Jesus watches you pee outside and judges you

I’ve been waiting for another case of pareidolia and, by no surprise, the Daily Mail delivers Jesus appearing in the grit and crumble on the side of a take-away Chinese restaurant.

Mr Ridley, 39, immediately took a photograph of the bizarre sight outside the Mayho Chinese Takeaway.

He said: ‘We were a little drunk at the time and went to get something to eat.

‘We were waiting for our meal outside when we saw it.

‘It was Jesus looking right at us, we were shocked and couldn’t believe it. ‘It’s a miracle!

‘The best thing about it is the face is actually facing the direction of St Luke’s Church so it looks like it is supposed to be there.

‘Since I took the picture, we have shown it to loads of people and all of them can see it instantly.

‘It is amazing and they can’t believe it.’

I wonder if they tell their friends they’re looking at Jesus, or if their friends come to that (silly) conclusion without prompting. People always seem willing to believe it’s Jesus.

Side note, I was listening to a Skeptics Guide podcast a while back that mentioned something called audio paredolia. Quoting what Steven Novella wrote about it later:

Skeptics love talking about pareidolia, whether visual or audio, because it is right in the sweet spot of the skeptical skill set – understanding why people often come to dubious and even bizarre conclusions because they fail to understand the nature of the human mind. It’s also fun and easily demonstrated, and so it makes an excellent skeptical lesson – your brain can be fooled, you can be fooled, and in order to properly interpret this one needs only to understand a little bit about how our brains work. Our brain actively process sensory input, making many assmptions, and forcing fits to recognized patterns. Our brains do not give a truly objective and accurate representation of the world. It give a human one – full of pattern recognition – sometimes real, sometimes forced.

Also in there is a link to a video of a group of singers performing a gospel tune of some kind. The subtitles provided don’t match what they actually say, but what it could sound like they’re saying. What it sounds like they’re saying is nothing you’d expect…

I like this headline: “Jesus: Fast food for the masses”

People line up during mass to receive the Communion wafers intended to be the body of Jesus. They get served pretty quick and the “food” doesn’t sit very long on the tongue, so how very true.

Not quite what the writer of the piece (going by the pseudonym of Titus Aurelius) meant to imply, probably, but it works for a good example of what the piece is actually about: cognitive dissonance:

Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. In our day to day existence we are constantly bombarded by stimuli and through various processes filtered by our frame of reference, we reach closure.

The process we use to reach the closure is what defines you as a person. It is your morals and values residing in your frame of reference that is instrumental in the resolution. The question that begs answering then is, “How much information do you feed your frame of reference?”

One of the effects of cognitive dissonance is that people tend to get mired in the teachings they received as children, simply because the introduction of new information into the frame of reference will lead to dissonance.

Any logical adult should scoff at the notion of transubstantiation but Catholic kids are told that the wafer miraculously becomes the actual body of Christ once ingested and many will continue to believe that well into adulthood no matter how scientifically improbable the whole notion is. It’s spiritual alchemy. There are a lot of other impossible ideas religious folk are expected to swallow and mentally change into facts and reality: the six thousand year old earth, Noah’s Ark, Jonah surviving in a whale, etc. The bible is jam packed with stories that any skeptical person could easily discount after a few minutes of research. The work’s been done, and yet so many can still turn a blind eye and believe the “words of God” instead of the words of the educated. Other believers can put a lot of pressure on a person to remain true to what’s written in there, especially if it’s parents or spouses.

So the fear of dissonance, coupled with a possible rejection of parental approval and even societal rejection is a great deterrent in broadening one’s horizons. This leads the religious mind to conceive of belief as a mechanism to resolve cognitive dissonance, but each injection of belief regress the dissonance one level deeper (postponing it) and each regression effectively gets pushed back into the recesses of the memory where it enjoys a blissful state of non-participation.

The rest of the article delves into examples where Christianity requires creating a partition in the brain to keep the logical, rational, scientific factual area to one side and not let it leak over into the spiritual, faithful, part required to believe every fanciful, mystical thing.

One example is the sheer number of contradictions in there involving the “facts” of Jesus’ life. He also brings up something called Preterism, an early Christian belief that the end had already come as Christ supposedly fortold, and a belief later Catholics and Protestants debated. I’ll quote from Wikipedia:

Christian preterists believe that the Tribulation was a divine judgment visited upon the Jews for their sins, including rejection of Jesus as the promised Messiah. It occurred entirely in the past, around 70 AD when the armed forces of the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.

