Evangelical Stereotypes

Who is sending the guy money then, surely it is exclusivley Christians who are sending Poppof MILLIONS of dollars.How thick does someone have to be to send money to a guy who has been caught fleecing money out of the sick and aged?Only American Christians are stupid enough to send millions of dollars to an obvious crook.Then you have the embarrassing Ron Wyatt paraphanalia, people buying videos of 'chariot wheels' at the bottom of the Red Sea when the Bible doesn't even say the crossing was at the Red Sea! Then those stupid videos about Sodom and Gomorah, Noahs Ark, and the Ark of the Covenant. Wyatt found them all and retarded American Christians are still buying the stuff long after Wyatt popped his clogs.There appears to be a certain type of Christian, who is generally American, that needs some sort of confirmation about the events in the Bible in order to support their faith. The funny thing is, they are too dense to realise that a whole army of chariot wheels at the bottom of the Red Sea, or a big boat on the mountains of Ararat with Noah written on it, proves absolutely bugger all in the Bible.What is wrong with these people?

Ahem... ticket to heaven... But that's just it. Just how many cultures and religions have christianity destroyed in the last 2,000 years? South America didn't just decide to convert one day peacefully, you know.Here is my opinion. I think these humanitarian missionary christian organizations are just as evil as the nazi organization. Both aim to destroy other cultures and religions. The only difference is one decided to sugar coat their goal and the other just did it using poison gas. Oh sure, I don't doubt it. But think of the reason. To repeat what Lewis Black once said, the god of the bible is like "I can see everything you do and I'm going to kick your ass!"And thus, we have billions of adults that have the mentality of mere children. You see, children don't have principles. They can't tell the difference between right and wrong. You threaten to punish them in order to get them to not do wrong.

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

We live in a marketplace of ideas. First of all, you cant simply lump all humanitarian Christian organizations into one camp. So what if some of them proselytize while feeding people? Its just like going to claim the offer of the free gift and having to listen to a sales pitch. Most people know what they are getting in to.While it is true that Christianity has done some vile things in the name of spreading the franchise, I don't think that society has a right to shut them up and keep them in a box. As long as we have a free marketplace of ideas here in America, all views should be allowed to be expressed.

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"All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."--C.S.Lewis
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“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”--General Omar Bradley
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"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog." -GK Chesterson

Phat, I recall spending at least a dozen posts explaining the difference between giving a free gift in exchange for your time in a sales pitch and taking advantage of desperate poor people.We live in a society of plenty. I remember in college the local pizza place occasionally gave out a free medium pizza to any student who was willing to sign up for a credit card. I always showed up, spent about 10 minutes of my time listening to their sales person, signed up for the credit/bank card, got my pizza, and canceled the card the next day. But even if I decided not to bother with the hassle, I knew for a fact that I could have afforded that medium pizza with my own money. No real loss to me.On the other hand, people who live in constant poverty have to watch their children slowly starve to death. Then here comes the christian missionaries who hold food on one hand and a cross on the other. Don't play dumb and pretend like these people actually have a choice between abandoning what they value for some food and abandoning the food to keep their culture. They have no choice. And christians know this. That's why they target desperate people to recruit.If christians are truly as good as they claim, then think superhero. Don't make people to choose between necessary glorious food and their culture. Just help them out without any bullshit.When I worked for habitat for humanity, I never once talked about intellectual atheism to the people I helped. I think they were all christians. Helping less fortunate people should have no pricetag to it. Just help them out and leave it at that. Don't destroy their culture in the process. Uh, you misunderstand me. I am not on a mission to shut up anyone. I believe in free speech above all else. This includes my freedom of speech to bitch about christians taking advantage of desperate people to destroy their cultures.Just remember this. South America didn't become predominantly christian peacefully or willingly. Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

OK, I see your point--you are talking about the extremists. I personally know of a few good inner city organizations, many of them Christian, who host events for the children and families and who do not preach. Of course they DO have an ulterior motive--namely getting pictures to pass on to their donors showing what good things they do.

