If you’re unfamiliar with the insanity of Cindy Jacobs, I have the misfortune of introducing you to a special kind of crazy bitch. Imagine if Marcia Gay Harden character in the movie “The Mist” had somehow found a way to traverse the fantasy barrier and crossed over into the real world (yes, I know it’s a terrible movie plot, but someone should have said that to Arnold Schwarzenegger) In January of 2011, she claimed that the mysterious death of thousands of migratory birds was the result of God punishing the world (through animal proxy, of course) for gays being allowed to serve in the military. Here she’s opposing the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, claiming that all of this is really the work of the devil, who intends to try and take rich people’s money away.

It’s ironic that she talks about class warfare when her own organization’s aims sound very much like that of a paramilitary group, or the kind of mission statement you’d expect from a super-villain group:

Generals International is an international movement that thrives to reform the nations of the world. We are achieving societal transformation through intercession and the prophetic. Together, the staff works to expand the Kingdom of God by bearing the vision of Generals International to reform the nations of the world through the ministry of the prophetic.

The irony in all of this is that Jacobs and her ilk are attempting something similar with their 40 days 40 nights campaign (let’s call it “Occupy Washington”) in order to transform it into the “District of Christ“. It’s ok though: they’re doing it for the Lord;  not a bunch of lazy bums that blame all of their problems on rich people (well, the ones that stole their pensions, anyways).  When you’re working for the Lord, you’ve got an important job to do:

While many want to wear the label of intercessor, few are willing to pay the price to hear the still small voice of God. The intercessor petitions the throne of God with the desires of God for His people. It is not about asking God for selish desires that can be used on our own lust, it is about discerning the will of God and then giving Him agreement and petitioning Him to implement His will on earth. A true intercessor prays God’s Word back to Him. Since God seeks voluntary lovers, we have the opportunity to cooperate with Him to implement His will on Earth. “Your will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven” is not an empty platitude; it is the vision statement for God’s original intent for mankind.

What bugs me about these kinds of power hungry madmen (or madwomen) is this idea they have that their crazy ambitions are a kind of desirable piety. It’s all for someone else in their eyes, you see. So every dollar they embezzle in their little “world reformation” plan is regarded, unquestioningly, as the will of Jesus (who is going to eventually show up any moment and claim the place, but they’ll gladly take the keys in the meantime).  And Lo it’s a miracle! Their savior believes in precisely the same things they do. Hallelujah!

(via Right Wing Watch)

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More of these Christian nutjobs claiming to be able to raise the dead. How do you argue with people that have gone that far off the deep end? It boggles the mind, it does.

“You can have expectations of seeing miracles every day”

You might be overselling it a little, lady. If you create these kinds of expectations, people might get a little disappointed when nothing happens. Hey, you could always take whatever medication she’s on.

(via Christian Nightmares)

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It ain’t easy being a Christian: sure, they might be the majority (for now), but every other day the faith is challenged by objective reality. While many Christians will scoff at the idea that their religion is in trouble, the truth is that countries like Canada, Sweden, and Australia are quickly shedding their religious coat in favor of a broader “spirituality” that doesn’t have to deal with the many inconsistencies or outright lies of organized religion. Over half of all Canadians, according to a recent survey, are convinced that religion does more harm than good.

Enter the Apologist. Their “job” is to try and defend their faith against the harshness of reality. Christian Apologetics have been around since the very forming of the religion; St. Paul was the first to begin the tradition when confronted by desert sheppards possessing some measure of skepticism. In the modern world, it’s much more difficult to defend the faith, and so a whole cottage industry has sprung up to meet the demands of increasingly skeptically-minded kids.

I spotted this article entitled “Top 10 Defences youth can give for their beliefs“, and I thought I might share with you the kind of “advice” they’re giving young Christians in a vain attempt to prevent them from leaving the religion in frustration. I think you’ll agree that any teenager attempting to use any of these arguments would be eaten alive by anyone with a moderate understanding of history or science:

1. How can you know for sure that anything is true?
Among your acquaintances are likely to be some people who don’t believe in truth. That is, they don’t believe truth can be known. However, that idea is easily refuted, as this fictional conversation in the 2011 novel, The Quest, illustrates:
It took a minute, but I finally realized what she was waiting for. “You’re saying that if I think that’s a true statement, then I’ve claimed to know something that is true….By saying truth can’t be known. I contradicted myself.”

