Last week, I wrote about a pastor named Glyn Barrett of the !Audacious Church in Manchester, England. He told a story about how he was invited to debate an atheist on the topic “There is no God.” In his version, he outsmarted his opponent by using an old apologetic argument: Atheists don’t know everything, therefore it makes sense to believe in God.

Needless to say, it was a dubious story from the start. Not only did Barrett not tell us where he debated (which is odd), one atheist group in the city where the debate supposedly took place said it never happened. The video was also taken down from Facebook, despite accumulating millions of views. And Barrett hasn’t said anything about the video since.

Now I find out this same story — with only minor details switched out — was told several years ago by Pastor Mark Finley:

It’s amazing how these Christians can have debates in which they outsmart everybody yet there’s never any proof of the exchange…

I’m guessing Finley isn’t the first pastor to tell this story either. Maybe it happened once, but I doubt it’s happened multiple times in a very similar way.

How many other pastors have used this story in a sermon? In other words, how many pastors have told this particular lie to their congregations?

Can you find video of them doing it?

(via Xplore with James Peter)



