Cold Case Christianity: Biblical “Faith”: Trusting What Can’t Be Seen on the Basis of What Can

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Biblical “Faith”: Trusting What Can’t Be Seen on the Basis of What Can
Posted: 16 Dec 2019 01:50 AM PST  

The Christian concept of “faith” is often either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented by skeptics and critics of Christianity.

It's also misunderstood by Christians, which makes it more difficult for atheists to define such monster "objectively".

Christians are not called to believe blindly.

Bullshit, in two places the NT praises the kind of faith that is unable to "see":

 29 Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." (Jn. 20:29 NAU) 

 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Rom. 8:24-25 NAU)

Wallace continues:

In fact, the Christian worldview is an evidential worldview grounded in the eyewitness testimony of those who saw Jesus provide evidence of His Deity.

It's also grounded on a view that cannot account for eyewitnesses who thought Jesus' miracles were total bullshit, such as his immediate family, see Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5.  In that honor/shame society, they would not lightly dismiss Jesus' claims, they would more than likely have investigated/observed them, since in that culture dishonoring Jesus was to dishonor his family too.  They would not deny Jesus' claims unless they had good reasons to consider his miracles fake.

Sometimes Christians contribute to the misunderstanding by failing to see the evidential nature of Christianity and the reasonable nature of “faith”.

Probably because they are new creatures in Christ who have the mind of the Holy Spirit.

As I teach on this topic around the country, Christians often offer this passage in the Book of Hebrews to defend a definition of blind faith:
 Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.
 Is the writer of Hebrews commending a form of blind faith in which we simply hope for “things not seen”? No. The author is encouraging his readers to continue to trust in the promises of God, in spite of the fact they haven’t yet been fulfilled (and might not even be fulfilled in their lifetimes). This trust in “things not seen” is not unwarranted, however. The promises of God are grounded in what God has already done. In other words, the author of Hebrews is asking his readers to trust what can’t be (or hasn’t yet been) seen, on the basis of what can be (or has been) seen.

Then Christian faith is not really different from skeptical faith, as everybody is using what they believe is already settled to draw inferences about what remains unsettled.

To make this point clear, the writer of Hebrews offers a short list of historic believers who trusted God’s promises for the future on the basis of what God had done in the past: Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are described as believers who “died in faith, without receiving the promises” (verse 13).

Included in this faith hall of fame was Abraham, and the reason was his quick trust that whatever voice was telling him to kill his son was from God (!?)

Abe did not have faith that God would stop the knife from being plunged into the boy, but he had faith that God was able to raise the boy from the dead:

 17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son;
 18 it was he to whom it was said, "IN ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS SHALL BE CALLED."
 19 He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. (Heb. 11:17-19 NAU)

The blindless of such faith may be inferred frm the fact that nothing is stated about how Abraham knew this "kill your kid" voice was coming from "god", yet Abe's obedience to it was instant:

 1 Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
 2 He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you."
 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. (Gen. 22:1-3 NAU)

The NT will also label Lot as godly, which means his offering his virgin daughters to a sexually violent mob was an act consistent with men who deserve the title of "righteous" in the New Testament sense of the word, compare:

 4 Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter;
 5 and they called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them."
 6 But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him,
 7 and said, "Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.
 8 "Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof." (Gen. 19:4-8 NAU) 

 7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
 8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, (2 Pet. 2:7-9 NAU)

Neo-fundamentalists will trifle that Lot's offering of his daughters was merely a case of Semitic exaggeration, that is, ancient Semitic peoples were always overstating facts and beliefs.  But if so, one wonders how many Christian doctrines about god's nature, derived as they are from a literal interpretation of the bible, are in fact a case of misrepresentation of the bible?  When the bible says God has been god from eternity into eternity (Psalm 90:2) is that literal, or Semitic exaggeration? 

And of course, neo-fundamentalists provide no criteria for distinguishing biblical claims that are meant literally from biblical claims that are mere Semitic exaggeration.

The promises of God were yet “things not seen”.

True, but that's not an exhaustive list of what qualifies under 11:1.  Blind faith would also qualify. 

