Buy Now!
January 8th, 2007 by 
drunkentune
I was thinking what sets Christianity, Islam, Scientology, and other proselytizing religions apart from religions such as Judaism, Taoism, Baha’i and Jainism. It isn’t that one religious style of conversion is correct, merely that there are two systems: introverted and extroverted. To someone that doesn’t believe, an occurrence this morning brought this to light in a humorous fashion: advertisements and street-evangelizing. Down the block from where I work, on my way to lunch, I ran into a team of Jews for Jesus. These past two years, Jews for Jesus have pamphleted street corners, outdoor festivals, and other events that have a high traffic of potential converts.
I passed them by as quickly as possible, as I have done numerous times before, and ate my lunch in peace. After work, a good friend (Greg) and I began talking, and his eyes lit up: ‘drunkentune, you won’t believe what I found today!’ he exclaimed. He pulled out this advertisement and handed it over…
TIME IS IT. Over 92% of people who own exercise equipment and 88% of people who own health club memberships do not exercise. A 4 minute complete workout is no longer hard to believe for all the people who since 1990 have bough our excellent Range of Motion machine (ROM). … It balances blood sugar, repairs bad backs and shoulders. Too good to be true? Get our free video and see for yourself.
The typical ROM purchaser goes through several stages:
1. Total disbelief that the ROM can do all this in only 4 minutes.
2. Rhetorical (and sometimes hostile) questioning and ridicule.
3. Reading the ROM literature and reluctantly understanding it.
4. Taking a leap of faith and renting a ROM for 30 days.
5. Being highly impressed by the results and purchasing a ROM.
6. Becoming a ROM enthusiast and trying to persuade friends.
7. Being ignored and ridiculed by the friends who think you’ve lost your mind.
8. After a year of using the ROM your friends admiring your good shape.
9. You telling them (again) that you only exercise those 4 minutes per day.
10. Those friends reluctantly renting the ROM for a 30 day trial. Then the above cycle repeats from point 5 on down.
‘11. Total physical and mental collapse.’ [An addition by Greg.]The more we tell people about the ROM the less they believe it.
This sounds too good to be true! Anthony Robbins and Fast Exercise’s aim is to sell as many of a product as possible, and there is pressure for the reader to believe that the product will cure any ailment (’It balances blood sugar, and repairs bad backs and shoulders.’) and is sold as superior and cheaper to other models. It is the car salesman pitch, and I saw that sale taking place on the street corner today. Buy now!
Perhaps the ROM is superior to other models, but there is no invitation to comparison. Instead, those that do not believe are only in the early stages of the ‘typical ROM purchaser’, and are disbelievers and hostile questioners. We must take it on faith that the ROM will work. To tell you the truth, the sales pitch is frightening: ‘The more we tell people about the ROM the less they believe it.’
Right.
And that there is one real crazy advertisement. Now, what if someone bought a ROM, evaluated it and found that the ROM did nothing as promised? What if their blood sugar was thrown out of whack and their bad back and shoulders did not improve, and instead became worse? I’d want to hear their testimony of the ROM before I spent $14,615 of my hard-earned money on a contraption when my set of barbells and a run through the park do just as good.
Thus begins the serious portion of the post – and a shameless plug to one of my favorite websites: Debunking Christianity. It is a collective blog voiced by ‘ex-ministers, and even ex-apologists for the Christian faith. [They] are now freethinkers, skeptics, agnostics, and atheists.’ They’ve got two books under their belt as well, Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist Explains, by John W. Loftus, and Leaving The Fold: Testimonies Of Former Fundamentalists, edited by Edward T. Babinski.
Posted in for fun | 
January 8th, 2007 at 12:36 am
I wonder how many people have earnestly tried Christianity to cure what ailed them and found that it made life’s symptoms worse. I’d imagine it would be something like, over 1900 years, 2 billion to 20,000 plus two books worth. I’m sorry i don’t have more time this time, i am a former atheist who was baptised at easter. I will have to polish my philosophical chops to even comment again, the level of discourse of both bearded men is scarily profound and intimidating to me, but I will try to respond in a more intellectually defensible way next time. Peace be with you both.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:38 am
rob,
No worries. We’re all men (and a few women) here, so if you have anything to say, we’re all open to hear it.
January 8th, 2007 at 8:16 am
RE drunken
“It isn’t that one religious style of conversion is correct, merely that there are two systems: introverted and extroverted.”
