Religious Fraud: May 21, 2011

Economics Economics Questions
1

Many of you probably have seen the advertisements stating that the end of days will be on May 21st, 2011. The person who was responsible for this was a pastor in California. Of course, people donated the money to help spread the message, believing in the pastor’s words. I heard somewhere that he collected roughly 72 million dollars from his supporters.

Nothing happened - the end of the world didn’t come, no rapture. Some people actually left their jobs, sold their house, sold everything they had, and awaited for the end of days.

Would anyone here consider this to be fraud? Or do you believe that it’s ok for a person to wilingly “donate” to a cause of his/her faith. Should the pastor be put in jail…in a libertarian society?

2

Sure people can donate. People donate to the Sierra Club with concerns about global warming apocalypse all the time.

3

I do not think it is fraud because the people at Familyradio actually believed this nonsense…

4

If that’s fraud, more then half the world would be in a lawsuit.

5

[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]

I do not think it is fraud because the people at Familyradio actually believed this nonsense…

[/quote]

No, the earnestness of belief is beside the point. Even if a shyster can prove he really believes his own nonsense, it doesn’t exonerate him if he has actually engaged in fraud. Fraud is just a form of theft through an opportunistic failure to honor another’s property rights. It seems less invasive than trespass or theft since the object of the fraud is not in the possession of the defrauded. In other words, I can steal 10 widgets from you in two different ways. The first way is to enter your property, point a gun at you and swipe the 10 widgets from your possession. But there is another way, that is, to sell you 10 widgets and then fail to deliver them to you. The use of deception in order to effect theft is fraud.

Harold Camping gave no contractual agreement to anyone to deliver property that he then failed to deliver, so he defrauded no one in the legal sense. Of course, he’s an intellectual fraud but many in his line of work are.

Clayton -

6

Fraud involves some form of trickery, and the party being accused of the fraud has to purposely know the ‘trick’ in order for them to be fraudulent. Familyradio has held to this doomsday belief for a few years and ever since they made the doomsday claim, people have called in on their radio show and asked, “If doomsday does not happen, are you willing to give back your contributions” or “If doomsday does not happen, are you willing to end your organization?” and ALL the responses to these types of questions is something like this : “We do not concern ourselves with these types of questions because we know it is going to happen, so answering these questions are pointless.” And if they openly responded like this in their radio show, and people STILL donate money to them, that is not fraud.

7

If you don’t promise to deliver anything, it’s not fraud when you don’t. Whacky end-of-days types typically don’t promise that they will personally do anything in exchange for your donations, which is why they’re called ‘donations’.

Avowing that something fantastical, like the Armaggedon, will happen is not a promise of personal performance - even if they faithfully aver that it will happen, they will admit that it is beyond their control entirely.

8

What about cases when there were people who committed mass suicides, believing to be for divine causes? There have been many examples of this in the past several decades.

9

This is like global warming, except that they actually provided a falsifiable prediction and that contributions are voluntary, not expropriated by the state.

10

the only safeguard against stupidity is education.

11

Honestly I’m not sure how you could differentiate this from normal, everyday church donations.

12

I think problem is not the donations, problem is people believing in nonsense, believing in prophets. It’s not just magic like wine as a blood of christ, it’s mere stupidity, mass delusion when people start quiting their jobs or selling their houses.

13

Have you heard that the rapture was moved to October, 21st? Man, it’s just like global warming; every time the prediction doesn’t come true they change the story. “There will be global cooling, no, I mean global warming, no, I mean climate change, no, I mean global climate disruption.”

14

Please explain how believing in an invisible man who lives in the sky and sees all and knows all, is any different than believing that invisible man is going to bring people up to the sky to live with him and cause everyone else to die from earthquakes.

15

it’s different in a degree. Believing that you are watched by God and he forgives your sins doesn’t much affect your personal life etc, maybe psychologically you feel more “safe” or something, but believing in doomsday (rapture) and selling your house, quiting jobs etc. in the name of it is quite too much…

16

You cannot be serious.

First of all, what you’re trying to do is draw arbitrary lines distinguishing which unproven, completely faith-based beliefs are “nonsense” and which ones aren’t…which ones are “mere stupidity” and which ones are completely rational…more than likely just based off of nothing more than what you personally believe (i.e. if you agree with it, it’s perfectly normal…if you don’t, then it’s crazy).

Second…believing in prophets is believing in nonsense? Wasn’t Jesus considered a prophet? Weren’t there prophets all over the place in his day? Does not the Bible refer to scores of “prophecies” by “prophets” that are to be respected? So basically, it’s okay to worship a guy who was considered a prophet, who spoke of other people being prophets, and respect and accept their prophecies, essentially as fact…but it’s “mere stupidity” to believe a prophet today? It’s “nonsense” to believe that God is speaking through a man on Earth now, but it’s completely reasonable to believe that that happened a long time ago? There’s a lot of problems with your consistency here.

