Evangelicals Don't Just Get Science Wrong

I recently read this critique of David Barton's pro-Christian authoritarianism book on American history. It's Baptists ridiculing his lack of scholarship and honesty, which is rich as foie gras.

This asshole regularly appears on TBN, and every time he does I laugh my ass off AND become vociferously angry. Apparently, his god condones shameless lying. What an awesome god!

In any case, it's a great scholarly chastisement from theologic historians who have every supernatural excuse available to support his made-up Christian dominionist history, then don't because of pesky facts.

Thanks to Ed Brayton for pointing it out.

Blessed Are The Televangelists, For They Shall Be Filthy Rich

NBC is going after televangelists (and it's about time). And they're hitting the fake, disgusting, tacky Paula White first.

One church board member told NBC News that he was surprised when a 2006 audit reported the church had $25 million in debt, even though it had brought in $35 million that same year.

During the same period, the Whites appear to have prospered with a $2.1 million waterfront home in Tampa, a $3.5 million condo on Park Avenue in New York City and salaries reported to exceed $1 million each. There’s also a costly Bentley convertible, driven by Randy White.

It's like they are trying to live up to atheists' expectations of them, as though they saw their own caricature and mistook it for a mission.

Here's Paula, looking sad. If she loses everything, her plastic surgeon is going to be sadder.

Send Jesus, Mountebanks, and Money

Kenneth Copeland--the Oral Roberts sectary and televangelist who uses tax-free donations to purchase private jets tax-free--set up a "private meeting" at a televangelist conference to raise funds for Huckabee's campaign. A total of $110,000 was collected, which to me doesn't seem like that much were it not from "people of the cloth." It's all such transpicuous chicanery, especially considering that Huckabee has been on Copeland's laughable TV show during the campaign (not talking about politics, of course).

And I'm happy to see that Copeland won't turn over his ministry's financial records even under subpoena. Maybe they'll be a showdown at Copelands lavish, multi-million dollar family ranch /ministry /airport.

Name It And Claim It

Here's a great article updating the progress of Sen. Grassley's investigation of several televangelists. I would add that even the ones who are cooperating, like Joyce Meyers, still operate under some very reprehensible practices and still rake in mountains of money (legally) from trusting, struggling believers.

Critics acknowledge the idea that God wants to bless his followers has a Biblical basis, but say prosperity preachers take verses out of context. The prosperity crowd also fails to acknowledge Biblical accounts that show God doesn't always reward faithful believers...

Uh, what about this critic, who says it's obviously all a load of swindler horseshit and that these mountebanks are preaching credulity and then reaping its rewards as they smugly grin asscheek to asscheek?

Tainted Degrees, Tainted Jets, and Mysterious Debt

Here's another article about Oral Roberts University's troubles. What did I learn?

1. Before the scandal, young adults were tricked into thinking that an ORU degree would not be "tainted," but NOW they're worried.
2. The chairman of the ORU board of regents is the son-in-law of the absurd faith-healing con chump Kenneth Copeland. Mr. Copeland is famous for having a palatial estate/megachurch that includes its own airstrip for both his and his wife's private jets (they have one each, naturally) and the ministry's other planes. The family has a history of financial shadiness. From Wikipedia: The Copeland's financial records are not publicly available and a list of the Board of Directors is not available...
3. ORU is more than $50 million in the hole. That's like almost 3 Cessna Citation Xs, right Kenneth?
   

See What Tax Exempt Gets You

It's About Time

The Senate, led by Republican Charles Grassley, is investigating several televangelists.

Because they have tax status as churches, the ministries do not have to file IRS 990 forms like other non-profit organizations - leaving much financial information largely behind closed doors.

You mean like how they all have private jets, palatial estates, and expensive cars: and those are all paid for by the "ministry," and do not come out of salary? I'm sure that most of these organizations do follow the letter of the law, but the government should demand that ANYONE who is tax exempt be totally transparent with their finances. These hucksters are fattening up in a loop-hole.

I'm Like Hosea And Shit

Ok, maybe I'm not really a prophet, even a minor one. And Yahweh didn't command me to marry a hooker named Gomer as a lesson to Israel to stop whoring about with other gods. But my prophesy did come true: Oral Roberts is blaming Mr. Oogie Boogie for his University's problems.

A noted U.S. televangelist returned to his namesake university Monday and denied accusations of lavish spending by school officials and illegal involvement in a political campaign, telling students and employees in a chapel service that "the devil is not going to steal ORU."

Why Beelzebub wants his dumpy "university," with it's aggressively tacky prayer tower and "big hands making a vagina" monument, is beyond me. But I don't question Our Dark Master, I only do his unholy bidding...

More Oral Roberts University Fun

A new court petition was filed pertaining to the case I posted about earlier. In it is the claim that:

Mrs. Roberts spent the night in the university's guest house with an underage male on 9 separate occasions.

It states there are 29 photos of Mrs. Roberts and the underage male alone in her sports car after city-wide curfew

Looks like Mrs. Roberts got her groove back. But of course the University is taking this whole thing in stride, counting on their faith and high moral values to get them through this adversity.

It also says three days after the original lawsuit was filed, ORU and Roberts terminated ORU's financial comptroller.

Then it states witnesses have reported that voluminous materials and documents were shredded and destroyed.

Or not. At least they don't have any sexual deviants on staff to worry about.

