This week, we discuss the scam of prosperity gospels, JW’s continue to try and fight courts to deny child life saving treatment, and the new Speaker of the House being a religious nutbag.
Christian Universities are a joke. The notion that an educational institution would have an official religion is against the very idea of learning. Forget being able to challenge the beliefs and ideas of others, which is the bedrock of any liberal education. Instead, if you are a sensitive Christian that despises the idea that you might share real-estate with people who don’t believe in exactly the same this, then the University of Grand Canyon might be for you. All you need to accept is the idea that the amount of money you’ll be spending on your education will be way different than what you were originally quoted.
This is because they were recently fined 37 million dollars for deceiving students pursuing doctoral programs into paying more money than they were originally slated to give. This represents the largest penalty ever issued to an “educational” institution for this kind of activity. They should feel proud.
The University ranks 395th out of 435 in the US, which means that if you were to randomly pick any school in America, the odds of getting a worst one would be quite low. Grand Canyon ranks in the bottom 25% of American Universities, and from the graduation rates, it’s obvious that the school is far more interested in registrations than graduations.
Here are a few reviews that seem to corroborate this
I spent eight years working on a PhD only to have incompetent dissertation chairs. I was put in an extension course after extension course writing my dissertation proposal with no end in sight. Paying out of pocket. They use up all your student loan money and they don’t care to see you graduate. Horrible experience.
I don’t even know where to start. I am in my first class and can already see I made a huge mistake. The interface is awful and half assed. I was given bad in financial info. It is not worth what you pay.
Were you expecting a religious organization to be interested in anything other than money? Where have you been for the last millennium or two?
It’s not often that the Catholic church tries to do something right. It’s so uncommon that when it happens, the cynical part of me wonders if there might be some ulterior motive behind it. For instance, the Diocese in California is trying to put a stop to fake priests who are tricking recent immigrants into paying thousands of dollars for “services” that would typically be either free or inexpensive.
Diocesan spokesperson Erin Haight told NBC News the bogus clerics “are charging these poor people thousands and thousands of dollars for things like health blessings for communions and confirmations.”
The church is learning lesson in humility, as the police have stated that only victims of the fraud can come forward. There is no legal way to distinguish between a destructive cult and an established religion, so it turns out that anyone that wears a crown of thorns can ask believers for whatever they want, and this kind of theft is totally legal.
Since so many of the victims are illegal immigrants, it’s almost assured that the perpetrators of these scams will continue to do so without resistance. Since they utilize the veneer of religion, they are practically untouchable. All the church can do is try to educate its flock to prevent them from being conned. The irony here is almost palpable.
Religion makes you blind and dumb. Believers always assume that people who share their faith must also share their morality, with devastating consequences. Take for example the case of Roc Anthony Byrd, recently accused of rape, and a number of other sexual battery charges. He would have been caught sooner, but when some of his victims came to the police, they were sent away because Byrd was a fellow member of their church.
One other woman said she attempted to file a report around 2004 to 2005 after being touched inappropriately but the officers involved reportedly said, “oh he would never do that he goes to our church… why would he do that?”
The 52 year old chiropractor had been inappropriately touching his female victims for years with impudence. He must have believed himself invincible, what with the police believing him an upstanding member of society simply because he showed up to their church ceremonies. So strong was the indoctrination of faith that even his victims were in denial about the whole thing”
Court records said another anonymous victim trusted Byrd because she believed he was “such a great Christian man.” When she was touched inappropriately, she thought to herself that the chiropractor surely couldn’t’ve been doing what “he was doing.”
This and other more heinous crimes are perpetuated every day, and the faithful close their eyes to it all. Even when all of their instincts tell them that something is wrong, the power of their indoctrination makes it almost impossible for them to see evil for what it truly is. It’s no wonder pastors and other men of the cloth have gotten away with the rape and mental torture of their flocks’ children; when their victims are in this level of denial about reality, it’s easy pickin’.
Do you remember a few years ago, during the height of the pandemic, when then President and resident idiot-in-chief Donald Trump hinted that drinking bleach was a possible cure for this disease? For those of us not steeped in conspiracy theory, it seemed like it was plucked right out of his limited imagination. This is not the case. It turns out that it’s a health “fad” that’s been marketed for years in Christian circles, and it’s killing them.
