Isn't It Time to Dismiss the Hucksters of Holiness?

One would definitely think so! Apart from being descended from toxic, historically gaseous windbags (e.g. Jim Jones, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham), all the known living hucksters of holiness continue to offer a false product. At the very least they should be guilty of fraud, and in making false claims for their product(s) which can't be validated. If they were snake oil salesmen proffering their oily medicinals, none of them would have reached the stages they did- whether Pastor Jim Jones, or the clown Billy Sunday (See figure insert)

The trademarks of these hucksters has been FEAR and control, while trying to SELL the gullible that their eternal lives depend on believing bible quotes literally, including: a rapture, an Antichrist, Armageddon, and Hellfire for all those who don't "believe on the Lord JC as personal Savior."

Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy puts it bluntly:

"The Rapture, End times, and Armageddon hucksters in the United States rank with any Shiite Ayatollah".

The difference, of course, is that sane people KNOW what these Shiite Ayatollahs are selling is fulsome horse pockey. But why do so many accept the nonsense of the Christians Salvation mongers and bible Hellfire hucksters? Why aren't these sanctimonious morons scorned for the bozos they are as opposed to nearly worshipped in personality cults, or worse given more money than their donors can afford?

If there were a Better Business Bureau to deal with "salvation" claims, all the hucksters would've have been locked up, or at least secured in straight jackets in loony bins, with 400 mg of thorazine administered on the hour. (Though for both Jones and Sunday I doubt it would've worked!)

Consider:

None of what they're offering has one scintilla of hard evidence to support it! There is no basis or any evidence for any "Rapture" and the way these charlatans work it is to postpone their predictions so late that no one will be alive to verify it! All they do is yap like barking dogs (in love with their own voice) over and over that there WILL be a Rapture, and it will happen to a select group of the righteous. I can find the same modus operandi for sell jobs on the tube at any early morning hour - where some jackass is peddling a product too good to be true. "This Rapture Wax will shine your car so it never EVER needs waxing or washing again! Furthermore, once waxed your car will be able to levitate over any traffic jam!"

"Salvation" is another gimmick. All these hucksters know how to do is tell foolish stories of putative devils or "Satan" barbecuing some poor guy or girl. Or some generic colorful fire ostensibly burning some people - whom we don't know, but they usually tend to label the poor "souls" as atheists, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Mormons and the like.

But a thinking person ought to demand more than a trite, oversimplistic depiction, just like a thinking person confronting a snake oil salesman in the 1880s ought to have asked for the proof that any elixir on the list works. But they can't deliver! All they do is threaten, terrorize the weaker minded and cajole - demanding their marks sacrifice their minds and authority to them in total belief....or else!

Or else what? Hell isn't even a logical possibility! The most regressive monkey could figure this out based on the definition of divinity most of these carny barkers give. If they say "God is infinite" then taking that LITERALLY (like they do their contradictory bibles) means there can be nothing that exists outside or beyond the infinite being.

Therefore, IF Hell really existed - it could only do so as PART of the DIVINE! Logically, if it existed apart from the divinity, then that would mean a domain or space exists where the divine doesn't. Hence, the divinity CANNOT BE INFINITE! The fundie clowns can therefore either have an infinite God OR Hell, but both together is an impossibility. They are mutually exclusive claims.

Q.E.D.

Yet this simplest logical process can't be followed by the hucksters (or mayhap they don't wish to) or it seems, any of their gullible marks.

Thus, simple reason would disclose to the most menial intellect that these hucksters are pushing a fraudulent product, a false promise. They cannot ensure any salvation because there's NOTHING to be saved FROM! It's like my filling a bottle of tap water, and selling it to any fool on the street that look's dumb enough to believe it's "miracle water from Lourdes".

In effect, the hucksters are demanding people pay an intolerably high price (their own mental authenticity and independence) for the false promise of a future salvation! WHO would be so insane to do that? Evidently, to read the sad statistics....millions...because they allow their fear to trump reason. They so desperately want to be counted amongst the "elect" they'd sell their "souls" (assuming they had any) to these charlatans as well as give away their pensions.

Finally, the hucksters make another false claim that Jesus will return in a "Second Coming" and all the Jews will suddenly convert at the last.

This is idiotic and crazy. There is not ONE single piece of confirmed historical evidence that a real historical Jesus existed. By that I mean, a Jesus who is a God-man with the capacity to save all of humanity via his death. No such person ever existed, and all the so-called evidence is reverse- engineered. Even the so called New Testament citations were simply copied extracts from the more ancient Greek Septuagint and its prophecies. There isn't a single nanobyte of hard evidence the events described in the NT were the least bit original.

What the bible hucksters adopt as "evidence" is either non-historical (non-authorized) text or passages, or late (syncretic) additions that have no historically dated confirmation, or authenticity. Oh, the hucksters will pull some monkey shine out of their a$$es to insist the authority is there, is real and is "biblical" (sic), they always do. But any committed textual analyst can easily expose their claim for the baseless deception it is. One Biblical Exegesis course at Loyola (Theology 130, 1964-65) showed me that three-fourths of the "good Book" can be chucked straightway as either fulsome, made up rubbish or distorted, re-translated os mistranslated mumbo jumbo. Hucksters slobber over every word and quote in their KJVs but they are idiots to do so. Or, as one Anglican minister suggested to me, only do it to keep up with their own baloney so they can dole it out when required.

What is the best theory for the origin of the Christ myth? Probably it's from Oxford scholar Geza Vermes ('The Authentic Gospel of Jesus') who theorizes that the syncretic later additions and embellishments to the basic initial writings were probably a result of increasing skepticism and boredom among disillusioned Christians (Vermes, p. 384) After all, over a century had passed since the days of Jesus and the church- which had NO role to play during his life- had by then become institutionalized.

It thus had become an entity to serve no other purpose than to perpetuate the teaching of Jesus in an indefinitely postponed “Parousia”. This in turn, led to the impetus to continue ad hoc additions, further embellish and reinforce the Savior –Redeemer myth. The easiest way to do so was to copy legendary tales from earlier pagan sources (e.g. Mithra and Horus) and insert them into later translations. This mightily helped church leaders in their constant exhortations to the faithful to not lose sight of the goal.

Thus, there came new and revised parables and more “Son of God” sayings to encourage the need for quiet optimism and hopefulness, and to simplify a formulaic salvation. E.g. “John 3:5 and 3:16 are perfect examples of later syncretic additions. By the time of the 2nd Council of Constantinople – with flocks being pulled away by many other sects, the time had come to get more forceful to preserve integrity and “Hell” was inserted into doctrines. (Before that, reincarnation was accepted by more than half the original Church’s flock – following teachings by Origen of Adamantius and Clement of Alexandria.)

The historical warp and woof is thus that the whole "End times-Armageddon-Second Coming" edifice is built on soiled tissue paper and is an outright FRAUD!

No sentient person ought to extend gravitas to any of these fables, and certainly not merely because they fall under the banner of religion - OR the particular huckster also knows how to draw a good Hell Cartoon! As for the hellfiry yapping, I agree with poet Carl Sandburg in the poem he wrote about Billy Sunday - to the effect he trusts no man pushing a religion who hasn't personally suffered. Anyone who simply comes to Hellfire yapping from his mouth or keyboard is no sufferer- just another bombastic blowhard.

Even if modern psychiatry has no abiding remedy or therapy for these hucksters, isn't it time we at least dismiss them as authoritative voices?