A preterist discussion of the Tribulation has its focus on the Gospels, in particular the prophetic passages in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, the Olivet discourse, rather than on the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. (Preterists apply much of the symbolism in the Revelation to Rome, the Cæsars, and their persecution of Christians, rather than to the Tribulation upon the Jews.)

Remember Harold Camping? He was the opposite of a preterist. He was fully convinced, and convinced thousands of radio listeners around the world, that the end of the world would come last year, with the great Rapture occurring in May and the destruction of the world in October. You’ll notice we’re all still here.

The article goes on with more examples from the series of miracles credited to Christ like Lazarus, walking on water, feeding a crowd with two fish, etc.; and the stories that led to people truly believing that Jesus wasn’t just a son of God like every other Jew but on par with God in a divine holy trinity.

It is therefore my contention that the truth is too much effort to even comprehend, and that the “whole” is accepted and used as a vehicle for religious equilibrium where the “whole” usually consists of an à la carte menu as listed and supported by various Bible verses.

This contention is supported by the millions of Christians that are blissfully ignorant of the individual levels and happily live their lives in “unshakable truth” with the “whole”.

I think the trouble is that truth isn’t easy to come by. We are a gullible species. We’re easily tricked by our own brains and eyes on a daily basis. That’s what makes pareidolia and other optical illusions so awesome. We can be fooled so easily. And we learn to trust from a very early age; we have to in order to survive. We have to trust our parents implicitly when they tell us what’s good to eat and what will hurt us. We have an innate trust of authority and once we decide someone is an authority, we tend to extend the trust and forget how easily we can be fooled, foolishly believing we’re not at risk of getting tricked somehow. It’s why we fall for scams and con artists. We don’t always think critically about what we’re told and weigh it against what we’ve already experienced and know to be true. We can’t jam two of every kind of animal into a boat, but Noah supposedly did. “It was a miracle.” How’s that a solution to the physical and geological flaws in that story? How can anyone be content with that. And yet so many are.

As far as I can tell, I’ve always been atheist. Even as a kid I saw the flaw in the whole Christianity/Catholic thing during Easter. What weekend did he really die on? Was it in March or April? How come his death weekend bounced around every year? I never asked anyone about that but I know I wondered. And what did rabbits and chocolate eggs have to do with it? It didn’t make any sense and as a biblical story it still doesn’t. Using it as a roundabout way of acknowledging the pagan roots of an Equinox celebration does. Do the parents of Christian kids tell them that history of Easter? I have no idea.

Following a religion sometimes means ignoring facts and realities and taking everything one’s told on faith, no matter how ridiculous it’ll seem to outsiders. Religion isn’t alone in that, though. Look to anyone who believes UFOs land regularly or Big Foot will be found or homeopathy works or Obama isn’t a true American. We are a gullible species willing to believe anything should we really put our minds to it.

It’s a good thing there’s a skeptical movement gaining some ground, at least. It’s good to know there are people doing everything they can to try and burst those gullibubbles before it’s too late. On that note, I have a Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast to catch up on…

Russell Crowe to star in remake of Evan Almighty

Well, near enough, in my opinion. He’s part of the cast for a completely unnecessary retelling of Noah’s Ark:

As well as Crowe in the lead role, Aronofksy’s film boasts Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth and Emma Watson. Furthermore, Deadline suggests Jennifer Connelly may be in line to play Noah’s wife in what would be a repeat of the casting for the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind. John Logan, who co-wrote Gladiator, was reported in February to have rescripted a draft screenplay originally penned by Aronofsky and Ari Handel. Deadline does not offer a name for the Winstone character, described as Noah’s nemesis. Liam Neeson, Liev Schreiber and Val Kilmer had previously been linked to the role, but Aronofsky reportedly wanted an actor “with the grit and size to be convincing as he goes head-to-head against Crowe’s Noah character”.

Part of me sees it getting filmed like an even bigger CG version of A Perfect Storm. I wonder what version of the story they’ll tell, too.

In Genesis 6, God tells Noah to bring two of all living creatures including (as is logical) several of all birds. The King James translation makes it slightly more flowery, but the meaning “two of each” is still clear.

“You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.”