Um, there are other ways you can preach beside using your mouth, you know. Some do it with songs. Some do it with bill boards. You'd be surprised what kinds of creative ways christians come up with to spread the "good word".

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

I don't think it is people that are thick. I think it is people that are desperate and hurting. People that will grasp at anything that gives hope, That is what makes this so despicable.

Fundamentalist Christians believe that once they have accepted Christ and become Christian that the business of heaven is done. I would suggest that they are ignoring parts of the Bible but that is how it is.If anything they are considering that is a gift of a "ticket to heaven" for the individual they have converted. Actually you are roughly 100 years out of date. If feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked causes people to become Christian, then so be it. Just because people become Christian does not mean a change in culture. Western culture, including things like films, televison, foreign trade, tourism, the internet etc.have done far more to change foreign cultures than anything that Christianity has ever done. It is not about punishing you if you do wrong, it is about encouraging you to do right. It seems to me that there are people with all sorts of beliefs that have a problem with right and wrong.

That is absolute nonsense. Christian aid goes into foreign countries all the time with NO pre-conditions. People get the food, clothing etc. and they are free to believe whatever they want. If the aid workers who have given their time and money are holding a cross in one hand, (which I do not accept as being the norm), the individual is free to ignore or reject the implied message without it impacting on whether or not he/she is going to get food for their family the next day.How much aid do you think would be going to Africa if it wasn't for Christian groups. That is not a choice they are being asked to make. I just got back from spending several hours with two different senior's groups leading sing songs. I don't think I impacted their culture either. So what?

Or like supplying them with food, clothing, shelter, medical care and other such evils.

GDR, try to understand this from my perspective. I was a history major before I turned to science. Even though I stopped declaring history as my major in my undergrad, I continued to take classes and do research on history subjects because history fascinates me so. My senior project was on the devastation of the Americas. I am very well aware of christianity's past history of belittling and destruction of other cultures. Much of the conversions in history didn't happen willingly or peacefully. Missionary works usually involved telling/forcing people to abandon their beliefs and values. A major factor in the decimation of the population of Meso-American civilizations was the culture shock that force-christianization brought upon the native populations.Only the arrival of the modern age did public opinion begin to sway toward the other way. If anything, christianity didn't turn from witch burning to a message of love because of its inherent nature. It's because of independent free thinkers that began to question the methods christianity employed to recruit followers. This is why I'm not convinced all the good stuff that you mentioned that are coming out of christian charity groups aren't just sugar coatings. Forgive me for being skeptical, but 2000 years of persecution and destruction of other cultures is a very long chapter in our history to ignore. I simply don't believe that anything has changed other than the appearance of the so-called charity groups.But let's not get side-tracked. Why is it that christian churches aren't screaming bloody murder about crooks like Popoff? Why is it that christian churches have allowed anti-gay rights sentiments to be THE factor in every election period? Is it because deep down they don't want to touch the Popoff issue for fear of raising awareness that faith healing is just legalized scam? Is it because deep down the majority of christians are actually bigots?GDR, I don't have to prove anything to you about christianity and it's long history of intolerance. It's right there in your local library. You want us to stop seeing stereotypes more than that? Demonstrate to us that christians do care. Raise awareness. Don't wait for atheists to get involve. Help us raise awareness about these false prophets. Help us help your fellow christians to stop hating gay people. Don't just make the hollier than thou statements. Get out there and do something for a change. Then perhaps televangelist scammers will stop receiving tens of millions of dollars.

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

The vast damage that was done to other cultures was the colonization by the west. It was the British, French, Spanish and others that went about force ably changing cultures. They were doing it to rape the countries for their resources. (As well as literal rape and pillage.) These were not Christian missionaries.As I said earlier, there cultures are being eaten up now by the secular west; not by Christians. Why are you not complaining about the internet and TV going into the third world if you are so concerned about their culture.There were some Christian missionaries who risked their lives for what they believed in to bring Christianity to other cultures a century or more ago. They were well intended but somewhat misguided. Do I think that they should have worked within the confines of the existing cultures? Yes. Do I think that Christians have learned from these past mistakes? Yes.Christians are going into war torn countries, risking their lives to bring aid to those who have been left as orphans, widows and without hope. They are doing it because they believe it is the right thing to do. I have the good fortune to be able to help financially, even though I don't have the guts to do the actual heavy lifting myself by putting my life on the line, but at least I'm not sitting back criticizing them because they are doing it in the name of Christ.As far as Popoff is concerned Christians aren't any better equipped to shut him down than anyone else. People are willingly being defrauded. It seems that what he is doing is legal or he'd be in prison where in my view he belongs.