Here the author tries to argue that if an agnostic claims that truth cannot be known, this itself is a truth-claim and the statement is therefore inconsistent. While it’s true that consistency is a desirable attribute of any philosophy, we have to examine what’s actually being argued instead of over-analysing the statement itself. What is truth? How do we determine what’s real and what isn’t? Humans create models to explain the natural world, and while they can be amazingly accurate, there is still much to discover. We must accept that our understanding of the Universe is limited, flawed, but constantly improving. To claim otherwise is only possible when one sees the world through the arrogant prism of religion.

2. Is God a human invention?
A popular view these days is the idea that humans invented God in order to meet their needs and fulfill their desires. But it is at least as reasonable to believe exactly the opposite: that the innate desire humans have for God exists because there is Someone who satisfies that desire.

“Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles.”- Voltaire. The fact that we have a tendency to see patternicity, agency and intentionality has more to do with our environment than some invisible man in the sky. For millions of years, our ancestors braved a cruel, violent world which placed survival above skepticism. As a result, we’ve inherited brains susceptible to superstition, and the persistence of religion in a world of scientific discovery is an excellent example of this.

3. Doesn’t the Big Bang disprove Creation?
There is a common misconception that the Big Bang has pretty much eliminated the idea that God created the heavens and the earth. But the opposite is true. Former atheist Antony Flew, in his book There Is a God, explained that the Big Bang model eventually led him to believe in a God who created the universe, because it pointed to a beginning point in the universe, and to something (or Someone) behind that beginning that was too big for science to explain.

So the Universe needs a beginning, but Super-Monkey doesn’t? The best science we have now tells us that a Universe can indeed come from nothing, so while the science we have today tells us that the Universe requires no supernatural “party-starter”, religionists can’t seem to abandon this lost “first” cause. I won’t pretend to know for certain that a God couldn’t have done this; however, our faithful opponents have still failed to provide a compelling explanation of their deity’s apparent ability to transcend the law of causality. Lastly, this idea that something can be “too big” for science is just an invitation to ignorance.

4. How can an intelligent person not believe in evolution?

Atheist Richard Dawkins has famously written, “Beyond doubt evolution is a fact,”4 adding that no reputable scientist disputes it. However, neither statement is true. First, it is necessary to understand what people mean when they use the world “evolution,” because it can refer to both micro-evolution (the observable process by which change happens over time within species) and macro-evolution (the arguable claim that starting with a common ancestor, over time simple organisms have changed into the species that exist today). Macro-evolution is not as widely accepted as some claim. In fact, more than eight hundred world-class scientists have signed a formal dissent from Darwinian evolution.

So, you’re willing to accept that species gradually change over time, but somehow still can’t grasp that over geological time-frames (millions of years), these incremental changes would form entirely new species? Also, if you want to put this whole “over 800 scientists express doubt about evolution” number into perspective, there are currently over a million scientists working in the US alone. 90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today. The fact that you have 800 dummies on your side only proves that education is no guarantee of intelligence.

5. How can you trust the Bible when it has been changed and corrupted so much through the centuries?
I aimed to show everyone that Christianity was nonsense. I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. In fact, I discovered that the Bible is far and away the most meticulously preserved and widely attested documents of the ancient world. No other book even comes close (we go into greater detail on this subject in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). This reliability was confirmed by the 1948 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which showed that after a thousand years of copying, the text as it appears in modern Bibles was more than ninety-five percent the same, word-for-word and letter-for-letter, as it had been three thousand years earlier! And what differences did exist were mainly spelling variations.

The relative consistency of nonsense is of little interest to us. The fact remains that the Bible is little more than a book of fairy-tales. The ancient stories of Gilgamesh and Enkidu have survived the ravages of time, and yet we do not believe that the ancient stories of Sumer are anything but poetic allegory. As a Christian, you’re far more likely to be asked “How can you trust the Bible to guide your morality when it advocates rape, incest, genocide, infanticide and cruelty?”. I’d try and work on the response for that one instead.

