The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple -- simple enough to be outlined in a few pages. It is a message from the Bible about God and his son, Jesus. It is about life and death, and the choice that we all face.
And it all starts with a loving creator God...
Fallacy #1 is obvious, this is a false dilemma. Just ask a Muslim, or Mormon, or Buddhist if the two ways presented by Matthias Media, and Christians generally, are the only two ways. So for someone to believe this, to fall for the false dilemma, they basically have to already believe quite a lot of specifically Christian theology. So there's good old circular reasoning too.
In my google search, I went to "images" and one of them was totally brilliant in it's lack of self-awareness and irony. It had two little pictures, for living my way or God's way, and the text on the side says "Select by tapping one of the pictures. Or perhaps you feel you need more information before you can decide." It's hard not to laugh. More information? No kidding someone ought to ask for more information! Reason and evidence would be great. I'd love to know how many would tap "my way" just to see what judgmental Bible verse they have to scare you with. It's never okay to present two options as if they are the only two options when they're not. Why isn't there a picture to tap for "I'm not convinced you've met the burden of proof a God exists, let alone your specific God"?
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Fallacy #2 is closely related. The fallacy of presumption. Even within the dichotomy presented, which shouldn't be a dichotomy, there's obfuscation. The options are merely 1.) live my way - rejecting God, waving my rebellious fist in his face! or 2.) live God's way. So even when you don't live God's way, it's still framed as believing God exists but not wanting God to "control our lives". That's a loaded question.
The whole Two Ways to Live could be captured in the question, "have you rebelled against God?" This is like the question often used to illustrate the fallacy, "have you stopped beating your wife?" It's a yes / no question, providing only two options. The question presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as presupposing that you have a wife. If you have no wife, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded. The Two Ways to Live presentation is likewise a loaded question for presupposing a god exists, that it's the Christian god, and that you believe in it. Whether the unlucky person evangelized by 2WTL chooses "my way" or "God's way", implicit in either answer is belief in God and the accuracy and reliability of the Bible. Those things need to be proved first.
Also look at the glaring assumption of a "loving creator God". This is intellectual dishonesty at it's worst. The creation story in Genesis 1 is just describing the various components on the commonly held, not divinely revealed, "snow globe" cosmology. The waters above and the waters below? The firmament? The stars in the firmament? The fact a few days passed before the sun was created? There are unmissable clues that this isn't describing reality. Two Ways to Live falls at the first hurdle with the assumptions it makes. There's nothing special about Genesis 1 among the hundreds of creation myths we know about. Maybe the loving creator god is Aztec? Their myth is no worse. The Jewish view of the cosmology is no different from other cultures. There's no sign it's divinely inspired. Christians need firmer foundations for an evangelizing presentation that wants to rearrange someone else's life.
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Some false dilemmas are not as problematic. But this one is. In some churches, Christians are learning this Two Ways to Live by rote as an evangelizing tool. Somewhere, someone will be put on the spot with the expectation they'll change their whole life (because why would you choose eternal damnation?). This appalls me. Christianity ought to love honesty, but it doesn't. Christians: be ashamed of evangelizing with Two Ways to Live, and stay away from intellectual dishonesty in general. Pretty please.
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