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| Clockwise from upper left: Creflo Dollar, Bill O' Reilly, Joel Osteen, John Hagee, David H. Willis, Mark Wolford, David Barton, Pat Robertson |
Ostroy avoids what would have been a mind-blowing 4-in-a-row, but just could not overcome the religious loons of 2012
by Larry Simons
December 17, 2012
They say there's a first for everything. For the first time, since its inception in 2008, the Fraudie award does not go to an individual person, but to a band of religious loons. They seemed to have crawled out of the woodwork in 2012, and the lunacy that I exposed was enough for this team of religious frauds to capture this year's prestigious Fraudie.
Religious nuts [particularly Christians] have always been a fun and easy target here at Real Truth Online and they seemed to have come out in full swing in 2012. They simply could not be ignored this year. They deserved to be rewarded for their collective insanity.
It all began in February with a glimmer of hope here at RTO, when David "I'm all about the truth" Willis appeared to have ended his hiatus on his blog and posted a story in which he stated that one receives salvation at the very moment of baptism, when in fact the Bible lists many requirements for salvation: believing, baptism, faith in Jesus' death, works, etc....the list goes on and on.
Of course, Willis knows what precisely needs to be accomplished for salvation being that he has a direct line to God and does not have to worry about misinterpreting the Bible, because God himself just tells Willis during their daily conversations. My hope that Willis would resurrect his blog was laid to rest eventually because this was Willis' final post. I then had to put my trust in other religious loons to keep my blog fresh with new examples of insanity. Happily, they did not disappoint.
In April, I exposed known religious fraud Joel Osteen for telling Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that being gay is a sin and that Mormons actually follow the Bible. Naturally, Osteen failed to tell Wallace that God wouldn't be a perfect or all-powerful God for creating the desire within human beings to choose to do something that God abhors so much, homosexuality.
Osteen also conveniently omitted from his discussion with Wallace that why, if he believes that Mormons follow Christ, Mormon founder Joseph Smith needed to create his own Bible. Was it because the regular Bible wasn't good enough? Osteen believes that the only requirement to be a follower of Christ is to say "I love Jesus". What would be the point in their being 27 books of the New Testament if this was the only requirement? If this was God's only requirement for man to be his disciple, God could have fit that on a flash card.
In June, I wrote a story on two religious buffoons. One, a complete nut and the other a hypocritical fraud. Respectively, these two individuals are Mark Wolford, who died from handling a deadly snake, per being instructed to by the Bible, and Creflo Dollar who abused his daughter per both of his daughters' testimony.
Wolford was simply following biblical instruction by handling deadly snakes. In Mark 16:17-18, it states, “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
This passage alone should be solid proof that the Bible is false. Wolford obviously believed in Jesus, yet he handled a snake, as the passage instructs, and it, in fact, did hurt him...by killing him. Supporters of the Mark passage will argue that Wolford did not have enough faith. I argue that this kind of response indicates that religious people are loons who should be rounded up and admitted to mental institutions.
Creflo Dollar may not handle snakes, but on June 8, 2012, according to the testimony of both of his daughters, he attacked his 15-year-old daughter by choking her, throwing her to the ground and beating her with his shoe. The most disturbing aspect to this story is the fact that his congregation simply did not believe Dollar could do such a horrific thing and continued to support him. It all goes to prove that religious nuts come in all shapes and sizes.
In September I reported, in my second of two stories on religious fraud Joel Osteen, that Osteen admitted sexual orientation is not a choice, contrary to what most of the Christian community holds true. Osteen, obviously admitting this inadvertently when he stated that his own sexual orientation was not his choice, told a CNN panel, "I know I have not chosen to be straight, I feel like that's who I am. I don't understand all those issues so, you know, I try to stick on the issues I do understand. I know this: I'm for everybody, I'm not for pushing people down. ... I don't know were the fine line is, but I do try to stay in my lane."
Stands to reason that if a heterosexual like Osteen does not choose his sexual orientation, then neither does the homosexual. It is the only conclusion to come to unless religious loons believe God has different rules for different people. If that was not hypocritical enough, Osteen had the audacity to not only admit that although sexual orientation is not one's choice, homosexuals will still be condemned by God anyway, despite not having the capacity to choose their own sexual orientation. Does it get any nuttier than this? Answer: No.
In late September I reported the story of religious fraud David Barton, whose book on Thomas Jefferson was withdrawn from publication by Thomas Nelson, the largest Christian publisher. Why? Because even the Christian community came forward and denounced Barton's book as blatantly inaccurate. Some of Barton's inaccuracies concerning Jefferson included half-truths, which were purposely meant to deceive.
An example of this attempted deception was included in one of his chapters titled, "Lie 3: Thomas Jefferson Wrote His Own Bible and Edited Out the Things He Didn't Agree With". Here, Barton includes a truth, that Jefferson edited out portions of the Bible in a project he worked on. The lies are the facts that Jefferson did not write his own Bible, nor were the edited portions of this Bible parts that Jefferson "did not agree with." Jefferson constructed his own version of the Bible using a razor to cut out portions of the gospels from various bibles to make a continuous narrative of Jesus' life while omitting everything supernatural.
