"The priests of the different religious sects... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live." ~Thomas Jefferson
I met a woman in the park on Sunday who said the world was going to end. She was a Christian. I tried to talk some sense into her but it’s sad and maddening talking to religious people. They are hypocrites who barely know their own history and have such a blind and selective view of the bible and the world as to exist in a frightening bubble of delusion.
She was wearing a sandwich board declaring Judgment Day to be May 21st this year. She had it all worked out since she’d read a couple of pamphlets from the
eBible Fellowship and the Family Radio people. I asked her a few questions and discovered she totally actually believed the world was going to end. It was astounding, in this day and age, with so much information available to people… Anyway, rivers of blood are booked in for June. The raising of the dead is scheduled for August, probably to take advantage of the summer weather so it’s not so hard on their decayed bodies to sleep outdoors.
“But what if it doesn’t happen?” I asked.
“It is going to happen,” she said.
“You know it’s been predicted before. A lot actually. By a lot of religious crooks. It’s a con to get you to give the church money and grow the flock.”
“It says it’s going to happen in the Bible.”
“Lady, it says a lot of things in the Bible. Like in Luke, where Jesus says twice that you have to give up and sell everything you own.” My knowledge of the gospel of Luke stunned her a little so I pressed on. “Have you sold everything? Because if J-day is really coming, you’re running out of time.”
She was troubled. “We’re working on it,” she said.
“Are you sure? Have you sold your car?”
“No... I use it to get to my Grand Children,” she said. She was suddenly quite emotional but I wasn’t going to let her off the hook.
“Jesus is very emphatic about it, you must sell everything.”
It was clearly ringing bells with her, the scumbags from the Cult of Christ were obviously hitting her with this stick already. I began to feel a little sympathetic but then I asked her if she read Hebrew and knew the origins of the man-made Bible and she said she didn’t but that it didn’t matter. Then I asked her about the existence of dinosaurs and she said that dinosaurs were still amongst us. My jaw hit the floor. I looked around, the park was all there, I wasn't dreaming. She really was batshit crazy.
Get this, the Geckos you see running around would grow as big as the T-Rex but for a global conspiracy of Scientists killing them off before they can reach full size.
NUTS.
You live a life and you try your best, to be good, to hold things in perspective, slowly shaking off the monstrous burden of animal appetites and ignorance through the slow evolution of human intelligence. And on most days it all kind of makes sense, and there's hope. And then you meet a woman who not only believes the world is going to end but that there is a global conspiracy by scientists to suppress the existence of dinosaurs. There just aren't enough psych wards and padded cells to deal with the religious. What can you do with people like this? I’m used to debating with all faiths on various sites on the Internet but this was something else. This was sheer bloody-minded imbecility. She's going to get all shes got coming to her. I hope they take her for every last penny.
Her sign was covered in quotes from the Old Testament.
“In Leviticus,” I said, “it says: ‘A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortuneteller shall be put to death by stoning’ clearly, by your own rules you should stone yourself to death for predicting the future.”
She smiled slyly. “I’m not acting as fortuneteller. What I say comes from God...”
What can you do with these pricks? The old Son of Sam / God made me do it defense. They pick and choose which bits of the Bible to believe, the small obscure bits condemning gays are true but the clear commands of Jesus telling them to sell all they own are not. The bit about stoning people to death who work on the Sabbath is ignored but Judgment Day is coming. Jesus is all powerful and will answer your prayers and yet the power of prayer does not work at all and they have to create crazy elaborate excuses for the existence of suffering in the world, for example: it’s a test for Christians. It is in such a way that they all quietly slide in step with the congregation from the repulsive Westboro Baptist Church. Acting as a fortuneteller and predicting the end of the world which should get you stoned along with the homosexuals you want to stone is unashamedly sidestepped because it’s not them who’s being a fortune teller, it’s God.
You point at the paradoxes in their beliefs and they blink like bovine and go right on preaching the faith while fucking up the world. You point out that science delivers where prayer does not and they smile and continue to thank Jesus for the gift of electricity and hummers and the military. Science puts planes in the air and religion flies them into buildings. It’s disgusting.
And now. In 2011. In one of the most technologically advanced nations that humanity has ever seen. We’ve got the classic replaying of one of the most obvious Short Cons of all time: Judgment Day.
As you read this, the eBible Fellowship is driving a
caravan of buses across the country covered in slogans like: 'awesome news: the end of the world is almost here'. They are gathering in public places, pushing their leaflets and flawed Bible based bullshit onto anyone who gets near.
It’s just like: 90CE / 500CE / 1000CE / 1284CE (Pope Innocent’s J-day, conjured by adding 666 years onto the foundation date of Islam) / 1669 CE (20,000 Old believers in Russia burned themselves to death to protect themselves from the anti-Christ) 1689CE / 1794 (Charles Wesley’s year) / 1891 (Joseph Smith’s)… all over again. Or, if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, 1994…
This Short Con like this really shouldn’t work in this day and age. The contradictions of the Bible are clear to anyone who has a drop of critical thinking in their heads. But the con is working. The weak and the vulnerable are giving over cash.
I’ve been in touch with the eBible people and in a bombastic attempt to stand up for the weak of mind, warned them they are going to have to account for every penny next year, when the world hasn’t ended. I got a quick reply back from one of their leading lights, a man called Chris Mccann. He quoted the Bible at me and told me they were a non-profit organization. Their website is pretty slick though, a bet he pays himself a massive fee for running it. ‘Operating Costs’ they call it. Fucking jokers. Why are we not taxing these goons? When can we hold them accountable?
The Catholic church gained a lot of its wealth with this Short Con in the early years. Now they stick mainly to Long Cons like indulgence selling. You can buy your way into heaven don’t you know. They had stopped doing this after much criticism but have started doing it again in the past couple of years since they have lost so much money
paying off the families of the children they’ve
raped all over the world, (one billion and counting - oh come all ye faithful drop off your pennies for the pedophiles). It’s a Long Con since the people who are cheated, are dead when they discover the money they gave did not buy them or their friends and relatives out of purgatory.
The Short Con is much more of a mugging. The victim will know they have been conned when, say, the magic beans do not grow a giant beanstalk or that Judgment Day does not happen. The Short Con should have repercussions on the con artist. They normally have to get out of town and change their name. On May 22nd, these people should be held to account. In November, after they say the world will have definitively ended. We should freeze their bank accounts and repossess their cars.
I’m a good person and I do not need to invent an imaginary friend to make me be a good person. Nobody does. It’s time, the religious must be held accountable. The Sky Fairy can’t do it, since he doesn’t exist. We need to protect the weak from exploitation.
Who’s with me? Grab your cyber-pitchforks and let’s storm the castle. If we can deal with this pathetic Short Con we can perhaps go for a bigger one next: The Eternal Con, that is religion itself.
