mankind before people spread around the globe. I hope that my study does allow my readers to believe, if they so choose, that 1) at one time all of mankind did know God, and 2) mankind has always been ambivalent in attitude toward God.
I have kept the book short. But it still covers a lot of unfamiliar territory. I certainly have not put together all the data that could be used to make my points.