—Genesis 6:19-20[1]

In the next chapter, Genesis 7, God directly contradicts himself. Instead of two of every animal, male and female, God tells Noah to bring seven of every clean animal – although this is also read by many as seven pairs. How can one bring seven of some animals if he is already only bringing two of all animals? Genesis 7 also contradicts God’s statement in the previous book by stating that instead of two of all birds, seven of all birds were to be brought.

“Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.”

I suspect it’s another example of the contradictions that befell Genesis. Different cultures were telling different versions of origin stories and rather than pick one version as right and drop the rest, the bible builders opted to hang onto all of them. Story telling was important as there was no way to pass on one’s history otherwise. These days (nearly) everyone learns to read and write and books are plentiful. In bible days? So not the case.

Well anyway, I’ll add it to the list of films I will probably never watch.

Old bones equal proof the bible is true!

At least, as far as Fox News is concerned. Here’s their headline: Mysterious bones may belong to John the Baptist

There’s no way to be sure, of course, as there are no confirmed pieces of John the Baptist to compare to the fragments of bone. But the sarcophagus holding the bones was found near a second box bearing the name of St. John and his feast date (also called a holy day) of June 24. Now, new radiocarbon dating of the collagen in one of the bones pegs its age to the early first century, consistent with the New Testament and Jewish histories of John the Baptist’s life.

What if the box was just owned or built by the dead guy and some family member thought it’d be nice to put it in with him? Isn’t that a more likely scenario than claiming we “just happened” to find John the Baptist? What a miracle! I’m thinking not.

“We got some dates that are very interesting indeed,” study researcher Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford told LiveScience. “They suggest that the human bone is all from the same person, it’s from a male, and it has a very high likelihood of an origin in the Near East,” or Middle East where John the Baptist would have lived.

Him, and how many thousands of other people?

Historical research by Oxford professor Georges Kazan suggests that relics supposedly from John the Baptist were on the move out of Jerusalem by the fourth century. Many of these artifacts were shuttled through the ancient city of Constantinople and may well have been gifted to the Sveti Ivan monastery from there.

None of this proves that the bones belonged to a historical figure named John the Baptist, but researchers haven’t been able to rule out the possibility, Higham said. Their study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but a program detailing the research will be aired on the United Kingdom National Geographic Channel on Sunday (June 17). National Geographic funded the research.

So this is not Fox’s fault? I thought National Geographic put more emphasis on facts over sensationalism but maybe I’ve been living under a rock or something. I’m already aware that The History Channel offers up Pawn Stars and American Pickers. And it looks like the Learning Channel long since gave up on teaching people anything useful. Toddlers and Tiaras? Say Yes to the Dress? 19 Kids and Counting? Give me a break. And I see NatGeo offers up its own share of WTF TV, too. It’s all a ratings game, I guess.

Linkskrieg! (First pass)

It’s occurred to me that I’ve collected far more links than I have time to write about, so here’s a batch of things I did want to bring up at some point but never did. I may flesh out some of these at some point, though. Time will tell.

1. The Codex Gigas:

Lore behind the codex suggests the book was the effort of one monk’s labor in a single night. After breaking the rules of the monastery, he’d been sentenced to a slow death – he’d be walled up in a room of bricks. The night before his sentence would be executed, the monk decided to write his last work, an evil book written on animal skins. He realized that finishing the book before imprisonment would be impossible, so he made a Faustian deal at midnight with Lucifer to finish the book, with the devil signing the document by painting a portrait of himself on the 290th leaf.

2. A pastor’s controversial book on sex:

The book was written by Driscoll and his wife, Grace, to, in Mark’s words, “compel married couples to have important conversations about important things.”

In the first half of the book, the Driscolls discuss their own sexual issues using the lessons they learned to discuss how to reignite a marriage whose flame may have gone out. The book’s second half, which is getting most of the negative attention, discusses sex in detail.

In response, religious scholars and writers have blasted the Driscolls’ work on a number of grounds ranging from the logistical to the biblical.

3. Apocalypse tourism:

The Mexican government is expecting 52 million tourists to visit the five regions — Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche, over the next 12 months, says the Latin American Herald Tribune.

According to goverment reports, the boom is part of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s tourism campaign: “Mundo Maya 2012,” to promote Mexico as a unique destination.

4. Ancient document claims dozens visited Jesus, not just three:

The translation of the mysterious ‘Revelation of the Magi’ describes how the three wise men actually numbered over a dozen and came from a faraway land, possibly China.