Yes, or - some religions are pluralistic and some are monopolistic. Monopolistic religions appear to act in a similar way to powerful corporations. Drive out competition until there is only one. Or a line from “Highlander” which always seems apt to me - “There can be ONLY one.”
Monopolistic religions do not play well together. They tolerate each other only in so much that they seem to be in a continual process of weighing up each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I’ve seen the ROM before on airplane flights and have been more than a little skeptical. How could it cost anywhere near that much to create a machine that looks like that?
I’ve learned something, however, since I now buy most of my books online. I often like books others don’t and don’t like books others do, according to user reviews. So whether a book is good or bad, or whether the ROM works or not, is hard to know, since people and their opinions are involved. Debunking Christianity is interesting, and should, in keeping with the termonology of this post, be encouraged as ‘consumer feedback’ and product review. However, I will be careful not to introduce similar content on the ‘happy customers’ in Christianity because it may be interpreted as an ‘agruement from popularity’.
I would say to evangelism, that in my personal life I do not practice it as propagandism, but as activism. I think, for the good of the world and each person, that it is right to attempt to convince my neighbors to recycle, cut fossil fuel consumption, etc. Likewise, I will attempt to help them relational and spiritually, but I will do so with every ethic of not violating who they are as a person and their freedoms. Thus, I ask and listen and do not tell unless information is requested, and I attempt to provide all positions, even that of non-faith when appropriate. It is unfortunate, however, that we have drawn public and private compartmentalizing lines throughout our lives and my environmental activism draws no offense, but my relational-spiritual activism does. In my view, that is where the greatest human suffering lies. While I advocate a strict ethic of evangelism, it is by no means a crime to tell people about what you think is a good thing and would make their lives better. Now they may not think it will make their lives better, so it is important to take every step to preserve that choice.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Thanks for your plug. Sometimes I get criticized for plugging my own book so it’s nice when someone else does. As the author I really think someone ought to step up and buy a few thousand copies and distribute it free to students at university campuses, just like Chrisian organizations do with Josh McDowell’s books. This isn’t to make money. It’s to get people to consider the whole case against Christianity in one volume.
On the DC blog I offer in piecemeal fashion some of my arguments and Christians think that by dealing with that isolated argument they can deal with the whole thrust of my book, but that doesn’t follow.
My book is one single argument, and should be taken as a whole. It’s thrust is cumulative. So I challenge people to read the whole argument and see what they think.
January 8th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I added de-bunking Christianity as a link on my blog (on blogger.com also) - since I do take interest in what any group has to say - and I think they look quite interesting - blog-wise anyways.
As for converison, let people make their choices based on what they see and learn - since we know most people do that anyways and I believe in ‘free thinking’ myself. I think if someone wants to join a certain group they should have the right to make that choice on their own - with rationale. I personally have the lost the taste for most Christian evangelism that I see out there - too pushy and intrusive. We all have a chance to meet one another or read if we so choose too - and that’s where the choice really is.
January 9th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
This is a link to a christian who is wrong about sociology and God’s Plan in almost every simgle possible way. I offer it not as an argument for anything, but as an expose as o how “intelligent” a completely wrong person can be. I came across it because we were the only two poeple to have “miscegenation” as interests on our blogspot profiles. He, because he is vehemently against miscegenation (c. 1963 a.d.) and me because I am a committed Christian Miscegenist. Not boasting, just my reality and his. You make the call! (80’s generation football reference)
http://jesuspolitics.typepad.com/jesus_politics/2005/10/a_kinist_nation.html
Truth seems to require a monopoly to me. If it is incomplete or unknowable is a question for philosophers (which drunkentune an soulster are whether they like it or not), but I think an important one. I don’t pretend to know everything as a believer, but yet that does not lead me to reject all things as unknowable (i’m still not convinced that that is a word) or hold to certain precepts. One precept I held to as a theist, before believing in Christ: reality is not an illusion. Atheists don’t believe that this is the case either. It is serious and demonstrably meaningful. (I’m not sure that I spelled demonstrably right either)
January 10th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I use the ROM every day, and I can now proudly say that I lost 20 lbs, began reading the Torah, believe in Jesus as divine savior, and am engaged to a beautiful Jewish girl. Shalom!
January 10th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Twenty pounds? You’ve sold me!
ROM, here I come!