Barton's technique in this book was to make false claims, then attempt to prove the false claims are false so that it appeared as if Barton refuted a "lie". This is not even my opinion. Barton's own publisher validates my assessment better than anyone could have possibly done, by ending publication of Barton's pack of lies.
In October I told my faithful readers of religious wingnut John Hagee's revision of Civil War history. Hagee appeared on fellow wingnut Glenn Beck's internet program and said that Lincoln should be credited with ending the Civil War because of the day of prayer he announced on April 30, 1863, two years before the war actually ended.
If this is true [which it's not], not only is God very slow to answer prayers, but attributing the end of the Civil War because of a call to prayer two years before the actual end to the war is the equivalent of claiming that World War II ended on September 2, 1945 because of FDR's opening prayer before his declaration of war on December 8, 1941.
Nevermind that Lincoln could have ended the war anytime he wanted to or that it was he who started the war to begin with. Facts like these do not matter to religious loons like Hagee, who never miss an opportunity to deify St. Lincoln one more time.
Last month I brought to you the latest in the long list of reprehensible comments made by brain-damaged religious fucktwat Pat Robertson. It does not get any nuttier than the likes of this ancient glob of sludge.
On his program The 700 Club, Robertson made the false and irresponsible statement that atheists are miserable people and they want everyone else to be miserable at Christmas. Robertson is one of a small band of loons that come out of the woodwork every Christmas and claim that not only are the atheists trying to take Christmas away from religious people, but that atheists have nothing to celebrate or be happy about during the holidays.
Of course, the sane and thinking community knows this is utter bullshit. What Robertson really means is that atheists do not celebrate the birth of Jesus, and anyone who does not celebrate Jesus' birth, according to Robertson and his ilk, should be shipped off to a communist country or better yet for Robertson, shot dead and buried 25 feet under.
It is actually the atheists who, in my opinion, would be more humanitarian-centered and concerned for their fellow man, because they possess no judgement of people or have holier-than-thou attitudes. This is, no doubt, why there is less crime committed among atheists as opposed to the skyrocketing homicide rate among the religious.
And last but not least, it wouldn't be the holiday season without the annual declaration from the Mayor of Wingnuttia, Bill O' Reilly, that there is a "war on Christmas". We here at RTO have covered the seasonal declaration from FOX News's #1 propagandist on many occasions, but this year in particular, O' Reilly was showcased on our site for additional [and some might say nuttier] reasons.
In addition to O' Reilly's insane assertions that there is a "war on Christmas" [because there are two or three isolated incidents across the country every year of a few individuals that want to call a Christmas tree a "holiday" tree], it appears that O' Reilly does not know even basic facts about the religion he defends and claims to follow, Christianity.
Oddly, Billo does not even know that Christianity is a religion. On the November 28 telecast of The O' Reilly Factor, Billo was schooled by the President of the American Atheists, David Silverman, on the fact that Christianity is indeed a religion. O' Reilly claimed it is not a religion, but a philosophy. In the same interview, Billo referred to the Methodist denomination as a religion, showcasing to his senior citizen audience that not only is Billo an idiot on basic facts like whether Christianity is a religion, but has no clue the difference between a religion and a sect of Christianity [he called Roman Catholicism a religion too, which of course is another sect of Christianity].
As if this ass beating was not enough for Billo, on the November 30 telecast of The Factor, O' Reilly had on Ben Stein [otherwise known as Jew Ben Stein, an admitted Jew who acknowledges Jesus as the Son of God]. It does not get any funnier than that, folks. During this segment Stein claimed that atheists are bitter, angry people, yet just two days before this telecast, Billo was the one who became so upset at atheist David Silverman, that Billo used the Lord's name in vain when he said in frustration "Jesus Christ", and then attempted to blow off that he had just done so.
The icing on the cake came on the December 3 telecast of The Factor when Billo had Father Jonathan Morris on the program to discuss the "war on Christmas". At the end of the segment, Morris verified atheist David Silverman's correct statement that Christianity is in fact a religion. Not surprisingly, Billo had no time left in his segment to talk about that, but Billo did admit that Christianity is a religion [in my opinion, only to not look like the colossal fucknut he is in front of a clergyman].
The point is, the atheist was right and Billo was wrong. It does not get any better than Billo to be proven wrong about his religion from a clergyman who is validating the facts from an atheist.
There you have it, eight nutjobs who share the prestigious Fraudie award for 2012. It was well-deserved and long overdue. But, rest assured that more tales of lunacy from the religious will be coming soon and with full force. If it is one thing that can be guaranteed in this life, that is there is no shortage of religious loons and their insane rants. We will be watching and listening with great anticipation.