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Showing posts with label Friendly Atheist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friendly Atheist. Show all posts
Friendly Atheist ✒ Dave Hayes is a Christian activist known as the “Praying Medic” and an extremely vocal QAnon supporter. 

Hemant Mehta

Not surprisingly, he’s known for making bonkers conspiratorial claims and just flat-out lying to his audience. (Last month, for example, he told a struggling man he was “healed” after a painful loss… based on absolutely nothing.)

But what he did this week was just laughably egregious.

Speaking with MAGA cultist YouTuber Patrick Gunnels, Hayes explained how people needed to accept God’s healing powers — and if they did, it would make our traditional health care system obsolete.

That’s obviously a lie — there are plenty of devout Christians in hospitals today — but pay special attention to the example he offered to justify his claim:

... You know, God gave me a dream back in 2013 or 2014. And in that dream, He showed me that He has a health care system that He wants to implement that is going replace our current health care system.

And, uh, let's see… No appointments necessary, no deductibles, no side effects… It's not like we're going to take out the wrong kidney if we pray for you. No iatrogenic damages. No lawsuits, no liability. 

Continue reading @ Friendly Atheist.

Christian Conspiracist ✑ Accepting Faith-Healing Will Make Hospitals Obsolete

Friendly Atheist ✒ End Times Preacher Sharon Gilbert: A Reptile Alien Imitating My Husband Tried to Sleep with Me. 

 

Continue reading @ Friendly Atheist.

Desperate Derek

Friendly Atheist ✒ A Church Facing $1 Million in COVID Fines Received Over $340,000 in PPP Loans.

 HeMANT MEHTA

Back in October, I posted about Calvary Chapel San Jose, a church that ignored local Covid restrictions by hosting large indoor services, not requiring face masks, and not forcing people to socially distance. Even beyond that, Pastor Mike McClure openly bragged (during live-streams) about how the church is non-compliant, saying in May, “God doesn’t want us to isolate ourselves. All of us need to be in the sanctuary. I don’t care what they say, I’m never again going to close the doors, ever.”

To the county’s credit, they didn’t let any of this slide. They fined the church more than $350,000 for violating the law… but the church never paid up. So they filed a lawsuit and demanded the court shut the place down.

The church has still not shut down and the fines are now over $1 million.

But here’s an interesting twist to the story: The local ABC affiliate found that Calvary Chapel received over $340,000 in Paycheck Protection Program loans from the government earlier this year.

Continue reading @ Friendly Atheist.

Spreading The Lord's Money Virus

Friendly Atheist @ Scamvangelist Kenneth Copeland: We Made $1,345,129 on Day One of Our Conference. 

On Monday, Christian scamvangelist Kenneth Copeland began a week-long “Southwest Believer’s Convention” in Fort Worth, Texas that is expecting a total of 2,500 guests in the indoor convention center. (Your guess as to how many will be around by the end of it…)

Setting aside how Copeland has been declaring the end of Covid for months now, oblivious to (or purposely ignorant of) how he’s completely wrong, there was a moment when he told the crowd how much money his ministry had raked in via donations on the first day alone….




Continue reading @ Friendly Atheist. 

Looting For The Lord

From Friendly Atheist ➤ Last year, 51-year-old McKrae Game made a rather shocking announcement. 

By Hemant Mehta

After spending nearly two decades running an organization that came to be known as Hope for Wholeness, a South Carolina-based Christian group that supports gay conversion torture, he was leaving the movement.

Not only that, he was gay.

Not only that, Game admitted conversion therapy was “very harmful” and “false advertising.”

He said he had left the organization in 2017, but this was a more overt breakup with the entire conversion therapy subculture.


“I was a religious zealot that hurt people,” Game said in an interview. “People said they attempted suicide over me and the things I said to them. People, I know, are in therapy because of me. Why would I want that to continue?”

“I created it all,” Game said of Hope for Wholeness. “We have harmed generations of people.”