It began over a decade ago when an ex-scientologist named Jim Humble wrote a book claiming that what he had unlocked the secret of a magical solution he called “Miracle Mineral Solutions:, or MMS for short. The formula is simple, consisting primarily of Chlorine Dioxide, which is a commercially available bleach used to clean pools and hot tubs. Some municipalities use it to treat their water, but to ensure that it is safe, it cannot exceed 10 PPM (parts per million). That’s the equivalent of roughly one drop for every 50 liters of water. This “miracle cure” proports to treat illnesses such as cancer, leukemia, diabetes, AIDS, and a variety of other disorders. Instead of being sold as medicine, which would have put them immediately into the crosshairs of the Food and Drug Administration, they decided instead to market it as a religious sacrament, to be taken as part of a “healing ritual”. Humble registered the “Genesis II Church of Health and Healing” church, which anyone could be ordained in for the right price.
He has since recanted his claims:
“There are certainly times I have said some things that I probably should have said differently. For lack of a better way to express things at the time — or because others put words in my mouth, in the past I have stated that MMS cures most of all diseases. Today, I say that MMS cures nothing!”
The damage has already been done, however. This “miracle cure” took on a life of it’s own, and since then, a number of people have been arrested for poisoning their “flock”. Recently, a family was found guilty in the state of Florida for selling their poison to desperate Americans. Mark Grenon, along with his three sons Jonathan, Jordan and Joseph, were sentenced to 15 years in prison for selling MMS as a cure for Covid-19. The severity of the sentenced was largely because of the desperation of their clientele, many of whom had refused the vaccine and were desperate for alternatives. With the cost of healthcare being out of the range of most of the poor, this inexpensive solution was sold, not as medicine, but as “donations”, which also has the added benefit of avoiding pesky taxes. In total, these criminals sold more than 1 million dollars worth of poison.
The Grenon’s family’s Linkedin profile doesn’t even try to hide the fact that they were selling an industrial bleach, although they preferred the more appetizing word “salt”:
Genesis II Church of Health and Healing was founded by Bishop Jim Humble in 2010 to bring simple and largely overlooked healing methodologies and a self-responsible approach to wellness to the world… The major breakthrough that lead to the necessity to create the Church was the discovery that a commonly used mineral salt, sodium chlorite, when properly activated, made the simple molecule chlorine dioxide (ClO2) available within the body when taken internally or applied topically. Chlorine dioxide is an unique, weak oxidizer that eliminates many pathogens, including viruses, fungi, and anaerobic bacteria, and will break up toxins in the blood and deep in tissues so they can be flushed out of the body.
If you thought that this horror was confined only to Florida, you would be mistaken. A few months ago, a Calgary man named Pedro Acuna Saavedra was given a fine of $12,000 (a prison sentence would have been preferable, given that one person was in critical condition as a result of ingesting it) for operating as a branch of Genesis II Church selling this poison. In Argentina, a man by the name of Andreas Kalcker was arrested in connection with the poisoning of a young child. His naïve parents were convinced Chlorine would somehow ward of Covid-19. He has since died. Now Kalcker faces 25 years in jail.
The fact that people are going to jail has only fueled the idea that all of this is a giant conspiracy against Humble’s “teachings”, courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry; the favorite bugbear of QAnon believers. As with any belief that is challenged, the faithful are doubling down on rather than accept the idea of being wrong, even at the cost of their own lives.
What I find annoying is just how powerless and impotent the FDA, and other government agencies around the world are when it comes to the sale of kinds of dangerous products under the guise of medicine. You can thank the cloak of religion for providing a workaround that has largely tied the hands of most regulatory bodies who shy away at the possibility of offending the faithful. Just read this impotent sounding letter the FDA sent Genesis II informing them that they needed to take down their product. Here’s a sample:
If you cannot complete corrective action within 48 hours, state the reason for the delay and the time within which you will complete the corrections. If you believe that your products are not in violation of the FD&C Act, include your reasoning and any supporting information for our consideration.