And we have to ask...if an adult DOES have authentically "blind" faith due to some stirring sermon and ends up believing Christian claims on the basis of nothing more than biblical quotations, does THAT kind of faith "save", yes or no?  In other words, what can we deduce about you and your god if your god honors faith that is truly "blind"?  Will god withhold salvation from the sincere sinner until the sinner reads a few books about apologetics?

Or maybe we should worry about certain dogshit fundamentalists who think like Catholics, and say salvation is not certain until death?   Gee, how long must the skeptic trifle wth fundies about "already but not yet" crap before they become justified to start drawing conclusions about these scriptural 'tensions' that nobody wants to call actual contradictions?

In spite of this, these believers held firm to the promises of God on the basis of what they had seen.

And yet you despise skeptics who hold firm to the promises of science on the basis of what they have seen.

The author of Hebrews demonstrates this point with perhaps the best example of a believer who possessed a reasonable, evidential faith: Moses.

Nobody said the author of Hebrews was logically consistent.  11:1 is a blind faith by definition.  Whether the author cares, whether the author supports the point properly or uses evidence-based faith examples to support the point, is another question.

Hebrews 11:24-27
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.
 Moses repeatedly responded obediently (albeit sometimes reluctantly) to the yet unseen promises of God on the basis of what he had already seen God do in his life. In fact, years later when the Israelites complained or expressed doubt, Moses told them to move forward toward promises yet unseen on the basis of the evidence God had already given them:
 Exodus 13:3
Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery; for by a powerful hand the Lord brought you out from this place.
 Deuteronomy 5:15
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.
 Deuteronomy 7:18
You shall not be afraid of them; you shall well remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:
 Deuteronomy 15:15
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.
 Deuteronomy 24:18
But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing.
 Moses was the supreme example of a man who had a deep, reasonable trust based on the evidence God had provided him. His faith wasn’t blind, it was evidentially reasonable.

Maybe that's why he ordered babies to be slaughtered in Numbers 31:17.  Sure is funny that fundamentalists never think baby slaughter is morally good...unless it is ordered by god or a biblical character alleged to be in the will of God. Then suddenly, the magic of the bible soaks their brain and prevents them from giving a shit about being consistent.

He had seen God in the burning bush, watched how God used him in front of pharaoh, saw miracle after miracle, and witnessed the power of God. On the basis of this evidence, his confidence grew and Moses was ultimately transformed from a coward to a champion.

It's a great story.  And we also know that you have no interest in defeating skeptical arguments, rather, you only say what you think will suffice to keep Christians in the faith.

Christianity is grounded in the evidence of the eyewitness gospel accounts.

No, "Christianity" has become an infinitely splintered religion whose advocates contradict each other's interpretation of the bible on nearly every subject except perhaps Jesus' gender.   Even NT "Christianity" is contradictory, compare Jesus' requirement of works for salvation (Matthew 5:17-21) with the antinomianism of Paul in Romans 4:4-5 (salvation even for those who do not work).

These documents make claims about the history of the First Century and the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. As such, these claims are both verifiable and falsifiable. As we grow in our confidence related to the reliability of the Gospels, our reasoned trust in what they claim (and what they promise) will also grow. The gospels describe many “things not seen”. God is immaterial and invisible, and many of the promises of God are yet unfulfilled. But we can trust the things we can’t see on the basis of the things we can. We can move in faith toward the future on the basis of what God has demonstrated in the past.

Leaving skeptics wondering why you chide them for having faith in the unseen naturalistic explanations for phenomena which science cannot yet explain, when in fact inferring "god did it" violates Occam's Razor far more.

Frank Turek's attempted excuse/justification for doubt is unbiblical

This is my reply to an email I received from Frank Turek's mailing list:

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 8:04 AM Frank Turek <Frank@crossexamined.org> wrote:

    I want you to know that even though I have delivered hundreds of talks that give evidence beyond the reasonable doubt that Christianity is true, sometimes I still doubt.

    Yes, you read that correctly.

    Doubts drive me to get answers.

Rape can also drive a woman to be more careful about walking home alone in the dark.  That doesn't mean rape is morally good.  So it doesn't matter if you can turn doubt into an opportunity for good, doubt would still be wrong and sinful for biblical reasons. 