Continue reading @ Friendly Atheist.

Christian “Conversion Therapy” Group Will Shut Down After Years Of Failure


Religious racketeer Kenneth Copeland has been trying to scam his church attendees out of money during the Covid 19 public health emergency.
By Hemant Mehta

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who said earlier this week that God told him the coronavirus would “be over much sooner than you think,” wants you to know that he feels your pain if you’ve lost your job because of the virus.

But also, you really need to keep giving money to your favorite ministry. (Did you think unemployment meant deferring what you owe the church? C’mon now…)


Multi-millionaire televangelist Kenneth Copeland tells viewers that even if they lose their jobs because of the coronavirus outbreak, they must continue giving to the church: "Whatever you do right now, don't you stop tithing!" See VideoX

Fear of this coronavirus is faith in its ability to hurt you or kill you. The fear of “What are we gonna do? I’m getting laid off at work!”
Hey! Your job’s not your source. If it is, you’re in trouble. Jesus is your source! Whatever you do right now, don’t you stop tithing! Don’t you stop sowing offerings.
“Well, they won’t let us go to church!”
Well, email it in, then! Text together. Something. But you get your tithe in that church if you have to go take it down there and drop it off… stick it under the door or something. You get that tithe in that church, you get that offering in that church, and then you go home and do what you’re supposed to do.

Naturally, Copeland has a ministry of his own, so no doubt this is a selfish request rather than some magnanimous gesture for Christianity at large.

Remember: This is a guy who said he couldn’t fly in a regular plane because it’s a “long tube with a bunch of demons.” Now, more than ever, he must be thinking about his private jet.

And if that means bilking his suffering donors in a time of global crisis, who cares? All he has to do is invoke Jesus and there are people gullible enough to keep sending him cash.

(via Right Wing Watch)

Scamvangelist ➤ If You Lost Your Job in the Pandemic, “Don’t You Stop Tithing”


From Friendly Atheist a piece on a how religious hate views the Coronovirus.

By Beth Stoneburner 
The latest update on the coronavirus? Turns out it’s Satan’s plan to kill off elderly people in order to allow young folks to turn the United States into a Socialist utopia.

You heard it first, courtesy of right-wing conspiracy theorist (and Destroyer of Tornadoes) Perry Stone:

“It’s almost like a spirit of Amalek that is trying to attack our older people.” Stone said. 

Let me tell you why the enemy wants to get rid of our older people. They are the ones who are established in the Bible. They are the ones who know enough about the Word not to take the Mark of the Beast, If you get rid of all of those people who resist the Beast, and resist the Antichrist, and resist the system, then you have a whole other pro-socialist, pro-communist, give-me-your-money-and-I’ll-do-what-I-want-with-it group coming up ... You see them. They’re out there, 35 percent of America is into it. And they have no respect for those older people who have made this country great.


Young people: They’re completely irresponsible… except for when they want to overthrow the government.

Stone uses the right-wing buzzword of “socialism,” by the way, because it’s scarier than saying what many young people actually want: a right to health care, a social safety net, fair wages, etc. They want to take care of the poor and heal the sick.

That sounds a lot like someone Stone might have heard of … but don’t count on him to connect the dots.  


Pastor ➤ Coronavirus is Satan’s Way of Killing Old People So Socialism Can Thrive

From Friendly Atheist a report suggesting that the Men of God in the Baptist Community are as monstrous as their Catholic counterparts when it comes to child abuse.

By Terry Firma
Move over, Catholic padres.

“My earliest memory of being molested was when I was four years old. It was Sunday school.”

Image via Shutterstock.
So begins the fourth and final installment of an extraordinary Fort Worth Star-Telegram investigation into child molestation in and around independent Baptist churches. Published yesterday after eight months of information-gathering, the story by journalists Sarah Smith, Shelly Yang, and Neil Nakahodo reveals how a network of churches and schools covered up nationwide sexual abuse — and, in an all-too-familiar pattern, helped relocate the evildoers.