I knew you were going to make this comparason. You are not the first religionist to compare spreading the knowledge of the god of abraham to spreading education. And I have a feeling you're not the last.My experience tells me that no matter what I say people like you will not understand the difference between teaching people how to irrigate properly and teaching them about the god of abraham. Therefore, I'm not going to waste my time again going down this dead-end path. If you can't already see the difference between preaching your precious bible to third worlders and teaching them how to build a better infrastructure, then you will never be able to see the difference. Again, christian churches seems to find the time to hold protest rallies against gay people. They also seem to have the time to rally enough votes to past referendums after referendums against boys kissing. And yet we've heard absolutely nothing from them in regard to crooks like Popoff.Let me ask you this. When was the last time your church discussed about false prophets? I'm not talking about just reciting something from the bible. I'm talking about really discussing about false prophets in the real world.Even though we're atheists, my wife and I regularly go to christian churches on sundays. I guess it's something we've gotten used to doing. In all the years that we've been doing this, I've never once heard any sermon to help people guard against crooks like Popoff. We've heard plenty of homosexuality being an abomination and aids being god's punishment for gay people, though.So, again, why are atheists the ones that have to clean up the mess made by christian crooks and liars? Is it because the good christians simply don't care enough? Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

That may be true but it is too general a statement to be that meaningful. What kind of aid? What strings were attached? Compared to what other organizations? I need hard data from a reliable source in order to comment further. Does that mean, no faith, no food? It does with some faith-based charities in the US. That is a vast over generalization. One could just as easily state modern science began with Islam since they invented algebra or with Hinduism since they invented zero. Ever try to do calculus or physics with Roman Numerals and without algebra or zero?However this would be off-topic. If you want to back the assertion that Christianity is the sole cause of modern science, start a new thread. That's great, I am glad that you and the people within your circle of experience have not abandoned what I consider some of the central teachings of Jesus. Let's see, you are in British Columbia right? Could you spare some of those Christians you know to come to West Texas so that the ones in my experience could learn from them? Sorry, but many Christians here that are the most vocal about it also praise war, hate, greed, intolerance and are against science. And never with any conditions? Yes, I posted while ill and sleepless and am guilty of not qualifying my assertions so I spread the blanket further than intended. However, in my experience many so-called Christians here are preaching a gospel diametrically opposed to Jesus' message of feeding the poor, healing the sick, and bringing peace.As a Spinoza Pantheist trying to keep science in the schools, increasing access to the world's knowledge, and indeed even help to feed the poor, cure diseases, and bring peace within my limited abilities, why can't I count on help from moderate Christians such as yourself in fighting my opponents?After all it is the integrity of your religion, not mine, that is at stake.

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

I did not say that the spreading of knowledge and education is a bad thing. I frankly think it's a very good thing. I'm just pointing out that western secular culture has had a far greater negative impact on third world cultures than Christian aid workers. You concern was the damage that you assert was being done by Christians and yet it is ok when the cultures are being destroyed by something you do believe in. Of course I can see the difference.I wouldn't waste my money on someone who is strictly about trying to promote the Bible. I support an organization that brings tractors and teaches farming skills in the Sudan. I support an outfit that is digging wells in Africa, (Operation Eyesight Universal), for people that have virtually no access to clean drinking water. Are these organizations Christian? Yes. If it wasn't for these Christian organizations these people wouldn't be farming nor would there be clean drinking water.As far as Popoff is concerned there would be no point in preaching a sermon against it because there would be nobody I know who would be taken in by him. My opinion is that he primarily spreads his message by television and attracts people to his ralies through that medium.