Keep in mind that this “Church” had been exposed by the media over 6 years ago, but it took the government years to do anything about it. How many people died or became sick as a result? Considering how polite this letter was, the family probably thought that they would only get a slap on the wrist. They were wrong.
If you want to lose all faith in humanity, check out some of the comments in one of the videos exposing this dangerous product:
“After giving this to my brother having hepatitis c . The doctor at the VA after testing his blood for ammonia levels asked me what I was doing to him. His blood test had come back as normal for the ammonia levels . They had been treating that with a drug called lactulose which helped but didn’t bring it to normal . I gave 2 drops twice a day for only two days this cleared it out and his thinking returned to normal. Thanks Jim and all.”
MMS saved my life. I didn’t understand what it was. I was desperate after being diagnosed with covid19 and my medical doctor refused to prescribed medications. After being unable to move, severe pain, and having shallow breathing I drank one bottle of mms and I was able to breathe and sit up. The following day I was able to talk and walk. That is my testimony.
The comments in any video that features MMS is typically overrun by these types of testimonials. Anecdotally, this can all sound pretty impressive to someone that’s not familiar with the scientific method. In low dosages, it can be passed by the body fairly easily, and act as a powerful placebo. I’m even willing to concede that for people in Africa that have limited access to clean drinking water, the addition of this product might actually have some benefits. However, I can’t help but stress that all of the criticisms levied against the government for prosecuting vendors ignores the fact that people are attempting to pass off medicine as a religious offering. Anything can be a poison, including water, if the dosages are too high. Add the fact that Chlorine Dioxide is extremely potent, this is a recipe for disaster.
If MMS does have some form of health benefit, there is nothing stopping their proponents from commissioning a scientific study to show its effectiveness. There are plenty of highly trained professionals that would love to get paid to research things. Science is not something that is controlled by powerful elite. Hell, it can even be done at home by amateurs, so long as they are using the principles outlined by the methodology of science. Findings must then challenged by others, and stand up to scrutiny if it is to be given any credence. To pretend that science is the domain of the rich and powerful only demonstrates how little these people understand it.
Even with people being jailed of fined, it hasn’t stopped the product from being marketed. Recently, Vice did a news segment on a pastor by the name of Joe Salant. He’s selling this poison promising that it can cure autism. Surely a genetic disease needs only the introduction of pool cleaner to magically disappear. Give the man a Nobel prize already!
Trust is something that must be earned with time. It must be awarded to people based on merit, and nothing else. Unfortunately, religious people are often easily fooled, for when when people cloak their intention under the guise of spiritual enlightenment, they can easily override our instinct to reluctantly grant it. The result can often be tragic.
In Gwinnet County, Georgia, the community is reeling from the harrowing details of the torture and death of a South Korean woman at the hands of a cult called the “Soldiers of Christ”. Following a tipoff from one of the cult members (now in custody), the body of Se Hee Cho was found in the trunk of her car. She was emaciated and starved to a paltry 70lbs, and her body had been burned in an effort to conceal her identity.
Details are still murky, but it appears that the matriarch of the family, Mihee Lee, had convinced the victim to immigrate to the United States. Se Hee thought she was joining a religious group on a mission, but their only goal was to extort her for money, beating and starving her in the process. After coercing her into wiring them thousands of dollars, the cult ultimately killed her, and tried to conceal their crime.
As the trial begins, I’m sure more horrifying details will emerge (and I’ll be sure to keep my eyes open for more information). One thing is for sure, though: so long as religion is granted their underserved status, and automatic trust, more tragedies of this kind will continue to occur.
When you professionally believe in nonsense for a living, it can be nearly impossible to distinguish reality from fantasy. Most of the time, this kind of confusion is innocent, almost childlike. When you believe intently that putting your hands together and wishing things to make them come true, there’s very little harm you can do to yourself and others. However, when a person in a position of authority lacks the intelligence and the understanding to foresee danger, they can easily lead their flock astray.
Take as a prime example pastor Joe Salant. When he isn’t busy rapping to support political candidates, he’s selling industrial bleach tablets to his flock under the guise that this can cure autism. It works in pretty much the same way a gun would does: point it at the person you want to no longer have the disease, pull the trigger, and once they are dead, their symptoms will disappear.