Here are a few gut-wrenching passages.

On religious impunity:

Even if criminal charges are brought against a church leader, he might be allowed to continue in ministry. Facing charges that he had sex with a 14-year-old, a pastor left his Indiana church for Miami, where he told his new congregation that the girl was “promiscuous.” Though he pleaded guilty to felony stalking in 2009, he didn’t leave the church until 2014. He maintains his innocence. He’s one of nearly four dozen men who were allowed to continue in their ministry after facing sexual abuse allegations — and even convictions, the Star-Telegram found …

A man convicted of sexual battery in 1999 went on to serve as a youth volunteer in Georgia, where he abused three more girls. He pleaded guilty in 2016 to sexual battery.

A principal at a Christian school affiliated with Bob Jones University was moved out of state when sexual abuse allegations came to the pastor’s attention. The deacons, said one deacon’s wife at the time, convened a secret meeting and then spirited him away, on the advice of Bob Jones University officials.

Et cetera.

One victim, Dawn Price, adopted as a child, on abuse and forgiveness:

I was just five years old, looking for somebody to love me and not throw me out. I’d been in the system for three years, so I clung. [My adoptive father] told me he loved me, nobody loved me more. So the molesting began, and quickly it turned into rape. It went on till I was 12 years old. I did try to tell people at the church. There were five different times that I tried, and even CPS came twice, but I was told that I needed to forgive and forget, and that he had repented, and his sins were under the blood. My dad actually admitted to molesting me to a CPS worker, but again nothing was done …

The pastor knew … that my dad was a pedophile, and he allowed him to stay in the church. Why? Money. My mom and dad gave a lot of money to the church so they were allowed to stay and he was allowed to be around children. Even though the pastor knew, he actually put a girl into my parents’ home and she was molested and raped as well.

The reportorial team on coverups:

Current and formers members say many independent fundamental Baptist churches rule by fear. Pastor Jim Vineyard was an expert in the tactic. Vineyard had a tattoo snaking around his forearm and liked to talk about the days he said he was a Green Beret. …

Former members in Oklahoma City remember the story about a photo of a dead man Vineyard kept in his desk. It was a favorite of Vineyard’s to tell from the pulpit. In one version of the story, the picture was of a man who voted against Vineyard coming into the church to pastor. The man subsequently got into a car crash and broke his neck. Or there was this version: The photo was of the son of a Windsor Hills family who told Vineyard they were going to leave the church. Vineyard warned them: If they did, God would punish them. They left, and the son died in a car crash. Defy Jim Vineyard, the message went, and God would punish you … [E]x-members said they believed that if they disobeyed the pastor or left the church, God would kill them or their loved ones.

Rape survivor Amber McMorrow on Baptists circling the wagons:

I told [a church counselor] that I was raped and how violent it was and how I was terrified it would happen again. She gave me a five-minute counseling session and told me she would have to tell pastor Schaap and the nurse, inform the doctor. And not to tell anyone. Anyway, we had our meeting, and they told me my rape was God’s will because it sent me there.

By the way, that’s pastor Jack Schaap she’s talking about, now a convicted sex offender. His frenzied, lascivious “polishing the shaft” sermon — in which he simulated masturbation and an orgasm in front of thousands of children — has to be seen to be believed.



On guilting victims and making them pliant:

Rhonda Cox Lee felt special when [pastor Dave] Hyles noticed her out of the hundreds of kids who attended his dad’s church. The first time anything sexual happened, she said, they were in his office. He sat at his desk, she sat across from him on a chair. He walked around the desk and placed her hand on his groin. “Do you feel that?” he asked.

At first she thought it was some sort of spiritual test. He was a man of God, after all, and even though it felt wrong, he wouldn’t ask her to do anything wrong. Several meetings later, their clothing came off. She was 14. It felt wrong, she said, but she knew it had to be what God wanted.