And third…religion doesn’t affect your life? Are you kidding? It dictates virtually every aspect of your life. It has something to say about what you eat, when you eat, what you say, where you go, how you interact with others, what you do in your romantic life, what you do in your professional life, what you do in your everyday personal life. It has something to say about what you think, what you believe, and essentially how you live. This is why in colloquial terms, when someone says they “aren’t very religous” what they mean is that whatever religion they may claim to prescribe to doesn’t get in the way of how they live their life very much…because they don’t follow it very devoutly. Because that’s what religion basically is…a prescription for how to live your life. I cannot believe anyone would try to suggest otherwise.

My whole point is that it’s quite interesting how someone who requires virtually no proof for believing in such fantasically unbelievable things could so easily discount and dismiss other people as “stupid” and “believing in nonsense” just because they believe the exact same thing you do…but just happen to think it will happen sooner.

17

“First of all, what you’re trying to do is draw arbitrary lines distinguishing which unproven, completely faith-based beliefs are “nonsense” and which ones aren’t…which ones are “mere stupidity” and which ones are completely rational…”

That’s quite a big strawman of my reply. I didn’t claim anything about “rational” beliefs, I just compared beliefs according to my scale, which are “irrational” but not harmful to normal individual to those which are very harmful. I am not trying to debate here atheism vs theism, as I am uninterested in this topic at all.

“Second…believing in prophets is believing in nonsense? Wasn’t Jesus considered a prophet? <..>”

He was (if he existed at all), but he isn’t alive today and isn’t claiming about “raptures” anytime soon :slight_smile: It’s one thing to believe in magical event that happened long time ago (you can’t quite disprove that, heh) and another thing believing in a prophet nowdays, when you can easily disprove such nonsense with a simple trial and error method - there were countless “doomsdays/raptures” and none of which has happened, why should it happen now? Maybe I am just looking to much into it, I don’t know.

And third…religion doesn’t affect your life? <…>

Well, by that meaning anything affects your life, every TV show or every written or read word in every book, though I didn’t want to imply that and take it to such extremes. There are many different religions, by the way, some like control every aspect of human life, some are more liberal in a sense.

“My whole point is that it’s quite interesting how someone who requires virtually no proof for believing in such fantasically unbelievable things could so easily discount and dismiss other people as “stupid” and “believing in nonsense” just because they believe the exact same thing you do…but just happen to think it will happen sooner.”

Maybe you are right, but again, I don’t know, I just look at old time beliefs more like a cultural thing, while modern faiths to me sounds quite bizarre to say the least..

18

Huh? You literally used the words “mass delusion”, “mere stupidity” (twice), and “nonsense”…and you’re going to argue you’re not making a judgement of rationality? Just because you didn’t use the word “rational” doesn’t mean I made up some straw man. Multiple times you implied and directly stated that people who believed this faith-based magic were inferior and dumber than people who believed in some other version of faith-based magic. Which is exactly what I said you did.

As I said. You have some real problems with consistency there. Not to mention logic. Are you really going to try to make the argument that simply because something has never happened, ipso facto, it can’t happen? I really thought you were better than that. And “why should it happen now?” Well…Can you tell me why it shouldn’t?

Well, in a way you are affected by everything you let into your life. But obviously my point is TV shows and books (other than religious ones) don’t give me specific rules I’m supposed to abide by, else I end up in a fiery hell for all eternity. Again, I cannot believe anyone would try to argue religion doesn’t affect how how people live their lives.

So basically religious beliefs long ago were okay because it was a “cultural thing”…but believing the exact same things today is “bizarre.” If you want to argue that it is more understandable that people would believe in such unbelieveable things back then because knowledge was so primitive and people needed to explain things they couldn’t explain, fine. But that means you have to claim all completely-faith-based beliefs today are “bizarre” and “stupid” and “delusional”. And that’s not what you were doing. You were literally making a distinction between the people who believed this guy and people who believe everything else the guy believes, save for this one thing about exactly when this event would happen. And according to you, the former are “stupid” and “delusional” people who believe in “nonsense”, while the latter are not. That is nonsense in my opinion.

19

So what about the mass suicide religious cults? If a pastor guarantees that the person who commits suicide will go to heaven, and that person follows through, should the pastor be punished? Would this, then, be “fraud”?

20

It reminds of the case of Johanna Suffolk, that so called “Prophetess” of the Regency who claimed she was to give birth to Shiloh, the new Messiah. When the date came and no Messiah was born she kept moving the date ahead until, alas, the tumor which had caused her belly to swollen finally took her life.

I have always struggled with the whole concept of “Rapture”. It sounds to me like either a throwback to the Chiliastic movements of the Early Church or, much more likely, a sort of childish hope that you don’t even have to die anymore to get to Heaven. Very typical of modern society and also very sad.