6. Hasn’t modern science pretty much disproved the Bible?
t’s hard to imagine anything that is farther from the truth than the idea that modern science has disproved the Bible. In fact, the science of archaeology, to name one field, has repeatedly confirmed the trustworthiness of the biblical accounts (we devote a chapter to this subject in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). Archaeologist William F. Albright wrote,

The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history

We don’t need 18th century skepticism to tell us the Bible is full of holes. Where do we begin? The creation story perhaps, or Noah’s Flood? Shall we discuss what science has to say about the possibility of Jonah living inside a giant fish for three days, or Samson killing thousands of men with a donkey’s jaw-bone? As for the Bible’s take on history, modern archaeology has found little in the way of proof. Take the “City of David“. While Israeli archaeologists acknowledge that there is no evidence linking David to the site, they anticipate eventually finding this proof, and as far as they are concerned, there is no way to convince them otherwise. Proof has remained elusive for Israel’s archaeologists, but it hasn’t prevented anyone there from trying to use it as a political tool to bolster Israel’s claim to ancient Palestine. Does this sound like good science to you?

7. Who even knows if Jesus ever really existed?

The existence of a man named Jesus who lived in Galilee and Judea in the early part of the first century is utterly indisputable from a historical standpoint. In fact, if you ever encounter such a view from a friend or teacher, invite that person to travel with you to Israel. In the land where Jesus once lived, everyone—Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists—consider the idea that never existed to be laughable. Why? Because the evidence of his historicity is a daily reality there.

Is this guy for real? I don’t find the idea laughable at all, and I’m not the only one. Some of the very first Christians, the Gnostics, didn’t believe in a historical Jesus either. You don’t hear much about these early Christians since, like the Aryans, they were mostly wiped out. Questioning the historicity of Jesus isn’t new; we just weren’t allowed to voice contrary opinions for a long time. To claim that everyone agrees on his historical existence is a pretty big disservice to Christian teens desperately trying to defend their bullshit, trust me.

8. Don’t you think Jesus could have been just a good teacher who didn’t intend to be worshiped a god?

Though Christianity and Christians can be pretty unpopular these days, Jesus remains widely admired… even by many people who don’t profess to believe in him or worship him. He is revered as a “good teacher,” as a “philosopher,” but not as who he said he was, according to the historical record. C. S. Lewis famously wrote about this phenomenon:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic— on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg— or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse…let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Creating this kind of dichotomy can’t possibly work in your favor, guys. Any person with a logical mind not indoctrinated to your cult would immediately realize that, if given the choice between God or madman, Jesus certainly fits the description of the latter. When he curses a fig tree for failing to give him fruit, the choice seems fairly obvious. When he claims that diseases are the result of demonic possession, we recognize the words of a loon. Giving him the status of godhood only serves to prove how little Jesus knew about the real world. If he did exist, he is no more remarkable than Apollonius of Tyana, who was claimed to have performed the exact same miracles as Jesus (with the added bonus of being able to pass through walls like David Copperfield).

9. Do you really believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead?
Many theories have been put forth to try to cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. All of  them are inadequate; some are even ludicrous (we devote three chapters to these theories in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). In fact, the historical evidence for the resurrection is so overwhelming, historians have to become “anti-historical” in their efforts to build a case against it. As Lord Darling, a prominent English judge, once said, “No intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.

Lord Darling, for any of you who gives a shit, was a minor historical figure of little importance, and little relevancy. Authority here, in any case, is not needed to contest the Resurrection of a Palestinian Jew 2000 years ago. Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, and what little there is consist of “witness” accounts written decades after his supposed death by people who never even met the guy. If our standards for evidence are so low, than should we also believe that Perseus really did kill the Medusa, and Orpheus braved the underworld to rescue his beloved?

10. How can you believe in that stuff?

The most convincing evidence for the Christian faith is not historical, textual, or archaeological; it is the testimony of a changed life. When I (Josh) set out to disprove the Christian faith, my mind met unassailable facts… but my heart met irresistible love. I met a group of Christians at Kellogg College in Battle Creek, Michigan, who exposed me for the first time to the love of God. Oh, how they loved each other. And I wanted what they had. That love paved the road of faith for me, and thus began my journey of faith. All the evidence in the world—the most powerful arguments and most convincing proofs—probably wouldn’t have gotten through to me if the transforming power of God’s love had not reached my heart through that student group and others.

Always keep in mind that the same will be true of anyone who challenges or questions your faith. Your answers can help open their hearts, but the vibrant evidence of a changed life will always be the most convincing apologetic you can offer.

