John Oliver, Televangelists, 'Nuff Said

[bilby]

I consider taking money on the promise of magical returns to be fraudulent.

And I think the Attorney General would agree with you if it weren't presented as religion. It would be difficult to prove in court that the televangelists didn't believe (in the religious sense) that it was true - even though the televangelists' motives are obvious to anyone with half a brain.

So if I take your grandmother's pension money, promising to resurface her driveway, and the driveway never gets resurfaced, can I get away with this if I tell the court that it is my fervently held belief that the driveway will be resurfaced one day, as long as I pray for it to occur? (And that the reason it hasn't yet happened is that He moves in mysterious ways, and that it is all part of His plan).

It seems to me that if you allow a religious exemption to fraud, it becomes possible for any and all fraud to be exempt from punishment. Bernie Madoff should just say that he firmly believed that God would pay back his investors, with their capital plus a 95% return, and that he is praying that it will happen one day.

In short, if bullshit is allowed, then anything goes.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And I think the Attorney General would agree with you if it weren't presented as religion. It would be difficult to prove in court that the televangelists didn't believe (in the religious sense) that it was true - even though the televangelists' motives are obvious to anyone with half a brain.

So if I take your grandmother's pension money, promising to resurface her driveway, and the driveway never gets resurfaced, can I get away with this if I tell the court that it is my fervently held belief that the driveway will be resurfaced one day, as long as I pray for it to occur? (And that the reason it hasn't yet happened is that He moves in mysterious ways, and that it is all part of His plan).

No, because it isn't 'believable' enough. The standard seems to be between Scientology and what you just described.

It seems to me that if you allow a religious exemption to fraud, it becomes possible for any and all fraud to be exempt from punishment. Bernie Madoff should just say that he firmly believed that God would pay back his investors, with their capital plus a 95% return, and that he is praying that it will happen one day.

In short, if bullshit is allowed, then anything goes.

What is bullshit is that charitable donations should be taxed if they aren't spent to help charitable causes, instead of 0%. And the tax rate should be on a sliding scale, with low overhead (Doctors without Borders) being nearly 0% and high overhead (Televangelists) being nearly 100%. Stop treating Churches as special and make their accountable for the money given to them as charity.

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

I thought televangelists would have died out with Jimmy Bakker, Oral Roberts and co. Yet still they linger. How, I don't know.

It's baffling until you consider that religion has lasted. The prophecies never happen, Jesus never returns, yet it goes on. Generation after generation is born, believes their entire lives, and then die with none of the predictions ever coming true. Still it continues.

The human awareness of its own mortality combined with heavy indoctrination and ignorance drives it.

It would be nice to think that in 100 years people will look back on this and laugh at how silly it all was, but someone like Robert Ingersoll probably thought the same thing 100+ years ago too. Yet it goes on.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I grew up in the South, and much of that time in the rural South. Working poor people, killing themselves in meat processing plants and tobacco fields, were my neighbors, my family. People who went to church every Sunday, and watched Oral Roberts and Ernest Angley, and Robert Tilton; Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, not to mention a changing roster of local preachers who's low budget offerings came on at less attractive times than the national fellows. All of them begging for money and promising miracles. So much money was duped from these people, people least able to afford to lose that money. People on their death beds sending their disability money to millionaires instead of spend it on making their own last days better. I have seen this "prosperity gospel" pick poor people clean and have hated it for decades.

People have been evicted because it was more important to put seed money in the pockets of hucksters than to pay rent or mortgage. People have ended medical treatment and stopped taking medicine because money had to go to so-and-so's ministry, to spreading the word. People have taken their last breaths while clutching a prayer cloth and writing a check, still believing that if they just have enough faith, death won't come and sickness will go away.

These people are bastards, promising health, threatening hell, and all the while grabbing the money, scooping up the money; eating, drinking and breathing the money.

I wish there were a hell, because every one of these bastards would bust it wide open.

 

[skepticalbip]

And I think the Attorney General would agree with you if it weren't presented as religion. It would be difficult to prove in court that the televangelists didn't believe (in the religious sense) that it was true - even though the televangelists' motives are obvious to anyone with half a brain.