(Since the bible never specifies how many wise men visited, I don’t see this as news, personally. Straight Dope dealt with this years ago.)

5. “Miracle” survival of a kid with flesh eating disease:

The pope on Monday signed a decree authenticating the miracle, clearing the way for Tekakwitha to be canonized as America’s first Roman Catholic indigenous saint.

“There is no doubt in me or my husband’s mind that a miracle definitely took place,” Jake’s mother, Elsa Finkbonner, told msnbc.com on Tuesday. “There were far too many things that could have and should have gone wrong with his illness. The doctors went through every avenue they could to save his life and he survived. It’s a miracle that all of the other things that could have gone wrong, didn’t.”

6. Utah’s festive season vs atheist billboards:

“We’re glad to share the Christmas season with Christians, but they have stolen Christmas, and it is not the birthday of Jesus,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based organization. “It’s a natural event, the winter solstice. … The shortest day of the year has been celebrated for millennia in the Northern Hemisphere with decorations and lights and celebrations. We just think it’s important to celebrate reason and celebrate reality.”

She added that the foundation has heard there’s a feeling of claustrophobia among non-Mormons and nonbelievers in Salt Lake City. “There’s a great dominance there, so we want to be there, too.”

7. Evidence from Dead Sea dirt may verify some bible tales:

Ben-Avraham, head of the Minerva Dead Sea Research Center at Tel Aviv University in Israel, noted that this is important because, when it comes to earthquakes, the last century in the Middle East was unusually quiet.

“People don’t take this into consideration,” Ben-Avraham said, “but we have mighty earthquakes.”

Looking farther back, one of the seismically active eras revealed by the core samples appears to have been about 4,000 years ago, he said.

“If you believe the biblical chronology, this is roughly [the time of] Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said. During this period, according to the Book of Genesis, God “rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed all.”

8. British PM and Dawkins disagree on need for faith schools:

David Cameron has said atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins “just doesn’t really get it” on the issue of faith schools.

The Prime Minister made the comments as he answered questions from well-known figures for a Guardian newspaper article. Mr Cameron said he thinks faith schools are “very often good schools” and he noted that the church had provided “good schools long before the state got involved”.

Dawkins would rather see more schools promoting secularism and critical thinking instead of traditions and indoctrination.

Old news: Cross purposes

A couple stories I’ll throw in; one from the start of 2012 when I wasn’t in the mood to blog and one from September 2010 when I would have blogged about it had I seen it. Oldest first: Mount Lebanon village erects giant cross as sign of unity

In the mountainous village of Qanat Bekish, a giant cross soaring over 73 meters in the air was constructed and lit up as a sign of unity among the world’s people.

I fail to see how a cross can be a sign of unity for Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists and any other group that wouldn’t fall under the Christian umbrella. But maybe those people don’t really count…

The edifice was inaugurated by the Maronite Christian Church and was lit up with 1,800 spotlights, according to Father Farid Doumit, a Maronite priest in Qanat Bekish. The inauguration came on the eve of the Feast of the Holy Cross, a celebration which commemorates finding the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified.

The cross was found? How come I didn’t know about that? When did that happen? States Wikipedia,

According to legends that spread widely throughout Western Europe, the True Cross was discovered in 326 by Saint Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, during a pilgrimage she made to Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was then built at the site of the discovery, by order of Helena and Constantine. The church was dedicated nine years later, with a portion of the cross[2] placed inside it. Other legends explain that in 614, that portion of the cross was carried away from the church by the Persians, and remained missing until it was recaptured by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 628. Initially taken to Constantinople, the cross was returned to the church the following year.

French Catholic groups and locals donated a total of $1.5 million to make the cross a reality.

(via)

What a waste of money in my opinion. They could have gotten the same amount of pipe from Home Depot a lot cheaper than that, even including shipping costs.

In northern Lebanon, a Mass was held in Koura at the Saydit Bkifteen monastery. Archimandrite Issac Khoury presided over the ceremony and stressed the importance the cross had for Christians.

And what do the Muslims who share Lebanon think about this so-called unity cross? The article doesn’t say.

Onto the second. I discovered the link I’d saved died but the story was out of Mt. Juliet in Tennessee where the mayor there was hoping to erect a giant cross to honour God and country. While looking for a copy of the story elsewhere, I found the Storify rundown of tweets about the news.