This is usually where arguments with Christians end: this idea that “a changed life” is somehow proof that their faith is real. While I don’t deny that their beliefs may be genuine, it has no bearing on reality whatsoever. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second regardless of how I feel about it, or whether my life is transformed with such information. If relying on emotion is your idea of a strong defense in face of legitimate criticism, than there’s very little I can do to convince you otherwise. Of course, I can offer you this little piece of advice: don’t expect to blow anyone away with these kinds of pathetic arguments, boys and girls.

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A fan found this article on Kotaku of a woman who supposedly found the image of Jesus on her old Nintendo. Truly it’s a message of hope for all of you gamers out there who worry that the “King of Kings” doesn’t approve of your lifestyle.

A Maryland woman said she was surprised to find what appears to be an image of Jesus Christ on the top of a used Nintendo Entertainment System she purchased on eBay for $US31 this week.

“We were inspecting it for cracks/damage and when we turned it just right into the light, the image showed up,” she said. “Our reaction was mainly curiosity at first. Then as we looked at it closer and ruled out what it couldn’t be, we began to get excited about it.”

They should be excited: think of how much money they can sell this console for now! Some gullible idiot paid $28,000 for a partially digested “Virgin Mary” grill-cheese sandwich, and that thing had to be encased in plastic to ensure it wouldn’t disintegrate into nothingness. Think of how much bread a hard-core Christian gamer will fork out for this piece of Jesus Junk? It’ll be way more than 31 bucks, I can guarantee you that!

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You can learn a lot from a video. Did you know that all drugs, once your brain is “on them”, will resemble a fried egg? I know this for a fact because Rachel Leah Cook smashed someone’s house up with a frying pan to prove it. Clearly, lessons abound in the digital format, so I thought it might be nice to extract some lessons of our own from this christian cartoon courtesy of NuBeat Music (a Christian music label that occasionally dabbles in videos).

#1 – God will give you directions if you’re lost.

Forget about advances in science and technology that allows us to circumnavigate the world thought GPS: God is the only navigator you’ll ever need. Just close your eyes, make a wish, and voila! God (who looks suspiciously like Santa Clause) will appear and give you the directions you so desperately need. It’s better than OnStar, people! All you need to do is surrender yourself (and a massive part of your income) to a deity that needs constant praise and approval!

#2 – Evil people are incompetent

Are you worried that Satan and his hoards of minions might slaughter you in the night? Don’t worry: evil is in fact completely and utterly incompetent. While you may have heard “rumors” of genocides and various holocausts throughout human history, these bumbling fools are easily out-matched through the awesome power of prayer.

#3 – Everyone finds the answer “Because the Bible told me so” 100% convincing.

Your children will never be exposed to skeptical human beings vastly more knowledgeable than they are concerning the historicity of Jesus, Moses, or any other Biblical figure. Everyone is so receptive to the idea of Jesus that any need to further educate yourself is unnecessary.

#4 – When you pray, angels with giant mullets will beat-up the demons that cause cramps.

The power of prayer can cause any miracle to happen, and while your cynical mind may wonder “why can’t they do the same thing for the poor little crippled girl”, keep in mind that the added sympathy she gets from potential converts isn’t something you can easily measure. It must certainly be part of God’s “big plan”, regardless of how cruel or random it might appear to your limited mind.

#5 – Little kids are way more effective at conversion than adults

Adults are merely chauffeurs, driving around the wisdom of 5 year old children where ever they go. You see, we begin knowing everything about the world, being infinitely wise and only slowly polluting our minds with facts, experimental evidence, and skepticism about the world. That’s why when the only grown up starts to speak, it’s because she needs to be “taught” something by someone who still wets the bed. She has so much to unlearn, and all of that starts the minute she stop thinking and starts feeling!

Well, I feel properly educated now. With my navigation, health and entire future in the hands of Santa Clause, I feel ready for the wider world. Is it finally time for me to leave the nest and start preaching the world of the Lord? If this video is anything like real life, then the answer is a resounding “Fuck Yeah!”

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If you’re a small church in the West, odds are that attendance is at an all time low, tithing is way down, and desperate vicars are looking for ways to attract people into their nonsense. With profits dwindling away, any bit of parlor magic or cheap holy relic is bound to seem like a boon. Of course, it’s important to capitalize on these opportunities while your congregation is still shockingly ignorant and impressionable. Such was the hope for the now defunct “Wax Jesus” in a small church in Wiltshire.