So if I take your grandmother's pension money, promising to resurface her driveway, and the driveway never gets resurfaced, can I get away with this if I tell the court that it is my fervently held belief that the driveway will be resurfaced one day, as long as I pray for it to occur? (And that the reason it hasn't yet happened is that He moves in mysterious ways, and that it is all part of His plan).

It seems to me that if you allow a religious exemption to fraud, it becomes possible for any and all fraud to be exempt from punishment. Bernie Madoff should just say that he firmly believed that God would pay back his investors, with their capital plus a 95% return, and that he is praying that it will happen one day.

In short, if bullshit is allowed, then anything goes.

Religion is a con game to start with. Our Constitution, for some reason, specifically allows this particular con. The only legal question is how far is too far to be covered by this guaranteed freedom. The alternative would be a ban on religion, incarcerating anyone who believed in the supernatural and communicated this belief to others, or a government controlled state religion. Either alternative would seem to be worse than the problem.

Your scenario, "...if I take your grandmother's pension money, promising to resurface her driveway, and the driveway never gets resurfaced, can I get away with this...", seems to go too far to be protected. The problem would likely be the promise. Now if you preached that if they sincerely prayed for their driveway to be paved then the lord may see to it - that donating money to your mission may demonstrate to the lord your sincerity, then your team of lawyers could likely fend off a charge of fraud.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Now if you preached that if they sincerely prayed for their driveway to be paved then the lord may see to it - that donating money to your mission may demonstrate to the lord your sincerity, then your team of lawyers could likely fend off a charge of fraud.

May? You can't blame the failure on God. At least not a whim of God's.
Blame it on the Faithful. The Insufficiently Faithful.

It WOULD have been repaved if THEY had sent enough money. God was disappointed in their lack of faith. God was not convinced by their poor showing. God tested their faith and found doubt.

They'll shoulder the burden for the failure. Their peers will be pointing fingers at them, not God. No one wants God to be a fault because that removes all of their hopes.

And how will anyone establish in Court that the member showed sufficient faith that God SHOULD have saved them from taxes, repossession, cancer...?

 

[skepticalbip]

Now if you preached that if they sincerely prayed for their driveway to be paved then the lord may see to it - that donating money to your mission may demonstrate to the lord your sincerity, then your team of lawyers could likely fend off a charge of fraud.

May? You can't blame the failure on God. At least not a whim of God's.
Blame it on the Faithful. The Insufficiently Faithful.

It WOULD have been repaved if THEY had sent enough money. God was disappointed in their lack of faith. God was not convinced by their poor showing. God tested their faith and found doubt.

They'll shoulder the burden for the failure. Their peers will be pointing fingers at them, not God. No one wants God to be a fault because that removes all of their hopes.

And how will anyone establish in Court that the member showed sufficient faith that God SHOULD have saved them from taxes, repossession, cancer...?

Much better... you, obviously, have a lot better understanding of their scam techniques than I do.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Much better... you, obviously, have a lot better understanding of their scam techniques than I do.

It's from watching Chaplains, mostly. The military shills for God have a very polished act.

They don't get money, but they set it up along very similar lines.
The best ones won't pray that your son, Johnny, comes home from war. They pray that God will watch over Johnny during his deployment. They'll pray that Johnny not be tempted into dishonorable behavior or unpatriotic vices. They'll pray that he keeps his faith even in the foxhole.

And if Johnny dies on the battlefield, it's still a success because God has a plan, and it's part of that plan to Call Johnny Home at that particular juncture. All so that the other guys in the ranks keep faith in God, while the family back home can feel confident that Johnny is waiting for them in Heaven, and his (and their) sacrifices helped keep 'Merica safe.
Or, he lost faith and God felt He had no choice but to withdraw Johnny from the world. But he'd about have to be found shot by friendly fire while smuggling 20 kilos of heroin into camp to trade for child porn, for them to go that route.