It claims Roberts and the board gave a convicted sexual deviant unrestricted access to the students of the university as a "mentor."

Where's that 900-foot Jesus when you need him?

Moral Oral?

Another Christian fundie scandal? Controversy surrounding Oral Roberts Ministry? How could that be: one can only be truly moral through Christ right? Right?

Right....

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as "underage males."

I'm sure the trip to the Bahamas was for missionary work, ahem, and that Mrs. Roberts was texting bible verses and prayers to a devoutly celibate teenage male youth group. These accusations are clearly satanically inspired, and their activities are just being "taken out of context" by the "liberal secular media." One doesn't need to be an Old Testament prophet to see that coming!

This article fails to raise a more serious question though: should we really consider a man named Oral who named his son Dick as a decent, moral, sane, and competent human being? I mean, fuck me Jesus with a chainsaw, if that doesn't clue you in, what would? Is the granddaughter named Clitty? I wouldn't trust someone like that to find his own asshole, much less wipe it. And when he claims to be a man who has discussions with an invisible deity...

And we really should be questioning the judgment of any parent who would send their child to a"university" founded by an uneducated huckster who claims to have seen a 900-foot tall Jesus, to have raised the dead, and to have been directly threatened by "godfather" Yahweh to come up with $8 million "or else."

Colleagues fear for the reputation of the university and the future of the Roberts' ministry

The school's reputation, as it were, should stand firm: it's a petty scam run by superstitious fools and Machiavellian theocrats. As for his ministry, what future did it have? He's almost 90 years old, the ministry has been embroiled in scandal before, his claims are "Joseph Smith" ridiculous, most Americans think he is a complete joke (if they know he is alive at all), and yet he still has monetary supporters and "colleagues."

Credulity truly works wonders.

And America's Collective Ignorance And Homophobia Statistically Decreases...

D. James Kennedy is dead. Good riddance to that gay-hating, superstitious, revisionist theocrat.

Looks like 8 months of his sheep's prayers for his recovery worked like a charm. EXACTLY like a charm.

Now we just have to see who takes control of his "flock" and his Center for Reclaiming America for Christ clan. Having no heir apparent to his grotesque church and anti-rationalist organizations, we can all just hope that prayer continues to work for them as well as it has previously.

This Has Nothing To Do With The End Times, Wink

A shocking and sickening expose of John Hagee's Christians United For Israel is here. These precious lambs of god are...precious. Hateful, insular, childish, superstitious, transparently deceptive, self-righteous and proud of it, and gleefully ignorant (and seemingly prouder of that), one would think that no one of any authority would take them seriously. Wrong! Lookie at who shows up. It's the worst elements of fundamentalist Chritianity and Jewry, joined in the common goal of fulfilling their messianic dreams (and eagerly awaiting with sadistic delectations seeing those who stood against them tormented on an eternal pyre).

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

These hucksters would let their religious money-making scams scourge the earth before they would grow up and get a real job.

You History Buffs Prepare To Laugh Your Ass Off

I just flipped through TBN, my favorite comedy channel, and one of their "history" authorities was telling the son of the (homo) Paul Crouch that Alexeis de Tocqueville's seminal Democracy in America states that the reason the US was different from Europe was because of, get this, FAITH!

He even brought out the book and pointed to it! I guess that proves it then. Forget that crass property rights and common man/ anti-aristocracy shit THAT TOCQUEVILLE ACTUALLY WROTE ABOUT, it was Christianity that separated the US from Europe. I'm laughing so hard I almost spit up!

Jesus would be so proud...

Best. Epitaph. Ever.

A follow-up to this post, you can find the full "debate" here. It's long and involves the odious Ralph Reed, so beware. My favorite line, the one that sums up everything I think about Falwell, was Hitchens' final shot (at ~ 9:40):

If you gave Jerry Falwell an enema, he'd be buried in a matchbox."

With room to spare.

As for Hitchens' (and my) "unkind" comments and their alleged affect on Falwell's family, I have a story. On September 11, a gay steward called his long-time partner/husband in what would be their last conversation. A short time later, his plane smashed into the WTC. What remained of his body had not even cooled to ambient before that sick, twisted snake-oil salesman had declared that the gay steward was partially to blame for the largest terrorist attack in American history...simply by being gay.

Baby Jesus ignores how his side's superstitious nonsense affects others (personally or through national policies that make condoms somehow worse than HIV); trivializes, scorns, and mocks those who recoil in horror at their callous, grotesque "faith-based" statements and initiatives or their unethical, anti-scientific, disastrous religiosity; but then demands that the same people whom the "Moral Majority" attacks as sinful, amoral, anti-American reprobates respect their dead because they were people of faith who did some good things sometime. If that's all it took to get "respect" in public discourse, few people would ever be criticized posthumously. All we could say of Hitler was that he built some nice schools and public infrastructure before making some unwise national and ethnic policy decisions.

Hitchens Skewers Falwell's Fat Dead Corpse

As promised.

Until It Shows Up On YouTube...

...here's the transcript of Christopher Hitchens on Anderson Cooper last night. There are many gems, such as:

I think he was a conscious charlatan and bully and fraud.

And I think, if he read the Bible at all -- and I would doubt that he could actually read any long book of -- at all -- that he did so only in the most hucksterish, as we say, Bible-pounding way.

Peter Popoff Re-exposed