An “image of Jesus” seen in dripped wax by worshippers at a church in Wiltshire has been removed by a cleaner. Created over a four-month period, the wax image was apparently removed by a diligent cleaner last week, although nobody has owned up.

Owned up to what? Doing their fucking job? If cleaners had to keep every stain that looked like someone’s extremely blurry messiah, then no cleaning would ever get done. Remember that Christians have been “Waiting for Godot” for over 2000 years, and that’s bound to make anyone restless. They want him to return so badly that they’ll start worshiping toast if it looks even faintly like someone in their supernatural pantheon. How do you tell someone in such denial of reality that their God is no more real than Santa Clause?

I find the response of the church warden especially revealing:

“I felt really disappointed actually and I wished I’d done more about preserving it,” admitted Mrs Irwin.

“The Church of England is not very good at this sort of thing and if I’d done something sooner it could have been a bit of a money spinner.”

There you go. Thanks for finally being honest with us! Rather than be upset that their false idol is now gone, the Church regrets that they aren’t as organized and efficient as the other faiths when it comes to exploiting opportunities to scam gullible people out of their hard earned cash. I mean, who wouldn’t want to pay premium monies to stare at a bunch of wax that looks like Cat Stevens?

I will say this for their congregation: most had not been fully convinced of its divinity, and so the loss of Wax Jesus is no big loss to them. I’d say for people who are superstitious and cling to anything that might resemble their hippy messiah, they show a remarkable amount of skepticism when it came to the sighting. It’s a fucking miracle!

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This is so stupid I felt like ignoring it, but since today is “make fun of ignorant Catholics Day”, I had to include it. You’re all intimately aware of the demise of bin Laden, but did you know that it was John Paul II that was responsible? That’s what the dumb-ass leader of Peru thinks:

Peruvian President Alan Garcia says Pope John Paul II should get credit for the death of Osama bin Laden.”His first miracle was to remove from the world the incarnation of evil, the demonic incarnation of crime and hatred, giving us the news that the person who blew up towers and buildings is no longer.”

Does this guy have any proof of what he’s saying? Of course not. He’s just making shit up at this point. If your chosen religion was still harbouring child rapists, preventing rape victims from getting abortions, and contributing to millions of people dying of AIDS, then you’d be looking for any amount of good news as well. It’s just that when you’re as evil as the Catholic Church, it turns out you have to make up crazy shit to justify your existence. That’s what they’ve always done to survive.

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With all the bad press they’ve been getting recently for harboring child-rapists, continuing their campaign to prevent contraceptive use in AIDS-ridden Africa, and saying generally hateful things about gays, the Vatican is looking for a bit of good news. Their deliverance has taken the form of a disfigured young boy, saved from the clutches of death by medical science and a combative immune system. His parents happened to be Catholics, and the child’s “miraculous” recovery was seen as an opportunity to thank the wrong people for saving their son.

Catholics believe in the ability of dead people to intervene in prayer. Often this is referred to as “intercessory prayer”, a kind of bureaucratic way of talking to God. Because you’re a worthless ant, someone dead but far worthier of God’s love can attempt to compel this capricious entity to be merciful. In the case of Jake Finkbonner (yes, that’s a real last name), this apparently involved him being saved from one of god’s loving flesh eating viruses.

At the trauma unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Craig Rubens, a pediatric infectious disease specialist, instantly suspected a flesh-eating bacteria called strep A. It was consuming Jake’s face with terrifying speed.

“It’s like lighting one end of a parchment paper,” he says, “and you just watch it spread from that corner very fast, and you’re stamping it on one side, and it’s flaming up on another.”

Dr. Richard Hopper, chief of plastic surgery at Seattle Children’s, had never seen a case so dire.

“It’s almost as if you could watch it moving in front of your eyes,” he says. “The redness and the swelling — we would mark it and within the hour it would have spread another half-inch.”

While surgeons struggled valiantly to save Jake’s life, his parents busied themselves with superstitious nonsense.

“Donny and I went off to the chapel and just surrendered Jake back to God,” she recalls. “We just said, ‘God, he is yours. Thy will be done, and if it is your will to take him home, then so be it.’ “

Jake is of Native decent, so the local priest instructed his parents to pray through a dead Mohawk nun by the name of Kateri Tekakwitha. Born in 17th century America, Kateria had horrible scars from small pox (brought on by God’s love no doubt), and took an interest in Christianity, fleeing to a convent in Quebec. Her faith took on a masochistic element; she would often perform acts of self mortification such as sleeping on thorns or cutting herself while praying for the salvation of her people. This insane woman, who died at the age of 24, would later become the subject of Leonard Cohen’s second novel, Beautiful Losers.