 

[Underseer]

I grew up in the South, and much of that time in the rural South. Working poor people, killing themselves in meat processing plants and tobacco fields, were my neighbors, my family. People who went to church every Sunday, and watched Oral Roberts and Ernest Angley, and Robert Tilton; Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, not to mention a changing roster of local preachers who's low budget offerings came on at less attractive times than the national fellows. All of them begging for money and promising miracles. So much money was duped from these people, people least able to afford to lose that money. People on their death beds sending their disability money to millionaires instead of spend it on making their own last days better. I have seen this "prosperity gospel" pick poor people clean and have hated it for decades.

People have been evicted because it was more important to put seed money in the pockets of hucksters than to pay rent or mortgage. People have ended medical treatment and stopped taking medicine because money had to go to so-and-so's ministry, to spreading the word. People have taken their last breaths while clutching a prayer cloth and writing a check, still believing that if they just have enough faith, death won't come and sickness will go away.

These people are bastards, promising health, threatening hell, and all the while grabbing the money, scooping up the money; eating, drinking and breathing the money.

I wish there were a hell, because every one of these bastards would bust it wide open.

I know about those things happening, but actually watching those things happen to people must have been a horror to experience.

 

[Atheos]

Awhile back my best friend's wife got involved in that, sending money to the daytime televangelists. My buddy was doing pretty well career-wise at the time though, so things got into a bit of a feedback loop. He'd make more money, she'd spirit it off to the televangelists, praising Jeezus the whole time. Then, suddenly he came down with a really bad cold and at the same time had a tooth infection that he didn't go see about. Long story short he died in his kitchen. He was young, in reasonably good health and it was just the perfect storm I guess.

The bizarre thing is that she went into full-scale denial mode, sending all the money she could get her hand on to these hucksters and asking them to pray that he would wake up. She refused to believe he was really dead. Maxed out credit cards, etc. She told me she was "Taking a stand of faith." She wouldn't let them bury her husband until it became necessary for legal reasons, and I honestly don't know how long that took. In one phone conversation she (mis)quoted Hebrews 11:35 "Through faith widows received back their dead..." Eventually she quit returning my calls, probably because I was trying to convince her that perhaps it was God's will that she must persevere without her husband. (I was already an atheist at the time, just trying to help her accept the reality of the situation.)

You don't have to think hard to figure out how that worked out. They lost the house and cars. Her parents stepped up and took over the situation. I have no idea where she is or what happened to the children. She may have ended up institutionalized.

So yes, it is quite disturbing to watch this sort of stuff play out first hand.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Egad! That is horrible! The televangelists make a good deal of cash on the desperate or ignorant. It is their most depraved act and what makes them good fodder for entropy.

 

[Underseer]

Awhile back my best friend's wife got involved in that, sending money to the daytime televangelists. My buddy was doing pretty well career-wise at the time though, so things got into a bit of a feedback loop. He'd make more money, she'd spirit it off to the televangelists, praising Jeezus the whole time. Then, suddenly he came down with a really bad cold and at the same time had a tooth infection that he didn't go see about. Long story short he died in his kitchen. He was young, in reasonably good health and it was just the perfect storm I guess.

The bizarre thing is that she went into full-scale denial mode, sending all the money she could get her hand on to these hucksters and asking them to pray that he would wake up. She refused to believe he was really dead. Maxed out credit cards, etc. She told me she was "Taking a stand of faith." She wouldn't let them bury her husband until it became necessary for legal reasons, and I honestly don't know how long that took. In one phone conversation she (mis)quoted Hebrews 11:35 "Through faith widows received back their dead..." Eventually she quit returning my calls, probably because I was trying to convince her that perhaps it was God's will that she must persevere without her husband. (I was already an atheist at the time, just trying to help her accept the reality of the situation.)

You don't have to think hard to figure out how that worked out. They lost the house and cars. Her parents stepped up and took over the situation. I have no idea where she is or what happened to the children. She may have ended up institutionalized.

So yes, it is quite disturbing to watch this sort of stuff play out first hand.

Those people are sick fucks.