By PZ MYERS - PHARYNGULA
Added: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:37:52 UTC

Franklin Graham has said something stupid again. He has some peculiar ideas about inheritance.

I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name. Now it's obvious that the president has renounced the prophet Mohammed and he has renounced Islam and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That's what he says he has done, I cannot say that he hasn't. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said.

So now religion is heritable factor, with a strange pattern of assortment where Islam is male and Judaism is female? That's got me wondering about a cross between a Muslim man and a Jewish woman — what would the child be? Or how about a Muslim woman and a Jewish man — is that how we breed atheists? Crazy stuff.

You might be wondering how Christianity is inherited. That's an exception: you become Christian by conscious choice, not by birth…

Well, you know, you can be born a Muslim, you can be born a Jew, but you can't be born a Christian. The only way you can become a Christian is by confessing your sins to God, asking his forgiveness, and by receiving Jesus Christ by faith into your heart, that Christ died for your sins, shed his blood on Calvary's Cross, and that God raised him to life. If you're willing to accept that and believe that, and let Jesus Christ be the lord of your life, God will forgive your sins, he will heal your heart, and that's the only way you can become a Christian. And so if the President has done that, then I would say he's a Christian, if that's what he has done.

…says Franklin, son of Billy, the well-known evangelical preacher.

Think, though, about Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad Ali — I guess they acquired their Muslim faith, not by conscious decision, but by the seed passed on to them by their Christian fathers.

Oops.
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