I recently read an article that revealed how much money TV evangelists are worth and what they take from people in a year. Jan Crouch (the one with the pink hair from TBN) is worth 150 million. Billy Graham was around 25 million. Jack Van Impe, who one of my family members worked for at one time at his mansion was around 5 million. He then tried to get my relative to take a lesser amount then agreed upon. Joel Osteen 45 million. The list was very long and you get the idea that these liars get paid to promise a way to heaven, salvation, prosperity, etc.
So my argument is that they should be held accountable for taking tax free money from people based on lies and false promises. Then again, should we feel sorry for people who are duped and send them money?
So some of the believers in god get duped and some do not. When I was a believer in a god I saw them as a fraud, so I wonder how some believers can not only listen to them, but give them money.
I had a friend who a long time ago was at a benny hinn faith healing side show and she had someone with her that actually was very ill. She kept asking him to help and he kept ignoring her requests. It is pretty obvious that he had his own people to play the sick card and miraculously get up and walk.
Some have been exposed, but they still seem to profit and continue to be allowed to lie and get millions.
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@TheLargerBowl
A few of them get exposed, like Peter Popoff. But the truly amazing thing is that even after they've been shown up as frauds, liars, and totally immoral, like Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard, they somehow manage to turn their shame into credibility with their sheep-like followers.
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@Algebe Yep. You want to get believers to eat out of your hands, just threaten them with an eternity of hellfire for not giving you money.
Then preach about how materialism and greed are "the true god of the atheist" and are causing natural disasters and soon the end of the world.
A friend of mine who had become a Buddhist late in life had a breakdown and spent some time in a psychiaric ward. A few days before he was due to be released he asked me if I could go round and tidy his flat up. It was in quite a mess ... the mess included lots of arm-twisting "begging letters" from Buddhist organisations.
@thelargerbowl OP
To me in some senses this also represents a decline in the large established religious institutions power, they can't even stop other con artist using their same con, but being more obvious about it.
Any one of us, if we were dirty enough, could go start a tv show or online following preaching crap and collecting desperate people's money selling them hope on lies using all the same material the big religious organizations use. And the large established religious institutions mostly fail to stop them.
@LogicFTW Exactly. They either do nothing about it or encourage more of it.
My honest opinion about TV evangelists?
Shoot them all. Then make it illegal for them to waste TV time where I might could watch Tron Legacy. Yes, I have it on BRD and DVD and DDL, but why waste the energy of running my BRD player AND the TV, when I could just waste the energy on only the TV?
Yeah my opinion is biased, but my honest opinion is it should be illegal for evangelists to use the TV as well as politicians. I would make it where they can have ONE, and ONLY ONE, website, both religitards and polititards, and that is it. No more.
Yes, I am harsh, but look at how harsh and insane and delusional those asswipes are. No persons with self-induced mental disorders should be allowed any airtime. Period. Exclamation Point!
rmfr
True, they are con artists, but violence is not the answer. It will only allow them to frighten their gullible flocks into going deeper down the rabbit hole and drinking even more of the religious Kool-Aid by playing on their religion's persecution complex- a powerful weapon that is already widely in use by the Religious Right.
@ Rohan
You missed the sarcasm of "Shoot them all." I am never a supporter of violence, excepting the need to stop it.
rmfr
They are the lowest of the low.
They are terrorists, that prey on the gullible, and use emotion as their tools instead of guns and bombs. But they are far worse, and cause more harm.
The only experience I have with this is from watching my mother-in-law waste away, by her own choice, on a couch most of her life before she died, watching televangelists. She once tried to lecture me for not going to Church, to which I simply answered that would be dishonest of me. I then asked her if it is better to go to church and pretend to believe, like so many Christians do, or to live with authenticity and try to help others from that point of view. She never understood the question.
That is a sad tale, and I commiserate with you Truthinator.
I know of many who spent their last days in such a sad situation.
And I have heard of religious parents and grandparents dying believing that the atheism of their children/grandchildren is "just a phase". It is indeed very sad, as they had wasted their one, precious, unique life fretting about getting into an imagined one. But if you have any elderly members of your family who are religious, then sadly they are probably beyond all hopes of deconversion, so the best you can do is just accept that.
When I first went to the US to live I stayed with my best friend, an American, near Encinitas. Suffering badly from jet lag I had a couple of days on the couch in front of (to me) a giant TV and a bewildering array of channels (We only had 4 in city Australia at the time and only one in the bush). I loved the cartoon channels...and then I discovered the comedy channels.
My friend returned from work one afternoon to find me writhing in tears of laughter, almost incoherent....He saw what I was watching and turned the TV off. When I had recovered the power of speech (two beers later) he asked me why I was watching the Trinity Channel with Mr and Mrs Bakker and guests?
I honestly thought it was a comedy program.....the first of many culture shocks....
All fundamentalism is comedy to us godless heathens. For instance, Conservapedia is a serious, "trusworthy"- er, I mean, "(sic) Trustworthy" source to the far-right YEC Buybull-thumpers on the conservativeally-correct right, but comedy to essentially everyone else.
I agree Old Man, the Roadrunner cartoon is more plausible.
Speaking of comedy programs.... For your viewing entertainment.... (On a side note, I'm thinking about investing in the fire-proof underwear market.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF19XWWyREE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxlS79Q3EXk
These people prey on the elderly, the gullible, the ignorant, and the idiots who refuse to fucking think for themselves and have to have a god to make their decisions for them! Hard to believe that the fucker on your tv needs money when there are people who are homeless and hungry in your own neighborhood! Quit wasteing time and money on this garbage! If god was real, you don’t need no money or half ass preacher to recieve his help! The whole fucking thing is such a joke,con,smokescreen,bunch of shit!