Your bible condemns any 'Christian' who doubts:

 6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
 7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,
 8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (Jas. 1:6-8 NAU)

The bible characterizes Christian faith as full assurance: 

  19 Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb;
 20 yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God,
 21 and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform. (Rom. 4:19-21 NAU)

  19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
 20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
 22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; (Heb. 10:19-23 NAU)

Maybe its my lack of training in the Greek that caused me to miss the fact that "full" means "99%"?

 Turek continues:

But what if doubts debilitate you rather than drive you?

 Then you should think the biblical description that says you are like a wave of the sea, tossed to and fro, unstable in all your ways, is the more accurate way to characterize the situation (James 1:6-8, supra). Unless of course you deny biblical inerrancy.

My friend Dr. Bobby Conway—whom you may know at the “One Minute Apologist”

Yes.  And he couldn't have chosen a more appropriate title.

—has been there. He’s dealt with doubt from every angle: in his own life and the lives of his congregation (Bobby is also a pastor).

    As he helps those he shepherds, Bobby can help you. That’s why I highly recommend his new online course called DoubtingToward Faith.

If you seriously believed the bible alone is "sufficient" for faith, and if you seriously believed that the Holy Spirit really does positively respond to the prayers of Christians to be delivered from their doubting natures, then you wouldn't be recommending anything to cure Christian doubt, except the bible, and specifically James 1:6-8.   

But maybe I'm mistaken.  Perhaps Turek is an open-theist.   Because God makes mistakes and cannot handle everything at one time, he employs the services of one-minute apologists to take up some of the load?  You are all selling Jesus for profit, friend, there's no nice way to put it.  Capitalism works like this:  Assure somebody they have a problem, then conveniently notify them that you have the solution, on sale.  Act now while supplies last.  And presto, you can earn a living selling Jesus, and teaching people who focus on you that they shouldn't focus on you, but on Jesus.

    This course is an answer to prayer. Just watch this chilling four-minute intro video from Bobby.

 I recommend the reader disregard the video and just read their bible.  This will reduce your ability to cash in on the Christianity problem, and it just sounds more godly to boot.  So it should be clear that my ideas about what's spiritually better for Christians come straight from demonic influence.

Cold Case Christianity: Volitional Resistance to Christianity Often Masquerades as Rational Opposition

This is my response to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Volitional Resistance to Christianity Often Masquerades asRational Opposition

265In another blog post I offered three reasons why people typically reject a truth claim. Sometimes folks simply have rational doubts based on the evidence, some people have doubts that are purely emotional, and others deny the truth for volitional reasons.

But if Enns and other liberal Christians can have doubts about fundie claims such as Jesus' resurrection being provable, or bible inerrancy, then unless you say liberal Christians are spiritually dead, you cannot assert the spiritual deadness of atheists as the likely reason atheists deny what you consider to be "truth".  You must find another excuse, and the truth is that your fundy claims are easily criticized as irrational, unreasonable, and unlikely.  You automatically suspect falsity when a stranger on the bus tells you they can levitate their body with mental power alone, and I suspect falsity when a stranger on the bus tell me they have an invisible friend who died 2000 years ago.  But until critical thinking skills become common place, room will always be made for apologists to make money pretending that God never had a chance until somebody invented the phrase "forensic faith".

 Until the age of thirty-five, I rejected the claims of Christianity (and theism in general). As an atheist, I adamantly identified myself in the first category of skeptics: I was a rational objector. When asked about my resistance, I repeatedly told people it was based on the lack of convincing evidence for Christianity and an abundance of evidence supporting naturalistic processes (like evolution). After examining the evidence and changing my mind, I revisited my prior opposition and realized much of my resistance was simply a matter of volition.

Then that helps explain why you started thinking Christian evidences were convincing.  Your basis for unbelief was more volitional than rational.  Glad I don't have that problem.

At some point I had to ask myself, “Am I rejecting this because there isn’t enough evidence, or because I don’t want there to be enough evidence?”

Gee, how many apologists are guilty of not "wanting" there to be any evidence for atheism?

