Ray Comfort and the $10,000 fix

While browsing Agnostic Atheism this evening, I came across this post with a spoof video of The 10 Commandments (the Charlton Heston/Yul Brynner one) depicted as a typical American high-school romp. You should watch it, it’s quite amusing.

Anyway, attached to this post, some fool has posted a comment to this “offer” of $10,000 to anyone who has kept the Ten Commandments.

Bill | April 5th, 2007 at 11:53 am

So do you think you’ve kept the Ten Commandments?
I bet you haven’t kept any of them. Go to www.tenthousanddollaroffer.com to see.

Now IANAL and I’m certainly not an American one, but Bill, if that is his real name, is possibly an accomplice (after the fact) to a criminal offense.

You see, the claim of http://www.tenthousanddollaroffer.com/ is this (emphasis as original):

This is a legitimate offer.

If you have kept the Ten Commandments, we will give you $10,000 cash. This is a legally binding contract. In other words, if you can prove you haven’t violated the Ten Commandments, we are legally obligated to give you $10,000.

They then ask you to take a test that puts forward ten questions, asking if you have kept the respective commandments (in reverse order) and offering you both an explanation of the commandment (as Comfort sees it) and ‘yes/no’ options to choose your answer to a particular question, followed by a ’submit’ button when you’ve chosen either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. So far so good.

So, for a lark, I answered the ‘test’. The first time, I answered honestly, and I got the result I pretty much expected (guilt, etc.) I’m quite untrusting of Comfort (it has his credit in the page’s HTML code¹) so I thought I’d take it again and answer ‘no’ to every question, to see if there actually was a form that one could fill in to contact the organisation. Funnily enough (or not) there wasn’t, and I received the exact same result as I had previously.

These results are (verbatim):

Perhaps you said that you have kept the first of the Ten Commandments, but the Bible says, “There is none that seeks after God” (Romans 3:11, italics added). So no one has kept that Commandment. Not one. So one of you is lying—either you or God, and the Scriptures say that it’s “impossible” for God to lie (see Hebrews 6:18). So, now you have broken the Ninth Commandment by lying about keeping the First Commandment. So you have missed out on the $10,000 (sorry about that), but please stay with this—for a free gift.

God has been a witness to everything you have coveted, every lie you have told, and everything you have stolen. The Bible says “All liars will have their part in the lake of fire” (Revelation 21:8), and that no covetous person or thief will inherit the Kingdom of God. Think of all the secret sins that you thought no one saw. He even sees your thought-life. Will you be innocent or guilty on the Day of Judgment? Listen to your conscience. According to the Bible, you will be guilty, and therefore end up in Hell. But that’s not God’s will — Jesus suffered and died on the cross, taking the punishment for your sins: “God commended His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Then He rose from the dead and defeated death. If you repent and trust Him, God will save you from your sins. He will forgive you and grant you the gift of eternal life: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Don’t miss out on the greatest of all gifts. Pray something like this: “Dear God, please forgive me for sinning against You. I trust alone in Jesus Christ for my eternal salvation. I will read the Bible daily and obey what I read. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.” Read John 14:21. Go to: www.livingwaters.com and click on “Save Yourself Some Pain.”

While this may not seem like much, there’s a problem with the ‘test’ that they invite you to take. Here’s where it might get a bit technical, so I apologise and please bear with me.

The problem lies within the code used to produce the test software, which was created using Adobe Flash (was Macromedia Flash). As I’m aware of Comfort’s previous attempts to deceive, I was a little untrusting of his ‘generous’ offer. Being a bit of a multimedia developer in a past life, I decompiled (reverse engineered) the ‘test’ software, and examined the code therein.

Apart from some basic code to move from one frame of animation to another, the only other code in this ‘test’ is the following:

on (release) {
    getURL("results.html", "_self");
}

What this code does is that it checks for a button to be released (the on (release) bit, in this case attached to the ’submit’ button on question 10) and when it is it asks your web browser to take you to another page (”results.html”) and open in in the same window or tab (”_self”).

From this, we can see that the only result you are ever going to get are the ones telling you that you’ve failed the test.

Now, call me paranoid, but as far as I can see, this is a blatent deception:

• anyone taking the test can assume they are taking it in good faith (no pun intended) as it claims to be legally binding (to Comfort, et al)
• no matter how you answer, you will always be directed to the same results stating you have not won the prize on offer
• the (pre-determined) outcome has a get-out clause (after the fact) making it impossible to answer the questions to satisfy the quiz
• there is no contact information to claim the prize even if you believe you fulfill the criteria
• as a (self-proclaimed) legal contract, not being made aware of any and all conditions prior to the contract being accepted makes it, AFAIK, breached

What it boils down to is this: if you have (honestly) answered all ten questions with a “no” answer, you’ve been defrauded; you cannot claim your prize as promised (the front page even says that t]his is a legally binding contract) even if you are able to provide proof.

Like I said before, I’m not a lawyer, nor a US citizen, but if this was on a web site in the UK I know for a fact that I could contact Trading Standards, the ASA (and possibly the Gambling Commission) to bring the full weight of consumer and advertising (and gaming) law down on this liar’s pathetic arse.

I’d like to make a correction to Comfort’s statement where he says So one of you is lying—either you or God, and the Scriptures say that it’s “impossible” for God to lie. There’s one other person who can lie: Comfort.

Comfort, it’s you: you’re the liar. James Randi you are not.

I hope someone sues this twat. FYI, the web site is hosted by hostway.com at IP address 64.41.127.123 through Snow Media.

^1.

<META name="description" content="If you have kept the Ten Commandments, we will give you $10,000 cash.">
<META name="keywords" content="cash,money,offer,commandments,dollar,Ray,Comfort">
<META name="author" content="Living Waters, Ray Comfort">

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