You would think that people would be reluctant to ingest a poison. You would be wrong:
A message on the Safrax website informs customers that there is a 2-4 week delay in sending out orders specifically due to overwhelming demand for the product as a result of the tablets being featured on the radio show of pseudoscience conspiracist Mike Adams.
What I find surprising here is that no one is in jail. There are bound to be tons of people who get seriously ill from consuming this garbage. Where are the authorities in all of this? Is someone immune from prosecution when they poison people simply because it’s a matter of their faith?
As one customer review on their site indicates, these pills are crazy dangerous:
“I can’t find any information about the dosage of the tablets… and I am currently sick. I tried dissolving one in a gallon [of water] and it tastes like pure bleach. I just wanna get well.”
Who knew that ingesting the stuff you use to kill germs would have such an adverse affect on people? Oh yeah, I know who knew: fucking everyone with their head screwed on right!
p.s. The recommended use of this product is 1 PPM 9parts per million), which means that the guy who put it in a gallon consumed hundreds of times the recommended dosage.
Going to the dentist is never pleasant. The needles they put in your mouth, or the high pitch drill they use to remove parts of your teeth, ranks pretty high up there in terms of nightmare fuel. However, for a 4 year old little girl, it was far worse than simply having a bit of pain. It basically ruined her life forever.
During a routine procedure back in 2016, Nevaeh Hall began to have seizures as soon as she was administered a sedative. Rather than call emergency services, Bathaniel Jefferson telephoned both her pastor and a pharmacist instead, and for several hours, the lack of oxygen to Nevaeh wrecked havoc on her brain and nervous system. She is confined to a wheelchair, is now blind and deaf, and will never fully recover from this dentist’s negligence.
A jury has found her guilty of one count of recklessly causing body injury to a child. The prosecution wanted 20 years. The sentence itself is only worth probation, so anyone hoping for more was greatly disappointed.
A civil trial soon followed, with the family being awarded a 95.5 million dollar lawsuit. Unfortunately, it is unlikely the family will ever see this money, as Jefferson’s insurance is unable to cover such a large amount.
Why the hell would anyone call a pastor in a time like that? Was she hoping for some magic prayers to fix he fuckup or something? Bizarre.
I hate the Salvation Army. First off, they aren’t a charitable organization. They are registered as a church, which means while some of the money and goods people give to them do go to the needy, they still run it like it is a business, buying expensive real estate, and more importantly, being exempt from needing to show where it uses its money and for what. Don’t believe me? Take a look at their mission statement:
“the advancement of the Christian religion… of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable objects beneficial to society or the community of mankind as a whole.”
It’s that “and other charitable objects” which make us think these guys are a charity, but while they do offer some helpful services, it’s more of combination of a church/business than anything else. For instance, did you know they own a real estate portfolio worth in excess of 4 billion dollars? It’s difficult to know how much of their money goes to charity, since as a registered church, they’re exempt from financial scrutiny. Basically, the Salvation Army is like a gigantic mystery box filled with money, goods, and massive financing from the government.
If you were still thinking of donating money or goods after having been told how shitty they are, consider what happened in Toronto recently. Former CEO of the Toronto branch, David Rennie, recently surrendered to police after investigators found 2 million dollars in stolen merchandise he was hoarding in a warehouse. The search began after an anonymous tipster noticed there were over 100k in toys missing from inventory over the period of two years (I ran a warehouse, and I have to tell you, that’s a ridiculous amount of time for things to go missing, and a ridiculous amount of goods to go unnoticed).
The organization now claims it will work to avoid any further problems with the help of accounting firm KPMG. You might remember them for the brilliant audit they did of Bernie Maddoff’s ponzi scheme. Perhaps the Olympic bribery scandal is more familiar to you. How about something more recent, like their failed due diligence in the Hewlett Packard / Autonomy that cost the company 5 billion dollars in losses?
