Christians will lie, spread misinformation and exaggerate for Christ, even unwittingly

In 2004, there was an Internet email hoax about bones of giants being dug up on an archaeological site. It was quickly proven a hoax. However, in 2013, I found that same hoax appearing in my inbox from a Christian who'd in turn sent it to all his Christian friends, thrilled that proof had been found of giants, thus confirming bible myths about Goliath and the Philistines.

I advised everyone on the email list it was a hoax, but I still got emails from a Christian who was unwilling to entertain the fact it might be a fraud. He insisted we should not be so sceptical because there is so much anti-Christian feeling out there, people are desperate to discredit such stories.

Shouldn’t there be scepticism by default? Shouldn’t we disbelieve outrageous claims until proven true? That would seem to be the sensible way of looking at it.

These Christians, if they'd made even a slight effort could have done a Google search and seen that every website, even Christian websites acknowledged it as a hoax. I had to gather this proof for them and even show a link to the Photoshop competition where some of the photographs were stolen. It showed me just how gullible many Christians are and how they are willing to believe without even questioning the validity of claims. It's wilful ignorance!  Some are obviously even okay about completely misleading people, just to have people believe the bible.

My dad was for all intents and purposes a very honest man. What you see is what you get, but later on I started to see some dishonesty coming in when it came to his Christian beliefs. He was very adamant that Evolution was a lie of the devil and that the earth was only about 7000 years old. He used to scoff at the TV when during a nature documentary, a presenter would talk about "millions of years ago".

After I lost my faith I challenged him on some of his claims. One such claim, that was common of his was that evolutionists believed that men came from monkeys.

I refuted it this time around. “No, Dad, that is not the case. Evolution teaches that we had a common ancestor. Not that we came from monkeys.”

Dad gave an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, I know, but evolution is just a theory.”

‘No, it’s not just a theory. A scientific theory is a framework which contains all the facts known about something, put together so that you can examine the evidence for yourself. We don’t call the Theory of Gravity, just a theory, do we?”

Another embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh yeah... I know that… it’s just that… - moves onto something else.”

This conversation troubles me, because it shows that my Dad knew full well he was giving fallacious arguments, but he gave them anyway. Why? The only answer I can come up with was that he figured those arguments would be good enough for me… and probably other Christians too. He wanted to convince me that evolution was a load of nonsense. So it didn’t matter to him that he was giving nonsense arguments himself. Arguments he knew had been soundly debunked.

Is this typical of Christians? I believe it is. They really want you to believe their fantasies and it’s not because they are liars. It’s because they care about your soul. Nevertheless, the problem is obvious. Christians may be willing to tell you anything to get you to believe.

For more on my experiences with lying Christians see:

Liars for Christ

Reason 47: The son of God applied faulty reasoning

Reason 49: People have perfectly good reasons why they don’t believe

Back to the list