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Author | Topic: Peter Popoff is back! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1495 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
1. You became an atheist when you were 10 years old, based on ideas of God that you learned in Sunday School. Your ideas about God haven't changed since. Well, I can assure you that I was a lot older when I became an atheist, and I've been exposed to every idea of God that there is, so there's no ignorance on my part about different people's beliefs about God. The vast majority of them are just excuses for how they can believe in a magic sky-man who wants everything to be good, and has all the power to make them that way, but doesn't even use any of it.
But it doesn't negate the possibility that you might be ignorant of what the core of Christianity actually entails as opposed to what you think it entails. I'm pretty sure that I'm familiar with what beliefs represent the core of Christianity - indeed, I'm aware that different Christian sects have different core beliefs. But, I'm amenable to correction.
I don't go to spiritual pep rallies, which, admittedly, many churches have resorted to rather than showing a true deference to God. Then it sounds like your disagreement is not with my knowledge of Christianity, but in other churches' practices of it.
I trust you might be able to distinguish the difference in motives between a good pastor and Popoff. Sure. It's similar to the difference between Popoff and the people, taken in by his fraud, who popularize him. I don't think pastors are out to fleece people, for the most part; the guy who says "hey, look at this book; isn't Jesus awesome?" is pretty much just as duped as the guy who says "hey, watch this video; isn't Popoff great?"
What leads me to believe that is your apparent inability to distinguish between somebody like Popoff from somebody like, for instance, Ravi Zacharias or C.S. Lewis. I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not talking about the people; I'm talking about the claims. The claims of Popoff are as equally religious as the claims of Christianity. That Popoff promotes his claims out of avarice, and the Christian claims are promoted with no duplicitous intent, is immaterial. Of course I can distinguish between the persons. It's the claims, I repeat, that are indistinguishable.
It’s almost humorous that the many people who claim the Bible to be fallacy often have read little more than a few pages. Is that fair? I find the opposite to be true, in my experience. It's usually Christians who haven't read much, if any, of the Bible; whereas atheists have usually read most or all of the whole thing. I have, several times. I don't commit passages to memory, but I usually remember the significant ones and whereabouts where they can be found. (That's what a good concordance is for, really.)
However, their personal exegesis typically does not accurately convey the message being portrayed by them. Should I assume by their platitudes that I have either caught them on a bad day, in where their memory is not what it should be, or that they are lying to me about their Biblical expertise or their grasp of the Christian ethos as a whole? You should conclude that you have, apparently, a selective memory; I imagine that you've had the exact same experience with people of differing Christian background, only you didn't see any reason to call their fluency with the Bible into question. Or am I supposed to believe that, in your experience, every Christian you talk to about the Bible remembers every passage verbatim and comes to precisely the same interpretation as you? That strains credibility, to say the least. Obviously atheists come to differing interpretations than you do, for some passages - they're not doing the incredible backbending and twisting I've seen you do when the literal text of the Bible runs hard aground against physical reality, or even other parts of the Bible itself. Freed to approach the Bible honestly, it's obvious that atheists would have a very different interpretation of its most twisted and re-interpreted passages.
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inkorrekt Member (Idle past 6109 days) Posts: 382 From: Westminster,CO, USA Joined: |
This is hard for me to believe. 20 years ago, my neighbor, a devout christian believed Popoff. Oneday, he announced over the radio that there is alady who has financial stress. God is telling you today that if you send $500, today, God will multiply this. Well, she believed this and sold whatever she had and sent $500. In 2 weekss, she won a lottery for $5000. Is this luck? Rare coincidence ? Or this had nothing ot do with Popof?
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
inkorrekt writes: Is this luck? Rare coincidence ? Or this had nothing ot do with Popof? I assure you it has nothing to do with Popoff. It may be luck, coincidence, or God's pity on her faith. But no matter what the result, it doesn't detract from the fact that Popoff is a fraud and he knows it.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1495 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
In 2 weekss, she won a lottery for $5000. Is this luck? Rare coincidence ? Or this had nothing ot do with Popof? What makes you think this actually happened?