Yeah, I’m sure they’ll do a fantastic job of ensuring an organization that has no real accountability is doing right by us…
f there’s a time in one’s life fraught with tragedy, it’s probably the hormone saturated period in our lives known as our ‘teen years’. How many of us have done something so incredibly stupid it still haunts us today? Tyler Alred will need to live with the fact his drunk driving took the life of his friend and passenger, 16-year-old John Luke Dum. He’ll also need to spend the next decade going to church regularly, lest he break the conditions of his sentence:
An Oklahoma teen convicted of manslaughter has sentenced to 10 years of probation, with requirements that include regularly attending church….In deferring the sentence, the judge not only ordered Alred to a decade of church attendance, but also required him to finish high school and welding school.
Alred’s attorney and the victim’s family agreed to the terms of the sentence.
Now I know the family has actually agreed to it (mostly because it seems to oblige their son NOT to become a high school dropout loser), but it doesn’t change the fact even the judge realized how unconstitutional the whole thing was. Nevertheless, he thought it wise to include a sentence forcing the young man to attend church services for at least 10 years of his life. This sentence is obviously meant to give him structure and discipline, but it’s frustrating people still think religion helps you act more moral. It’s simply not true. In fact, religious can often make you act totally immoral, with the added ‘bonus’ of feeling simultaneously morally superior and thinking your invisible friend is on your side (killing others in his supposed name comes to mind). If anything, he should have ordered the kid to read The God Delusion, since the atheist prison population is disproportionately small. Could you imagine the outrage if he did? Fox News would have a fucking meltdown.
A few days ago, I debated two religious dudes on a show called “Faith and Skepticism” (they might as well call the show oil and water considering how incompatible those two things are), and the one thing they couldn’t seem to grasp is the idea that “hearing the voice of God” is usually a sign of insanity. Obviously, the degree of this insanity can be measured by analyzing what is being communicated. If the little voice inside your head is telling you that you’re a good person and need to donate more money to whatever religious institution you’re part of, we would rank this as fairly low on the nut-job scale (though medical treatment should still be sought). If the voice tells you to stab your husband because Jesus and Mary told you he’s Satan spawn, you’ve probably reached the point where serious medication is your only “salvation”
A woman who allegedly stabbed her husband said she did it after, “Jesus and Mary told me to kill him because he is Satan’s spawn!” according to a police report… Horry County Police deputies were called to [Tammy] Estep’s residence at approximately 6:45 a.m. on the day of the incident. When they arrived, Estep told officers that “She was sent to save the world,” according to a police report.
What better way to save the world than by stabbing your partner repeatedly? My question is how long had she been over the deep end, and were there any other signs people ignored up until that point, convinced that her scary nonsense was just religious fervor. It’s kind of hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s not a coincidence…
So, what do you get for exposing the corruption of an organization like the Vatican? Well, how about an 18 month prison term handed down by the very institution you were trying to expose? Oh, and you can add the cost of the trial to the list of his expenses:
The pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted Saturday of aggravated theft for leaking confidential papal documents and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
He was also ordered to pay the costs of the trial at the Vatican City courthouse.
Well, he could have spent a full three years in jail, but the judge felt there were ‘extenuating circumstances’. Like what, the fact that your organization is so corrupt it would rather jail tattle-tales than actual child rapists? Or how about the fact you aren’t legally your own state, having achieved ‘independence’ from Italian fascists in the 1920′s?
I suppose you could argue that it’s Paolo’s fault for getting involved in a creepy cult that seems to be able to create its own laws, jail its own adherents for daring to expose corruption, and do so as the rest of the world watches on.
This week, Carisa joins me as we talk about global warming, Curiosity rover landing on Mars, and the shooting at a Sikh temple by a white supremacist.
There’s a predictable pattern to the way religious people deal with tragedy. Undoubtedly, this kind of horrific thing makes them question the dogma they’ve been spoon fed their entire life – that an omnipotent being cares for their well being, especially when it seems so senseless; the evils of the world throw this ‘loving god’ thing back in their face, and they don’t like it.
Then come the rationalizations:
Let’s be clear: there are no easy answers to the deepest questions of suffering. Libraries overflow with the volumes that have been written to address these questions. Centuries of philosophers, pundits and preachers have reflected on the existence of evil, the meaning of pain and the role of God in suffering.