After writing the post related to rational, emotional and volitional objections, I received the following note from an atheist who comments occasionally:

“I would place myself firmly in your first category, Jim: I’m not convinced by Christianity because I don’t see evidence for it. But I would not say it’s because I lack information – it’s rather that I have too much information, especially information about how the real world works. Your placing yourself in the third category, that of volitionally rejecting God, is telling. Almost all the Christians I know who were once atheists place themselves either here or in the second category, rejecting God because they hate Him. And almost all the atheists I know fit into the first, rational category. I would almost be tempted to say that you were never a ‘true’ atheist. It seems also to be a widespread belief among Christians that most of us atheist are god-haters or self-lovers. I guess that fits in with numerous Scriptural verses, but it doesn’t reflect reality on the ground in my experience.”

I immediately recognized the words of this atheist reader. They are my words, spoken many years before I became a Christian. All the atheists I knew (virtually all my friends at the time) identified themselves in the first category as rational objectors. I’ll bet Antony Flew, the famous British philosopher and atheist, would also have identified himself in this camp prior to becoming a theist. I don’t know anyone who was once an atheist who would ever have identified themselves as anything other than a rational objector. This really shouldn’t surprise us.

Then I would surprise you:  Not only do I reject your god and bible inerrancy because the evidence against those things is as conclusive as possible in this world, I also reject your god on volitional grounds, because he not only causes evil, but "delights" to cause men to rape women, to grant success to kidnappers,  and cause parents to cannibalize their kids.  Deuteronomy 28:30, 41, 53, 63: 

15 "But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

 30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.

 32 "Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them continually; but there will be nothing you can do.

 41 "You shall have sons and daughters but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity.

 53 "Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.

 63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it.

Unless you wish to argue that a woman is irrational to scream out against the local pedophile who just came to town, you cannot argue that I'm being irrational to use your god's above-cited moral failures to justify saying these traits are contradictory to the idea of "love" that god allegedly put in our hearts which was based on our being made in his "image".  Instead of worshipping Irenaeus and Tertullian as inerrant prophets, Mr. Wallace, you might consider that Marcion was correct, and the god of the OT was a demon.  Subjecting his people to punishment is one thing, "delighting" to watch rape after you have empowered the rapist through a curse to sexually violate Hebrew women, is quite another.  And yet in v. 63 is it specified that the type of "delight" God will take to inflict these atrocities, is the same "delight" he takes to grant prosperity to those who obey him.  So when you try to subtract happiness and cheer and glee from the delight God takes in causing these atrocities, you necessarily subtract it also from the delight he takes in granting prosperity.

Be sure your bible teaches the infinitude and perfection of god consistently, before you mouth off that we are in no position to judge God.  Moses successfully judged God's quick intent to kill people as irrational, and God apparenly saw the error of His way and changed His mind: 

 9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people. (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU) 

You can cite other parts of the bible that speak of God's foreknowledge and pretend that when you smoosh that and this together, you wind up with God not "really" changing his mind because he already knew what Moses' reaction would be, but that argument presupposes the truth of the certainly false doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and since so many spiritually alive Christians and their scholars deny inerrancy to various degrees, that doctrine has far less universal acclaim than other tools of interpretation such as "immediate context" and "grammar".  Therefore, I am not irrational to refuse to exalt bible inerrancy in my mind up to the status of governing hermeneutic.  If the way I interpret Exodus 32 causes it to conflict with something else in the bible, that is no reason whatsoever, to suspect that the interpretation is wrong.

Looking back at my own life as a young man who spent nine years in the university (prior to returning for seven more), I now recognize a simple truth: The more I thought I knew, the less teachable I became.

How boastful was the apostle Paul that he had the truth?  He cursed even angels from heaven should they preach a gospel different than his own (Galatians 1:8-9).   Will you say the more Paul thinks he knows, the less teachable he becomes?  What makes you think that his sometimes allegedly being "inspired by God" exempts him from your general rule?  Peter was sometimes inspired by God to the point of having trances: 

 9 On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray.
 10 But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance;
 11 and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground,
 12 and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air.
 13 A voice came to him, "Get up, Peter, kill and eat!"
 14 But Peter said, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean."
 15 Again a voice came to him a second time, "What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy."
 16 This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.
 17 Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in mind as to what the vision which he had seen might be,  (Acts 10:9-17 NAU)

and yet we know from Galatians that Peter around that time was a Judaizer:

 14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? (Gal. 2:14 NAU)

So no, Mr. Wallace, you cannot use the occasional divine inspiration of the apostles to justify your exempting them from that rule you wish to apply to everybody else, that the more they think they know, the less teachable they become.  So if that rule does indeed apply to the apostles too, then by your own rule, because they thought they knew great mysteries, they must have become correspondingly less teachable.