“He compared himself to David in the Bible and how he was anointed, and said this is what I was supposed to do,” Lee said. “I was supposed to take care of him because he was the man of God.”

Hyles, she said, alternately promised her that they would be together once she turned 18 and warned her not to tell anyone in the church because if she did, the church would split, America would go to hell, and the blood of the unsaved would be on her hands.

In this shocking Chicago magazine story from six years ago, you can read more about Dave Hyles and his father Jack, who transformed the First Baptist church in Hammond, Indiana into a religious powerhouse. You’ll need a strong stomach, thanks to descriptions of physical abuse, child rape, alleged torture, and baby murder (and I don’t mean abortion).

It’s mystifying and nauseating that despite these revelations coming out from time to time, the faithful either write off the loathsome acts as outliers, or apply a dose of forgiveness that papers over the seriousness of what occurred. For instance, these days, Dave Hyles runs a ministry for pastors who have “fallen into sin.” His colleague David Baker told the Star-Telegram it’s only right that pious evildoers can ask God for mercy and are then welcomed back into the Baptist fold. For many Christians, criminal behavior, if followed by a show of repentance, becomes a mark of suffering and redemption; they see it as proof of both the Almighty’s magnanimity and their own. Baker said:

He [Hyles] is someone who made mistakes years ago, and through that brokenness and God restoring him, wants to use what he’s been through to help others.

He refused to discuss the matter further.

It’s easy to sin, and just as easy to be forgiven (Christians think the latter is a feature of their faith, but I’ve long argued it’s actually a bug). All it takes to make a comeback is a dab of remorse, spiced with a bit of humility and a crocodile tear or two, and voilà: the sinner ends up becoming … a better Christian. (Just imagine if that’s how it worked, say, in school — that by flunking a math test, you can automatically claim to have gotten better at math.)

As the Star-Telegram investigation indicates, religion is often a child-abuse breeding ground. I believe this has to do with 10 factors that are part and parcel of the nature of conservative churches:


➧The belief that forgiveness is but a confession or a prayer away.
➧A patriarchal worldview.
➧A feeling of divine empowerment (“I can do anything, because God is on my side”).
➧Sexual repression.
➧Access to children who accept authority and expect instruction.
➧The illogical nature of faith, which, to a child, makes sexual overtures no more bizarre or suspect than baptisms or religious circumcisions, or any number of other out-there rituals.
➧The unquestioning trust of the flock in its clergy.
➧Congregants’ aversion to learning the distasteful truth about a religious figurehead.
➧The attendant reluctance to go to the police / press charges / start a scandal.
➧The justification that the church, despite any terrible acts, also “does so much good.”

We’ve seen these same things at work in Judaism, Catholicism, and Islam, all of which have been racked by horrifying sex scandals.

Sadly but predictably, Baptist churches are by no means an exception.

Exposé Reveals Network Of Baptist Institutions That Shielded Child Molesters

Friendly Atheist flags up the subject of the religious use of the threat of hell. 

By Hemant Mehta
Greg Stier, the founder of “Dare 2 Share Ministries International,” claims that kids are too coddled these days because they’re not told enough that they’re going to be tortured for eternity if they don’t accept his personal brand of mythology.

In an essay for the Christian Post, he says that we’re in desperate need of more fire and brimstone preaching.

Image via Shutterstock. 

… is it scare tactics to yell “STOP!” at a little kid running toward a busy intersection? Is it scare tactics to warn a generation headed toward the edge of hell to “STOP!” before it’s too late? …

Go online and take a look at the vast array of youth ministry curriculum made available for youth leaders to use and you’ll see all sorts of subjects. You’ll see subjects that range from building a healthy self-image to conquering anxiety to building strong friendships to strengthening our relationship with God. But you’ll see little on the subject of hell …

Talking about hell is not a scare tactic. It’s showing love at it’s [sic] most elemental form. It’s saving a generation from the wrath of God and delivering them into the loving arms of Christ, both now and forevermore!