The mayor of Mt. Juliet said he wants to see a megachurch build near I-40 and erect a Christian cross to complement a nearby flag. The idea was met with applause when he floated it to the local chamber of commerce but has been derided by sites like Fark.com.

Fark is probably where I found out about it. PZ Myers got his followers to crash a poll the Tennessean paper had posted about it but that link is also dead. The question was, “Should a mayor incorporate his or her faith into plans for a city?” The only real answer should be no, rendering the need to poll somewhat moot. Alas, if PZ had to get involved, responses must have been going in the opposite direction.

The site also notes the existence of a “15-foot cross along Interstate 40″ already, erected by Cookville, a town 30 miles east. The mayor wants to keep up with the Joneses, I guess. Maybe he thinks it’d boost tourism, like those who erected a 33 foot tall Jesus in Swiebodzin, Poland:

Some locals think the statue will bring more visitors to the area, which others think is a waste of money.

“I don’t understand. With all this money, we would have done better to build an elementary school,” said Jarek, 41, from a nearby village.

A source close to the project said it had cost around a million euros (£870,000).

But, no money goes to waste if it’s a statue of Jesus or his torture implement. Never mind what kind of social programs could have gotten a boost from that kind of money, throw it all toward a giant erection instead…

“You are what you eat” – yes, but you don’t eat video games

Fox News reports on two different video games released on the same day, one from Lightside Games focusing on Jesus’ life and the other being the demon haunted Diablo III, a product from Blizzard Entertainment.

The timing was not lost on Brent Dusing, CEO of Lightside Games.

“Both games immerse the player, and you are what you eat,” Dusing said in a statement. “While one game goes one direction, ‘Journey of Jesus: The Calling’ players walk in the Messiah’s steps, in an authentic experience of Israel in Christ’s time.

Diablo III sounds like Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned up to eleven, an adventure pitting a “barbarian, witch doctor, wizard, monk or demon hunter” against the fiends from Hell with the fervent hope that the “good” guys will triumph.

Journey of Jesus is free to Facebook users, so it probably will get a lot of play – by those who already claim to be Christian (whether they dutifully follow Christ’s footsteps or not). I suspect it’s going to be of little interest to people from other religions so wouldn’t be a useful tool for converting them. And the atheists who try it will probably try to pick it apart as they play, not use it as a means of learning any real history about that era.

When I was younger, I thought there was something to the notion that violent video games make people violent but then I came around to the notion that people who already have a proclivity towards violence are the ones more likely to be interested in playing those games. Research is starting to swing that way, too.

What the research does show, in a nutshell, then is this:

Teens who are already angry or aggressive likely should be limited in their playing of violent video games
Teens should not play M-rated games
Girls especially should not play M-rated games
Video game is an important social development interaction for boys. Parents should keep this in mind when taking such time away from them in punishment.
And of course, all things in moderation. Playing a video game for 6 or 8 hours straight is unhealthy behavior at any age.

I’ve played my share of “shoot ‘em ups” and I’ve yet to become a violent offender. That’s anecdotal, I admit, but still true. I’m not much of a gamer anyway. The Man loaned me his old Nintendo and I still can’t get Mario past the first few levels. I like puzzle games, or board and card more.

I never play the games on Facebook but for kicks I signed up for the app so I could try it out. I decided to play as a woman and already I’ve cut a bunch of wood, picked a fight with a Roman and witnessed Jesus getting baptized. Whee. What childish fun. If I play again, I’ll update you on my progress.

I get a kick out of church sign advice

Pithy, no? It’s off a local church sign I drive by once in a while.

I gather it’s a dig at the “no atheists in foxholes” kind of mentality, that notion that people are prone to calling on a higher power only when they’re in the tightest of jams instead of going through life “knowing” they’re covered by God’s security blanket from birth to death.

This analogy is flawed, though.

Unless God is like Google’s driverless car, people still have to do all the steering for themselves. People still exert some control over where they go in life and how they’ll get there.

Plus, a spare tire is a guarantee against the unanticipated. Like the ubiquitous nail in a parking lot, maybe, the random “accident” that would not have happened had one steered a bit more to the left, or parked elsewhere. A spare tire might be looked at by some as a “god send” since it means it’s possible to get the car to a nearby garage instead of paying for expensive towing.

Am I being too literal? Probably. It’s what I do.

“New” Mayan art contradicts 2012 deadline

Good news for those who might have been worried: archeologists in Guatemala have announced the discovery of a mural there that suggests the earth’s inhabitants still have another 7000 years to prosper.