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inkorrekt Member (Idle past 6109 days) Posts: 382 From: Westminster,CO, USA Joined: |
This happened on S 22 nd street in Omaha Nebraska. She never lied to me. I trust her.
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Coragyps Member (Idle past 762 days) Posts: 5553 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
A State of Nebraska lottery? Or which?
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Chronos Member (Idle past 6253 days) Posts: 102 From: Macomb, Mi, USA Joined: |
I signed up for that miracle spring water 2 or 3 years ago just for fun. He sent me a bunch of hilarious shit and sold my name to a bunch of sleazy advertizers. For example, I got an offer from Hustler magazine, which I can't attribute to anythign other than Mr. Poopoff. It was worth it for all the money whoring hilarious scams that I got. Bags of sunflower seeds, pennies, ribons, buttons, marbles - all this stupid junk drawer shit with ridiculous letters asking for money is lots of creative ways. I only threw it all out recently.
..In another way it's depressing to think of all the people who can barely afford to live who clutch at staws, giving money to this clownshoe.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
This is hard for me to believe. 20 years ago, my neighbor, a devout christian believed Popoff. Oneday, he announced over the radio that there is alady who has financial stress. God is telling you today that if you send $500, today, God will multiply this. Well, she believed this and sold whatever she had and sent $500. In 2 weekss, she won a lottery for $5000. Is this luck? Rare coincidence ? Or this had nothing ot do with Popof? In the last 20 years, thousands of people have sent money to Popoff, sometimes in large quantities on similar promises (how many ladies had financial stress in 80s? Plenty). Most of them did not get freebies in the form of gambling profits or other chance windfalls. Some did, and some of them did it within some 'significant' time frame of giving Popoff or somebody else (sacrifice to Satan, Allah, their agents or L. Ron Hubbard etc etc). So the answer to the question is 'insufficient evidence to make any positive claim'. To make a positive claim for Popoff's legitimacy we'd need a study. We'd need to hear from a significant proportion of Popoff's donators, with evidence of any claimed fortune. We'd need to see a group of people who simply came across fortune without any donation. Then we could see if giving a donation gives one a tendency towards being fortunate. In short, your anecdotal sample of 1 is completely useless. It tells us exactly what we already knew: people win lotteries and some of those people might have engaged in some superstitious ritual before hand. What it does not tell us is whether some superstitious rituals actually have any effect on success.
Rare coincidence ? No: a common one.
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tsig Member (Idle past 2936 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
'Hearing the voice of God' is generally not considered a testable product. However, we know this guy is lying about that. Whether or not he is legally allowed to lie, lying's still not right How do you know he's lying?
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tsig Member (Idle past 2936 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
I assure you it has nothing to do with Popoff. It may be luck, coincidence, or God's pity on her faith. But no matter what the result, it doesn't detract from the fact that Popoff is a fraud and he knows it. From were do you get this assurance?
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
ts writes: How do you know he's lying? If you watch the clip in message one you will see that the 'voice of God' was actually the voice of Mrs Popoff.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
ts writes: From were do you get this assurance? Well. let's see. I am christian, and I feel quite assured that anyone who would be silly enough to respond to my false claims of miracle money-producing water would not get any result even by luck that I could take the credit for.
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tsig Member (Idle past 2936 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
If you watch the clip in message one you will see that the 'voice of God' was actually the voice of Mrs Popoff How do you know that isn't the way god sounds?
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tsig Member (Idle past 2936 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
deleted by ts
Edited by ts, : lack of content
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kalimero Member (Idle past 2472 days) Posts: 251 From: Israel Joined: |
How do you know that isn't the way god sounds? I don't. But it could also be the sound of the tooth fairy, it's just as reasonable as the sound of god. The simplest explaination is that it's just his wife giving him information about those poor people that are being decieved (also the one that collected the info).
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