Theists, Don’t Fall For This Man’s Scam

You never know what you’re gonna get when you click a link from someone trying to convert you to their ancient mystical belief system. But I did that. I did just that… and I have barely had time to digest what I saw.

Apparently, there is now a course that theists can purchase to learn how to deal with the clever questions atheists ask. Yes. Yet, another way that religious leaders are prying hard-earned dollars out of the hands of good, decent believers.

How did you find this out Godless Mom?

A believer emailed me a link earlier this morning. I clicked it. Turns out, it was a sponsored post on Tim Challies’ blog. Yes. A sponsored post. Dr. Craig Biehl paid Tim to post a pre-written blog post on his website that represents Mr. Challies as a writer, author and man of faith.

How… weak.

I knew what would follow was nothing more than a ruse to part theists with their dolla dolla bills, y'all.

But I read it anyway.

Why Godless Mom?

Because, as I have mentioned many times before, I am a sucker for punishment. I am a glutton for pain… a masochist who performs a sort of mental self-flagellation via her reading material. I am an atheist… who reads theist apologetics from the bowels of the Creation Museum and laughs it off.

Sigh. Let’s tear this scam a new one.

First, there was The Hook.

Have you ever been told, “you have faith but I trust reason and science”? Does the suggestion that you believe fairy tales while unbelievers stand on facts and solid intellectual ground bother you? Can you easily answer the claim and prepare your children to answer this and the many other sophisticated arguments of unbelief?

Perfect. Hit them where they are weak. Pinpoint the frustrated ones; the moms whose sons refuse to attend church; the evangelical daddies who can’t seem to convince their teen daughters to go to a purity ball. Find the apologist YouTubers who struggle with putting together a coherent argument for belief, or the dim-witted Facebookers who are tired of being told that typing “Amen” will not fill your bank account with money. Target the Twitter users who say things like:

or

Reach into their minds and appeal to their frustrations. Bring them to the surface, by asking, like a Vince Offer Infomercial,

Are you tired of not having the answers? 

You’re going to love his nuts.

Why, yes. Yes, Dr. Craig. We are tired of not knowing how to respond to atheists' questions. 

The hook is in. Embedded in the fleshy cheek of desperate faith, tugging on godly heartstrings like a tuna at the end of a fishing line.

Now, The Teaser. Could there possibly be a solution?

What if you could easily see that all such arguments are built on unreasonable blind faith, that your trust in the Word of the Creator and Sustainer of all things is reasonable and supported by every known fact in the universe? What if you could increase your joy, comfort, and faith in Christ and Scripture in the face of the most sophisticated attacks of unbelief? And, what if you could do this all without reading countless technical books? Well, you can.

Can it be true? No piles of technical books? Tell me more!

Using simple language and illustrations, the Unbreakable Faith course and companion books God the Reason and The Box explore the amazing nature and implications of the infinite excellence of God’s perfections, exposing the unreasonable blind faith of unbelief while boosting your knowledge and love of God.

Thud. The Sales Pitch. All your frustrations gone with the drop of a couple Benjamins! That’s all! Not only is there no need to read super hard books, but this course is in simple language! Literally, the only skill required to take this course and “immunize” yourself against the “sophisticated arguments of unbelief” is makin' it rain!

I can drop billz! I can do this!

But wait… can we have a teaser first? I was saving those hundos for Bible camp.

All people reason by faith in an ultimate authority by which they interpret God and the universe. Atheists trust their own ability to interpret the world and answer ultimate questions about God and reality, while Christians trust God’s explanation of such things.

Actually, atheists trust the process of collecting and interpreting empirical data to answer their questions. Most of us call that science. We don’t just come up with random answers in our heads based on a tingle in our spleen.

Atheists reason by faith in themselves while believers reason by faith in God.  Both use reason and both have faith.

Perhaps if you’d used reason by evidence and observation (how most atheists actually do it), you’d have known this is not the case.

Faith is defined as:

confidence or trust in a person or thing or a belief not based on proof. It may also refer to a particular system of religious belief.

Most atheists value evidence or proof. Atheists also, by definition, lack religious belief. So, when you say that atheists have faith, I am quite sure you mean the exact opposite. I do not have faith in gravity. I have witnessed enough objects of mass fall towards earth in my lifetime to be able to predict accurately that if I knock this pen off my desk, it’ll go down rather than up. I don’t believe; I know there is a gravitational force on our planet. This is how we reason… based on evidence.

If my atheist neighbor can’t know the contents of my garage without having a look, he can’t be trusted to explain the nature of an infinite God and His universe. God must tell us such things.

The atheist’s position: I refuse to believe there is anything in particular in your garage until we find a way to open it or look inside and determine its contents empirically.

The theist’s position: We must not find a way to look inside the garage and determine what is inside because this 2000-year-old book that has endured countless translations, thousands of versions and was written about events nearly a hundred years after they happened, has already told us what is in there. Do not question it.

And complete knowledge of the universe and beyond, or the omniscience of the God the atheist denies, is required to know that God does not exist.

Which is why most atheists are honest enough to admit that there is no way to know if a God exists or not. However, until there is enough evidence for us to believe and change our lives to live by his doctrine, we will remain unbelievers.

Believers trust the God who has personally and clearly explained His nature and works, including the ultimate nature of the universe He created and upholds. Atheists trust their opinions.

Again, we trust evidence, on which most of us base our opinions.

Speculation about God, as well as science, would be impossible in a random chance universe—no laws, language, truth, knowledge, logic, experiment, or scientist would be possible.

How are you so certain of this, Dr. Craig? Your certainty is unsettling. I prefer to live like an atheist, without certainty in much of anything and open to have my mind changed by… you guessed it!

Evidence.

And now, The Freebie:

To further your love and knowledge of God’s excellence, and increase your joy, comfort, and faith in Christ and Scripture, I would like to offer you a free eBook copy of The Box as my gift to you.

Yeah. No thanks, Dr. Craig. You’re trying to get good, hard working theists to part with their cash, so that they can learn from you, someone who clearly does not understand what an atheist is, how to argue with atheists. You’re trying to take money from your fellow Christians and in return, you will offer them a big ol’ pride parade of strawmen. You are ripping them off, Dr. Craig, and I think you know it.

Believers trust the One who created, sustains, and knows all things… whose moral law is written on every heart…

If God’s moral law makes room for this sort of scam, Dr., is it really morality? Or is it just a straight-up lack of any moral fibre whatsoever? It seems to me, and go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong, that ripping people off is in direct violation of what most people would deem morally good. If this is the morality the Bible is selling you, Dr. Craig, I’m afraid you’re being duped… and now you’re trying to dupe others by selling your “expertise” in something you clearly know nothing about.

I beg that you will reconsider robbing your fellow believers. If you refuse, I hope theists understand: this man knows not what an atheist is. Based on these few paragraphs alone, that was overwhelmingly apparent. I’ve been an atheist for nearing 40 years and I can definitively tell you, what he has written about atheists here, does not apply to me, nor to any of the atheists I have ever spoken to, ever.

This. Is. A. Scam.

If you like what I do here and want to support my work, you can chip in here or become a member here.

#scam