Working with epigrapher David Stuart and archaeologist and artist Heather Hurst, the researchers noticed several barely visible hieroglyphic texts, painted and etched along the east and north walls of the room.

One is a lunar table, and the other is a “ring number”—something previously known only from much later Maya books, where it was used as part of a backward calculation in establishing a base date for planetary cycles. Nearby is a sequence of numbered intervals corresponding to key calendrical and planetary cycles.

The calculations include dates some 7,000 years in the future, adding to evidence against the idea that the Maya thought the world would end in 2012—a modern myth inspired by an ancient calendar that depicts time starting over this year.

“We keep looking for endings,” expedition leader Saturno said in a statement. “The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It’s an entirely different mindset.”

Bad news for “the usually picturesque and tranquil Pyrenean village of Bugarach.” Their village had been picked as the potential Noah’s Ark for scared hippies the world over. Back in March, the Independent reported that

Upwards of 100,000 people are thought to be planning a trip to the mountain, 30 miles west of Perpignan, in time for 21 December, and opportunistic entrepreneurs are shamelessly cashing in on the phenomenon. While American travel agents have been offering special, one-way deals to witness the end of the world, a neighbouring village, Saint-Paul de Fenouillet, has produced a wine to celebrate the occasion.

Jean-Pierre Delord, the perplexed mayor of Bugarach, has flagged up the situation to the French authorities, requesting they scramble the army to the tiny village for fear of a mass suicide. It has also caught the attention of France’s sect watchdog, Miviludes.

It’s believed by these people that aliens have a spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach and that they have the capability to “beam away” anyone in the vicinity on that day. No wonder there’s some worry. Nobody wants to see another Heaven’s Gate happen. (Their website is still up and running, by the way.)

Old news: faith healing event ends in tragedy, death

It wasn’t directly the fault of Pastor Chris Oyakhilome of Nigeria, but he was the person 150,000 people had traveled to see in Cape Town back in March. He has a reputation as a miraculous faith healer so people who should be going to doctors – or have but don’t like their diagnoses or prognoses – are putting their faith in his ability to heal. One man in the audience during the three day Pentecostal show died, another pastor by the name of Simon Williams. The fifty-six year old

was taken from hospital intensive care to the event by his family. He collapsed and died from renal failure inside the stadium.

Dr Wayne Smith, head of disaster medicine for Cape Town, said he treated about 30 patients in the stadium’s medical centre and sent 16 to hospital.

“Some of them had travelled long distances to get there, they had ongoing medical issues and were in a lot of pain,” he said.

Pastor Chris has a few black marks on him already. In 2008, he was accused of protecting another pastor from his church who might have murdered a girl. He’s been suspected of money laundering to the tune of 35 million dollars and charges exorbitant attendance fees for special events at his Christ Embassy church. He, along with a lot of other evangelicals in the country, preach the prosperity gospel, and the poor are giving him upwards of 30% of their available money in the hopes that God will turn things around for them. Of course, the truth is that only Christ Embassy and the pastors in it get to prosper and enjoy a windfall.

So, back to this faith healing business. It’s understandable why people with little hope of improvement (in health or finances) would try something like this but this shit doesn’t work. James Randi helped expose Peter Popoff as a fraud back in 1987 but he’s still kicking around and still fleecing otherwise intelligent people on a weekly basis. “Desperation changes the balance.”

If you would tell them not to give their money to Peter Popoff, what would you tell them to do instead? Would they be better off giving that $100 to the bank that’s about to foreclose on their house anyway, or to the landlord about to evict them? If we have no alternative solution to offer, then our best arguments may boil down to this: false hope is expensive, and hopelessness is free. That’s not a strong selling point.

People need hope. We have a powerful need to feel like we have some control over our fate, even if it is an illusion. That’s why those with the most serious illnesses spend the most money on quack therapies. And it’s why we can’t save desperate people from the likes of Peter Popoff through debunking alone—we need to offer a positive alternative that meets their needs.

When people really don’t know which way to turn, any wrong direction can feel like the right one. Maybe it seems like there isn’t time to look into alternatives, or it doesn’t occur to them to look for different kind of aid or support, or they think there won’t be anything even remotely close to what they need, save a miracle. I don’t know. I just hope that if I’m ever in dire straits I’ll look for real help rather than put faith in something ultimately useless.