If you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Stone Mountain, Georgia, you risk running into the lunatic hubris of Mark Cahill. Cahill is an evangelist known for books like One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven and One Heartbeat Away, manuals for how to harass your surroundings with Taliban-style fundamentalist talking points. A favorite tactic of Cahill’s is apparently stuffing evangelism tracts inside soda pop cartons when you visit the local grocery store, but he also recommends using “malls, music and art festivals, beaches, sporting events, and bar sections of towns”. His books contain materials intended to convince otherwise abysmally ignorant people of the existence and worldly influence of angels and demons, as well as the Satanic dangers of Buddhists, fornicators, pot smokers and the theory of evolution. Accordingly, Cahill is a fierce opponent of … schools, including Christian schools: “We have heard of Christian schools teaching all kinds of unbiblical information from evolution being true to ‘old earth’; that the prophecies in the Bible were written down after they occurred,” says Cahill, so “the real danger for students as they head to school lies in whether their guard is down, and whether they have been taught to be critical thinkers.” Which means, it seems, that in order to protect fundamentalism, students shoud avoid critical thinking like the plague. His website also contains a long list of anecdotes about speaking with atheists and “evolutionists” that are rather obviously ridiculously false, and recommendations for how creationists can challenge teachers when it comes to evolution (straight from AiG), including “were you there?”
Diagnosis: Oh, ye liars for Jesus, and Cahill is even more blatant about his use of this strategy than most. He seems to have a bit of influence, but it is very, very doubtful that he’s ever convinced anyone not already on the side of unreason.