We’ve all been hoodwinked at one time or another, whether by getting tricked instead of treated on Halloween, by a salesperson who misrepresented a product in way we wanted to hear, or by a politician who employed persuasive promises that weren’t so convincing after he/she was elected. It’s embarrassing to admit it (am I really about to spill the beans?), but one such oopsy for me was being convinced into buying Fast-Abs.
Oh the shame (at least it occurred in the days before I could call myself a doctor!). Fast-Abs is a bottle of electrically conductive gel and a flexible metal plate connected to a battery. You put the gel on your potential abs (more like one ab for me), put the plate on the gel, flip the switch, and supposedly build muscle by the effortless involuntary contractions that result. To be fair, Fast-Abs did produce some pretty gut-wrenching crunches, and passively contracting muscle is still contracting muscle. But I should have known by the myriad encouragements to regularly workout in the Fast-Abs manual that it was not going to be Fast-Abs giving me Fast-Abs. That and my abs are still, well, potential.
I fell prey to a misrepresentative assertion, and I’m not alone. We all get fooled into believing a lot of things through bad arguments, so when I stumbled across this free, online, engagingly illustrated book of bad arguments, I thought it’d be entertaining to share. In writing Healing Hereafter, my goal was to make my assertions in the most honest, objective, and helpful ways, and I expressly avoided these “techniques” used to by many to fool you. When addressing difficult questions of faith, it’s easy to make one’s position more convincing or popular-but not more valid-by leaving out the counterarguments and ignoring contradicting biblical evidence, hoping the audience doesn’t notice (Click to tweet). Sadly, this is a common practice for many pastors and professors. The senior pastor at my former church even encouraged me to do exactly that while I was editing Healing Hereafter, so I would be more persuasive. I told him I’d rather be transparent with my readers and trust them to be able to form their own conclusions, once all the information is presented.
The book series Healing Hereafter aims to treat you with evidence, not trick you with evasion. And just like Halloween candy, it’s free and instantly accessible…just click here! Have a happy, healing weekend!
