The Secret Battle Of Ideas About GodSample

Step 2: Isolate

After identifying bad ideas, we have to look at how they spread so we can stop them. Airline agents sometimes ask a passenger, “Has anyone you don’t know given you anything to carry aboard this aircraft?” I always say no, but it doesn’t occur to me that I could in fact be hosting millions of lethal pathogens. We need to look at patterns of how symptoms break out, not just individual cases, because most people carrying viruses don’t display symptoms themselves. They’re not sick in any noticeable way, but they make others sick with every touch.

The same is true of the ways bad ideas are spread. They hitch rides on someone or something that otherwise seems completely harmless. Just as viruses trick the body because they’re coated with proteins, something the body finds beneficial, bad ideas attempt to make themselves believable by coating lies in bits of truth. For example:

- “The physical world is all we can see; therefore, anything spiritual is merely a creation of the human imagination.”
- “Some rich people are greedy; therefore, we are justified in confiscating wealth.”
- “Often, religious people lie; therefore, no religious message should be believed.”
- “Forces are at work beyond what we can see; therefore, God must be a force, not a person.”
- “People rebel against God; therefore, they should be forced to submit.”

Bad ideas masquerade as something good—or at least harmless. Otherwise, they wouldn’t spread. You probably wouldn’t be tricked by an idea that explicitly promotes fear, disappointment, despair, or defeat.

Because they give some truth but not the whole truth, bad ideas are like counterfeits. Once when I was traveling in a large city overseas, a man sidled up to me and asked, “Hey, would you like a real fake Rolex?” I don’t think he understood the nuance. A real fake is fake—fake fake is a double negative, which means it is real. Plainly, his watches were not real; they were just very cleverly constructed counterfeits.

Counterfeit worldviews look and sound like the real thing. Their labels say they are genuine. But when you buy them, you don’t get what you paid for.