Don’t fall for that “busy intersection” analogy. It’s more appropriate to say this guy wants to yell “STOP!” to a kid running toward a busy intersection even though there are no cars on the road. It doesn’t matter that his warning is well-meant since it’s overridden by his own delusions.

And hell is nothing but a scare tactic. It’s a threat that says “Agree with me or else you’ll get hurt.” Just because abusive people often claim their actions are committed with the best of intentions doesn’t make it true.

Anyway, there you go. This guy’s best defense of Christianity is that you’re all going to be tortured forever if you disagree. If that message of love wins you over, have fun living in fear when it’s completely unnecessary.

(Thanks to Amy for the link)

Christian Youth Minister ➨ We Need to Tell More Kids They’ll Be Tortured in Hell

Friendly Atheist on the case of a bishop forced to resign.

By David Gee

A Catholic bishop with an anti-gay history has resigned from his post following several controversies involving him covering up for priests who were credibly abused of sexually abusing young children.

Bishop Richard J. Malone, who raised money through the Church to fight against same-sex marriage laws in 2009, got into trouble last year when he released a list of abusive priests that included 42 names. That’s because the actual went as high as 324, according to some reports.

A year later, in September, someone leaked a recording of Malone talking about how he wasn’t going to act on harassment involving another priest, whom he called a “sick puppy.” It’s a pretty troubling pattern.

All that scandal finally resulted in his resignation, as noted by the New York Times:

On Wednesday, after months of pressure from priests and lay leaders, the Vatican said in a statement that it had accepted the resignation of Bishop Malone, effective immediately. Since the Vatican did not specify the reasons behind the resignation, it was unclear whether Bishop Malone had been forced to quit.

Bishop Malone, in a statement, described his resignation as an early retirement that had been accepted by Pope Francis. He said he had made the decision to step down “freely and voluntarily” after being made aware of the conclusions of a recent Vatican investigation into the crisis in his diocese, which has been in turmoil over his handling of clergy abuse cases.

“I have concluded, after much prayer and discernment, that the people of Buffalo will be better served by a new bishop who perhaps is better able to bring about the reconciliation, healing and renewal that is so needed,” he wrote.

Now that is the understatement of the year. There is certainly going to be no healing with him in power.

Malone had previously vowed that he wouldn’t resign, especially because he was scheduled to retire in 15 months — on his 75th birthday, as is tradition.

In case you think Pope Francis did the right thing in asking Malone to step down, however, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

When Malone, 73, returned from the “ad limina” visit in Rome, he issued a statement Nov. 18 restating his position that he had no intention of resigning.

In that statement, Malone said “… it was clear that the pope understands the difficulties and distress we here in Buffalo and I, personally, have been experiencing.”

Reports consistently show that Pope Francis has supported the bishop throughout this controversy. Ultimately, the public pressure may have been too much.

It shouldn’t take this long for those who cover-up for abusers to leave (or resign or get forced out of) the Catholic Church. The Church needs to do a better job of holding its own leaders accountable for their inappropriate actions.



Anti-Gay Bishop Who Covered Up Child Sex Abuse Finally Resigns

Friendly Atheist with a claim that researchers Have Once Again Found A Negative Correlation Between Religion and IQ.


By Hemant Mehta



Atheists love to pose this question as if the answer is meaningful: Is there a correlation between godlessness and intelligence?

Image via Shutterstock
It’s a silly question for a number of reasons. There are brilliant religious people; there are dumb atheists. “Intelligence” is a vague term and IQ is only one of many ways to measure it. How do you even accurately test such a thing? And supposed it were true: So what?

In 2013, a team of psychologists including Miron Zuckerman (of the University of Rochester) and Judith Hall (of Northeastern University) published a paper in Personality and Social Psychology Review that aggregated the results from 63 studies on the issue done between 1928 and 2012.