And guess what? The doctors pull it off, and the kid gets a new lease on life:

Surgeon Richard Hopper says after two weeks and a dozen surgeries, the team of doctors had little hope they could get ahead of the bacteria. And when they realized they did, he says, it was breathtaking.

So where exactly is this fucking miracle, you ask? It seems pretty clear that the surgery worked, and yet purveyors of nonsense are tripping over themselves trying to congratulate a confused and isolated nun who died over 3 centuries ago. Congratulations, guys: you’re all fucking geniuses.

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Where do I start with this ass clown? I feel like he’s trying to sell me a used car or something. Let’s quickly examine his claims, shall we?

1. Does Truth Exist?
I think you’ll find that this is a loaded question when it comes to religion. For them, truth means only that their specific beliefs are true, rather than admit that an objective truth outside their schema is possible. This would involve the possibility of believers being wrong, and they just can’t accept that.

2. Does God exist?
Apparently they use 2 scientific arguments to “prove” that there’s an all powerful loving God that created the Universe. How many of you are willing to bet that it’s just more of that pointless “anthropic principle” shit they think they understand?

3. Are Miracles Possible?
This is where these clowns try and pretend that there’s scientific evidence that Jesus resurrected from the dead, and is therefore your Lord and master. Yeah, can’t wait to be blown away by this fucking science..

4. Is the New Testament True?
That’s your final question? Christians are hilarious sometimes, don’t you think? They want so desperately to have proof that their provincial, entirely unimpressive God. You have to love his slippery slope line of thinking: if I can prove that truth exists, that God exists, and that miracles are possible, it must mean that the NT is true! Actually, no it doesn’t. Even if the first three propositions were true, it certainly doesn’t mean that a contradicting piece of mythology is. Sorry bro, but it turns out that you’re just not smart enough to be an atheist.

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There are few men with the batting record of Peter Popoff. The man sems to have an innate ability to scam people out of their hard-earned money, and does so without breaking a sweat. He’s been largely free to bamboozle people out of their hard earned money using the best shield against rationality, responsibility and accountability: religion.

He began in the 70′s as a faith healer, racking up millions of dollars by making eerily accurate and dramatic “revelations” about his audiences illnesses, until James Randi exposed him on Johnny Carson in 1986. Turns out Popoff was using a hidden ear-piece and his wife’s rather unprophetic reading of pre-filled prayer cards to make his convincing “miracles” happen. Shortly after, Popoff’s ministry went bankrupt, and he disappeared.

But much like the plague, which lies dormant until our collective immune system is once again primed for infection, Popoff has had a number of resurrections. He first started popping up in Canada in the late 90′s selling holy water he claimed could work miracles (he also said the water came from a magic source near Chernobyl where animals had no diseases).

Apart from selling snake oil, he’s now turned his sights to those in need of debt relief. His latest scam, which he heavily advertises on BET (black entertainment television), is to ask people to make donations, and in exchange promises to ask God to relieve their debt.

When asked to answer critics who say he takes advantage of desperate people, Popoff issued a written response.

“As for religious leaders calling me a fraud, that places me in good company,” Popoff said. “The religious leaders of Christ’s day called him a fake and a demon-possessed fraud. They went so far as to crucify Him. I have no time for my critics, I have a job to do and I’m doing it for God’s glory.”

God’s glory, so far, has netted his ministry roughly 24 million dollars a year, and allowed him to command a salary of more than half a million dollars.

It would be easy to stop this man were it not for the fact that he is part of a whole industry of deceit and unaccountability. Prosperity gospels do very much the same thing he does, and the fact that all of this is considered a form of religious expression means that they aren’t doing anything illegal by lying to people in order to make money. After all, if you prosecuted every single preacher who took money from gullible people in exchange for some improvable supernatural blessing, every single God-pimp would be broke or behind bars.

So long as people continue to believe in absurdities without any critical thought, scumbags like Peter Popoff will enjoy all the luxuries afforded to them by such profound ignorance. You want to make people scam-proof? Start by teaching them enough critical thinking skills to see through the deception of religion. Otherwise, someone like Popoff will always be waiting to pounce on the weak minded and gullible.

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