As vicious as the dog looks in the above image, she was actually very friendly. This photo is one in a string of photos taken at the same time. She is barking, but not aggressively. Rather, I was holding her tennis ball and told her to sit, but because she was never particularly intelligent, she thought I meant "say please", so she kept barking. Other photos in the series show her sitting in the grass looking very sweet, and as you will see in the two other photos attached to this article, she really was quite adorable.
You may think you are difficult to fool, and perhaps in most cases you are, but photos like the above make it relatively easy to lie, and even get away with that lie. In political and religious discussions, this sort of thing happens very often. You are shown only one piece of information, but critical information is also left out. It is very common, for example, to cite a single, out of context Bible verse which, on its own, may sound really bad, but with added context, is really no problem at all.
One of my go-to examples is Sam Harris' attempt to show that Christianity is violent by quoting Luke 19:27: "But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.’" This is even more effective in red letter Bibles, because the verse is in red letters. In other words, these words came right out of Jesus' mouth. Right now, Christianity looks as violent as my dog does in the header image. But then we go back to verse 11: "Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately." (Emphasis mine).
Suddenly, you see the flaw. Added information disarms the objection. No, Jesus isn't commanding His disciples to kill His enemies in front of Him. Jesus is symbolically describing the final judgement that will take place at His second coming. Now, atheists will claim this is still violent, but there are only two ways to interpret this verse. The first is that Christianity is false. If this is the case, Jesus is never coming back, and so there will never be a command to man or to angels to kill those who rebelled against Him. Thus, Christianity is, and always will be, a peaceful religion.
Alternatively, Christianity is true. If this is the case (spoiler alert: it is), what are you waiting for? It's very easy to avoid being condemned. You don't have to receive the death penalty for your sins because the very same God against whom you are rebelling received it on your behalf. Now, should you choose to remain in your sins, you will receive the punishment for them, and you will have no one to blame but yourself. But this isn't what Jesus wants for you, so rather than complaining about what Jesus will do to you if you refuse to repent, try repenting and make sure you never have to face that judgement.
Luke 19:27 is just one misquoted verse that demonstrates just how easy it is to give a false impression of Christianity. The scarier part of this is that Sam Harris retained his popularity long after making this embarrassing blunder. There are two possibilities here. The first is that Sam Harris is unbelievably sloppy, lacking any fact checking abilities what so ever. As I showed, it takes as much effort as reading a few extra verses (not even enough to fill a whole page) to put that particular verse in context. Yet, Harris presented the misquote as an argument anyway. So he doesn't really care much about fact checking, he just presents any argument he thinks will work. The alternative is far more sinister: Sam Harris is not sloppy, he knew he was presenting a bad argument, but dishonestly chose to present it anyway, believing, or at the very least hoping he would not be taken to task.
Both possibilities should have destroyed Sam Harris' credibility the moment he presented such an abysmal argument. Whether sloppy or dishonest, Sam Harris proved himself to be an unreliable source. But worryingly, he retained his popularity. He wasn't taken to task, at least by his followers, which shows just how easy it is to fool his fans. The reason popular atheists are so comfortable presenting propaganda is because it works. The sloppy ones don't get less sloppy because they are never called out for being sloppy. The dishonest ones don't get less dishonest because they know their audience wants to be fooled.
Although I have singled out atheists in this article, the principles discussed extend far beyond atheism. In fact, not even Christians are immune to this sort of tactic. The importance of fact checking cannot be understated. As Paul warned the Thessalonians, "Test all things, hold on to that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).