Ripping People Off in the Name of God

Many readers on this site may be too young to remember televangelist Peter Popoff. The only reason I know of him is due in no small part to magician and skeptic James Randi. Popoff was a faith healer that achieved fame by being able to make startling predictions as to people’s ailments during his church services. He was even able to recite their address, as though God had given him a cosmic phone book of some sort.

Obviously skeptical of this supposed supernatural ability, Randi decided to investigate. He was able to isolate a radio frequency transmitted by his wife to Popoff via a small earpiece, and Randi recorded it. He then played the tape on an episode of Jonny Carson (who was himself a magician and avid skeptic).Exposed as an obvious fraud, Popoff filed for bankruptcy, and disappeared.

Then, beginning in 2003, he started making a comeback, and he opened up a church where Popoff employed his usual bag of tricks. A few years ago, Peter got creative; he began offering “miracle spring water” on infomercials for free, claiming that if the participants followed the instructions to the letter, they would be blessed with a miracle. Although the tiny plastic reservoir of water was itself free, the instructions demanded that the water be slept with overnight, drank, and that a check for the amount of 17 dollars be sent to his church. It also unleashed a flurry of mail, often demanding that recipients pay amounts of up to 200 dollars as part of their expected contributions.

To most people, such demands would seem outright ludicrous, but Popoff nevertheless was able to secure 23 million dollars in revenue for 2005 alone, thanks in large part to his clever schemes. Some people, desperate for a miracle, continued to blindly follow Popoff’s instructions; one couple spent over 5000 dollars, and had to stop when they ran out of money to afford food. Why would anyone allow themselves to be manipulated by such obvious schemes? The answer can be found in the way in which the supposed virtue of faith operates: in blindly following the words and advice of people in positions of so-called “divine authority”.

The imagery of god as a Sheppard is no coincidence; we are deemed, by the 3 great monotheistic religions, to be unable to dictate for ourselves how to live ethical and meaningful lives. As such, we require the tutelage of God’s interpreters, who generally command a far greater understanding of scripture then we do. Or so, we are told. If a priest says that during masse, wine is literally transubstantiated into Christ’s blood, we are to take him at his word, despite the fact that our natural curiosity and observational powers would seek to refute it. Although the priest may himself be a well meaning human being that attempts to interpret his holy manuscript in the best possible way, the truth is that his constituents are quite literally trained to trust whatever he says, and as such are unable to tell the difference between good and fraudulent advice. They must simply take him at his word.

So if a man has similar constituents to our hypothetical preist, and claims that a plastic tube of water will cause it’s imbiber to witness a miracle, how are they to discern his true intentions? Is he merely trying to make money from these poor desperate folks, or is he genuinely offering a sacred libation? Well, therein lies the dilemma; we cannot criticize the victims of this spiritual hoax, because they were systematically trained not to be able to make that distinction. The fact that many of them do is not because of their respective faith’s doctrine; it is in spite of it.

Incidentally, it is this same reason that prevents any major religious organization from speaking out on the issue of fraudulent faith healers; any attempt to discredit them also places them in danger of being discredited. A fresh supply of faithful must always be maintained, even if such inculcation inextricably creates a highly susceptible and vulnerable populous.

Popoff’s ministrations continue to defraud many thousands of people out of their hard earned money every year, all of them hoping for a miracle to occur. We cannot blame the victims, and think them foolish for their credulity. We can only continue to harangue those that continually seek to bamboozle and defraud their fellow man, and try to elucidate to the faithful just why believing what they are told, is a villainous trap.