Thanks for your personal testimony, but only a fool would assume his personal problems as an atheist count as evidence that other atheists are plagued with the same problems.   I have above-average knowledge of the bible, and I'm willing to discuss whatever apologetics arguments you think are the most unassailable.  You will find that what you think shows unteachableness, is really just genuine scholarly knowledge that overcomes your popular-level efforts.  Maybe knowing this is why you banned me from your facebook page despite the fact that I never violated any of your rules or Facebook's rules.  Hard to make the commercial persuasive if your competitor is always right there to explain why you are wrong.

My educational self-confidence led to a form of self-reliance in many aspects of my life, including the foundational worldview I constructed along the way.

Will you admit this was true of the apostles after they became born again, yes or no? 

My “rational” resistance to theism was deeply tainted by my desire to be the author of my own worldview (rather than the acceptor of someone else’s). I don’t think this is all that uncommon for people who think they know something.

Was it uncommon for the apostles, who clearly thought they knew something? 

That’s why virtually every skeptic identifies himself as a rational resistor, and I think this is also why those who consider themselves educated often reject any theistic worldview that requires them to submit their authority.

But since you cannot rationally claim to know what's going on in the mind of any other atheist, you need to candidly acknowledge that at this point you are pushing speculation to its limits.n  The truth is that there are plenty of skeptics who are ready and willing to take you on in a formal debate, live or over the internet, and you not only refuse to acknowledge these challenged, but you relentlessly promote your books as if they are explosive rebuttals to skeptical critiques, highly inconsistent with your track record of never having a full scale debate with an informed skeptic.  You are a fool if you think allowing comments at your Facebook page constitutes proof that you are willing to have such debates.  I was there for several months before you banned me, and you never responded to anything I had to say.

Theistic claims are unlike virtually any other claim we might consider. Every day we weigh the evidence related to all kinds of important decisions. Which car would be the best for my family? What school should I attend? Which career path is best suited to my skill set? We evaluate the evidence and options without thinking much about the role volition and emotion are playing. But make no mistake about it, our wills and emotions are always at work, even when we would deny this is the case.

Thanks for saying "we", because you condemn all Christians here when you condemn skeptics.  What fool would deny that most Christians do Christianity because it offers emotional fulfillment? 

Our decisions related to theistic claims are far more critical than other decisions we might make. As C.S. Lewis wrote in God in the Dock, “Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, is of infinite importance.

Incorrect: plenty of liberal Christians say Christianity is true and everybody is going to be saved, in which case, dying as an atheist involves no more risk than dying as a Christian.  You are just passing off Lewis' fundamentalistic view as if it were gospel, sorry, it ain't.

The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” Even before we begin to examine the evidence related to Christianity, we understand the implications of any future decision. If we reject Christianity (or theism broadly), we get to continue living as the ruling authority of our own lives. If we accept, we must submit to a much greater authority.

Moses didn't submit to that authority in Exodus 32:9-14, so the door is open to the possibility that your God is just plain stupid at times, and needs human advice in order to see the error of his ways.  When God disagrees with me, that's where the problem starts, not where it ends.

Our decision related to God’s existence has a deep impact on every other decision we make going forward. This decision related to theism is foundational in a way unlike any other. It’s foolish to think this plays no part in how we might consider the question in the first place.

Our wills and desires are often deeply connected to the rational resistance we offer prior to submitting to the truth of theism. I would never have admitted to any volitional resistance as an atheist,

Indicating you were less honest than me.  I have no problems admitting I volitionally resist your magic genie for the same reason I resist the god of Mormonism:  they don't exist, but belief that they exist causes terrible emotional distress for some even if it creates joy in others. 

and it shouldn’t surprise us when other atheists also deny this to be the case. Volitional resistance to Christianity often masquerades as rational opposition.

 and it shouldn’t surprise us when Christians also deny this to be the case. Volitional resistance to atheism often masquerades as rational opposition.