Deeply held religious beliefs
I don't know if this is better or worse than a state run lottery:
To be honest, though, i don't see any reason for the Senate to be investigating this. If you're meshuggah enough to fall for this kind of bullshit, maybe you shouldn't be around a checkbook in the first place.
And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.
Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.
"I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them," she said. "I'm angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don't watch anyone on TV hardly."
To be honest, though, i don't see any reason for the Senate to be investigating this. If you're meshuggah enough to fall for this kind of bullshit, maybe you shouldn't be around a checkbook in the first place.
Some ministers hold up their own wealth as evidence that the teaching works. Atlanta-area pastor Creflo Dollar, who is fighting (Iowa Senator Charles) Grassley's inquiry, owns a Rolls Royce and multimillion-dollar homes and travels in a church-owned Learjet.
In a letter to Grassley, Dollar's attorney calls the prosperity gospel a "deeply held religious belief" grounded in Scripture and therefore a protected religious freedom. Grassley has said his probe is not about theology.
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
5 Comments:
I can't believe someone with a name like "Creflo Dollar" would even have the gall to go into a business where he's simply taking other folks' money away. His name sounds like he should be a bad guy in a James Bond novel. I guess there's a sucker born every minute.
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Joseph H. Vilas, at 6:02 PM
O.M.G.
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Joseph H. Vilas, at 6:03 PM
They're all just big Ponzi schemes, aren't they? Some start their "ministries" from scratch in a school cafeteria, but a lot of them are disciples of other prosperity preachers, who pass on the art of the grift.
@Joe- I give kudos to anyone who can give themselves unique names in the internet age. You want to be easily googlable so your flock can send you money. Bet you don't know any other couples named "Creflo and Taffi".
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toastie, at 8:12 PM
Shoot, the Creflo Dollar probably has more value than the American Dollar these days.
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Durham Bull Pen, at 8:33 PM
Irrational belief systems require built-in defense mechanisms if they are to overcome the reasonable doubt of reasonable people. "Your faith isn't strong enough" is a common one for defusing people's doubts when the hocus-pocus doesn't work. If you find fallacies in the logic of the dogma, then "You have to take it on faith" is right up there with "It's a mystery" (which in Catholicism, at least, is a statement of mystical profundity, not befuddlement). It's considered a good thing to "have the gift of faith" which I believe means to be gullible enough to suspend your disbelief about what is obviously a bunch of hooey.
It's not just Christianity that is prey to these sorts of argument-ending non-arguments. I recall telling someone that I though Dan Millman's book "The Peaceful Warrior" was a poorly written pile of pseudo-profound new age cliches. I was told that I was not "ready to hear its message."
Or, I actually had a clue.
By
Anonymous, at 9:40 PM
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