Centuries? More like millennia. In fact, some 300 years before the supposed birth of Jesus, a Greek philosopher by the name of Epicurus essentially laid out the most compelling argument regarding the notion of God’s relationship to evil ever made. His argument has yet to be refuted:
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?
Your answer, sir?
The capacity to choose God and goodness came with the commensurate ability to choose evil. Is it loving to force his creation to follow his order, or to teach it and leave the creature to choose? It would seem that God came to the same conclusion that America’s founders did many millennia later: compulsory virtue is no virtue at all.
Ah yes, the old free will argument. God could eliminate all evil, but in doing so he would be subjugating us, and we wouldn’t have the ‘option’ to turn away from him. That’s all fine and good for the god of the Old Testament, who simply obliterates the unbeliever’s soul. The Christian god, unfortunately, has a rather unpleasant fate for anyone who exercises their own free will and chooses not to love an invisible tyrant. In his view, it is more moral to allow a person the right to choose their actions for a lifetime (however brief) than to torture that person forever for making the wrong ones. Sorry, your god sucks.
Let me suggest simply that God, in his sovereignty, has chosen to make our decisions meaningful. Consequently, much of what happens on earth neither conforms to, nor results from, his preference. There are at least four influences on human events: God’s will, to be sure; but also the will of Satan, our adversary; peoples’ choices, for better or for worse; and natural law (gravity, collision, combustion, and the like).
What a confusing mess of influences here. Why does Satan even exist? Sure, we make him out to be the bad guy, but it seems to me he’s simply the ‘bad cop’ to God’s ‘good cop’ routine. Without Satan there to look like the bad guy, you realize that by failing to rid the universe of this loathsome entity, he is in fact endorsing evil. Like Epicurus pointed out: if God is all powerful, and there is still evil, it is by his choice alone. One cannot condone evil without being part of it.
You don’t get nearly the same consternation in Burundi or Burma, because suffering is normal to them. God and hard times coexist intuitively there.
God likes to be where the action is, and there’s no greater place of suffering than Africa. And because tragedies are a regular occurrence there, Aurora isn’t a big deal. See, isn’t that a satisfying answer to the problem of evil? It isn’t?
The God of the Bible promises no exemption from suffering. In fact, he all but promises suffering. He does not suggest that his followers won’t go through fire, but rather that we won’t burn up.
What a deal! Sign me up for this omnipotent god who spends his time ‘grieving’ with me when my infant son dies of a highly treatable illness. Hopefully I got him baptized in time, or he’ll burn in hell!
Where was God in Aurora? He was on the lawn in front of the Civic Building as thousands gathered in solidarity, hope, and love at a packed prayer vigil last Sunday.
God was with those people who, powerless as they are, could do nothing but grieve. Sounds like the all powerful creator of the universe, doesn’t it?
Redemption has only begun in Aurora, and already God is everywhere. There will be beauty once this story is written that overshadows and transcends the ashes.
It’s doubtful any of this supposed beauty would make up for the innocent lives lost at something as peaceful and enjoyable as a movie. I would rather none of this happened rather than see an opportunity for human solidarity in the face of tragedy.
So you fucked up. You drove drunk, smashed into another car, and injured the passengers. Now you’re part of the legal system, and at the mercy of very human, and very flawed human beings who have a very tenuous grasp on the separation of church and state. The result is probation, and an odd book report on the book of Job.
Such is the fate of Cassandra Tolley, who wound up agreeing to this strange request from Judge Michael Nettles (which appears to be the only reason this hasn’t caused more uproar). He wants her to read the book of Job, which has a certain tinge of cruel irony to it. You see, Tolley is apparently a victim of abuse, which would certainly make her feel some sympathy with poor Job, who is tortured by God in order to win a bet with Satan.
The story is said to have a happy ending, but considering his entire family was annihilated, I’m not entirely sure having twice the livestock makes up for it. In any case, I hold to my statement that reading the Bible is the fastest path to atheism. What else are you supposed to conclude from the story other than God considers humanity no better than toys, to be used, abused, and discarded as he deems fit? What a swell guy! Can he have all my money?