Their meta-analysis found that, yes, there was a “significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.” Countries with a higher average IQ were found to be less religious.

While acknowledging the caveats, the researchers attributed that to the fact that intelligent people are less likely to conform and more analytical in their thinking — obstacles to traditional religion, no doubt — and less inclined to adopt religious behaviors.

In case you’re wondering, 53 of those 63 studies had that negative correlation, with 35 of them having a significant negative correlation. The other 10 showed a positive link (i.e. more intelligence was associated with more religiosity).

There were some reasons to be skeptical of the study, though. The 63 studies were all written in English (with a couple of translated ones), so they didn’t look at many studies conducted and published in foreign countries. Most participants were from the United States, U.K., and Canada — which are obviously dominated by Protestantism. In short, despite the number of studies, the researchers were looking at similar groups of people influenced by similar environments.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of controversy and discussion when that first report came out. And now Zuckerman and Hall are back at it, joined by Chen Li (of the University of Rochester) and Shengxin Lin (of the University of Chicago).

In a paper recently published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, they looked at 83 studies about religion and IQ — updating their data set with newer information — and found that religiosity and intelligence still have a negative correlation.

They included 61 of the studies they used last time, an additional 22 done between 2012 and 2018, and found that their 2013 results had not changed in any meaningful way. Zuckerman told PsyPost:

The evidence that there is a negative relation between intelligence and religiosity is very strong. But the effect size of the relation is small. This means that there are factors besides intelligence that explain why people are or are not religious. It also means that although more intelligent people tend to be less religious on the average, predicting religiosity from intelligence for individuals is fallible.

The new study is still heavy on Western countries (so Christianity is over-represented compared to Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam), and there are still all those caveats about what intelligence actually means.

So I wouldn’t read too much into these numbers. I certainly wouldn’t get cocky about it. But if you were looking for evidence that intelligence and religiosity don’t always go together, this may be the most academic piece of evidence you’ll ever find.



Negative Correlation Between Religion and IQ

Hemant Mehta in the Friendly Atheist on: Ex-Christian: My Faith Shifted After Seeing Ken Ham Get “Destroyed” by Bill Nye. 

 
Kudos to the Christian Post: The publication just posted the first of eight (!) personal essays written by people who walked away from Christianity, even if they later returned. This one’s from Luke Douglas, the executive director of the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix and board member for the Secular Coalition for Arizona. In other words, a legit atheist activist.

Douglas was in law school — and taking seminary classes on his own over the summer because he was still a devout believer — when Creationist Ken Ham debated Bill Nye in 2014. That debate shifted his thinking.

… When [Ham] debated Bill Nye the Science Guy on the scientific legitimacy of creationism, I was about halfway through law school and organized a debate watch party, ordered pizza, and gathered my evangelical colleagues to root for Ham together. So imagine how devastating it was to watch my childhood icon be so embarrassingly destroyed before my very eyes. Ken Ham brought faith to an evidence fight, and even my fundamentalist creationist eyes could see it. I resolved in that moment to learn more about evolution, astronomy, and geology so that, when it was my turn to debate the Bill Nyes of the world, I would do better than Ken Ham had.

We know what happens when fundamentalists “learn more.” They stop being fundamentalists. (“The more I tried to investigate, the more problems I ran into.”)

Eventually, Douglas was convinced that the religion he dedicated his life to was just flat-out wrong:

… my desire to be an effective apologist left me with nothing to defend. I had wanted nothing more than to reinforce my faith, but willing myself to believe something that just didn’t make sense was no longer sustainable. So adrift on a sea of chaos, I called my then-fiancé, who was doing missions work in Asia at the time, and begged her not to leave me as her faith insisted she would have to.

You know the article is effective because one of the comments is from someone asking, “what is the purpose in giving this antichrist space on your website?”

It’s a compelling story. It’s also not uncommon. The most fervent believers often become the most active atheists.

Faith Shifted After Seeing Ken Ham Get “Destroyed”

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