The bunny trail

Tomorrow is Easter, the most important celebration of the Christian calendar, a time when believers are reminded about such things as eternal life and redemption and salvation.  Also, therefore, time for the wacko fringe element to remind everybody that they better not get their kids chocolate bunnies, because this will cause children to hippety-hop right to hell.

[image courtesy of photographer Josef Türk Jun and the Wikimedia Commons]

At least, this is the claim of "Shirlee" of the site Real Bible Stories, in her post "Easter Bunny Brings Satan's Communion."  And I'd like to be able to tell you that this is a parody site, but "Shirlee" appears to be entirely sincere.  Here's what she has to say:

Easter. For many, it conjures images of a basket-toting rabbit bearing chocolate bunnies. The White House hosts an Easter Egg hunt, as do many churches.  What’s wrong with that?  It’s a celebration of spring, and fertility, and...  Yes, fertility. I’ll bet you didn’t know Jesus was a fertility god, did you? 

What’s that you say? He’s not? 

Then why are you worshiping rabbits — an unclean animal, consumption of which is abomination to God — and hunting for colored eggs on the celebration of His Resurrection?

Yes, well, in Leviticus 11:6 the bible also says that rabbits "chew the cud," which they don't.  But don't let that stop you from taking the whole thing as the literal truth.

And wait until you hear who is responsible for this perversion... you'll never guess.

It's... the Catholics:

Yes, Catholics. The inheritors of the Babylonian religion, who have perverted every aspect of Christianity with the ways of Nimrod and Semiramis (Ishtar)! 

Satan has found a very clever way of perverting Christianity...  He used the Catholic cult to inject his own rituals — those directed at any number of false gods, and even a false Savior — into Christian worship!  Think about it...  Whenever you idolize the Easter bunny, or trade eggs, or even fast at Lent, you are worshipping Satan!

Huh.  I was raised Catholic, and even back then, I was always in it for the chocolate.  But I suppose that's only to be expected from a former cult member who made it worse by giving up religion entirely.

"Shirlee" then goes into a long diatribe on the origins of Easter and how the "Catholic cult" (her words) has twisted the whole thing into a fast-track into hell.  She also more than once uses the phrase "Bunnies of Satan," which I think would be a great name for an all-girl metal band.

She ends with a scary question:

Will your kids be chomping on chocolate eggs and rabbits tomorrow, taking the Devil’s Communion?

In all seriousness, I find it hard to imagine living my life in such perpetual fear.  The idea that there's this evil guy who is constantly trying to find ways to grab you, and that even something like a Russell Stover Chocolate Bunny Rabbit could provide him ingress, is so horrid that if I believed it, I wouldn't want to leave my house.  Ever.

It does make you wonder what's appealing about this world view.  Once you've bought in, though, it's clear why people stay.  If you have let yourself become convinced that everything is a threat, and the only way to avoid burning in agony forever is to follow the bible word-for-word, it's unsurprising that it's difficult to cut free.

Unsurprising, too, that people like this get their knickers in a twist over anything that's different.  Which is why an elementary school in Kennesaw, Georgia has cancelled a yoga program designed for  alleviating student stress because parents thought it was "sorcery."  Kids and staff are now forbidden from saying "namasté" to each other.  One parent wrote:

Now we can’t pray in our schools or practice Christianity but they are allowing this Far East mystical religion with crystals and chants to be practiced under the guise of stress release meditation.  This is very scary.

Yes indeedy.  We don't want students de-stressed.  We want them scared.  We want them to be aware, 24/7, that anything they do, any tiny misstep, could potentially lead to their spending eternity in hellfire.

The administrators, of course, caved; no way could they push back against the people who raised the stink, because then you'd have Fox News blathering on for weeks about the War on Christianity even though Christians make up 55% of the population of Kennesaw.

So anyway.  Me, I'm just looking forward to next week, when all of the remaining Bunnies of Satan are gonna be on sale.  It may be the Devil's Communion, but it sure as hell is tasty.

Rising tide

At what point does choosing to ignore the facts cross the line into being morally responsible for what happens?

Because I think we've reached that point with respect to climate change.

Folks, we've been warning people about this since the early 1980s.  James Burke's seminal documentary After the Warming first aired in 1989, and predicted not only the dire consequences of anthropogenic climate change, but the resistance of the powers-that-be to doing anything to halt it.  (If you watch it now, many of its predictions sound like history -- his timeline for what was going to happen from 1990 to the present came so eerily true that it almost makes me want to believe in precognition.)  However much Al Gore is derided for his politics, his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth has also proved to be prescient.

Scientific paper after scientific paper -- peer-reviewed, based in hard data -- has demonstrated incontrovertibly that our world is warming.  There is no controversy amongst the climate scientists any more.  And still we shrug our shoulders at politicians who brand climate change as "liberal claptrap" (Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California), or those who say that if it's real at all, it will be "beneficial to society" (Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma).  Scientists who research climate have faced gag rules, funding cuts, and harassment from the likes of Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, who somehow, bafflingly, has ended up chairing the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

This all comes up (again) because of a study by Columbia University climate scientist James Hansen et al., who last week released a paper in the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics that is rightly scaring the absolute shit out of anyone capable of reading a scientific paper (thus disqualifying Rohrabacher, Inhofe, and Smith).  The title of the paper is unequivocal: "Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence From Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that2◦C Global Warming is Highly Dangerous."  (Note: the link is to a draft released last year; the paper itself appeared after extensive peer review, and with only minor modifications, in JACP last Tuesday.)

[image courtesy of photographer Angskar Walk and the Wikimedia Commons]

If the title by itself doesn't spook you enough, take a look at this excerpt from the abstract:

There is evidence of ice melt, sea level rise to +5–9 m, and extreme storms in the prior interglacial period that was less than 1 ◦C warmer than today.  Human-made climate forcing is stronger and more rapid than paleo forcings...  We argue that ice sheets in contact with the ocean are vulnerable to non-linear disintegration in response to ocean warming, and we posit that ice sheet mass loss can be approximated by a doubling time up to sea level rise of at least several meters.  Doubling times of 10, 20 or 40 years yield sea level rise of several meters in 50, 100 or 200 years... Ocean surface cooling, in the North Atlantic as well as the Southern Ocean, increases tropospheric horizontal temperature gradients, eddy kinetic energy and baroclinicity, which drive more powerful storms...  Recent ice sheet melt rates have a doubling time near the lower end of the 10–40 year range. We conclude that 2 ◦C global warming above the preindustrial level, which would spur more ice shelf melt, is highly dangerous.  Earth’s energy imbalance, which must be eliminated to stabilize climate, provides a crucial metric.

Co-author Eric Rignot put it more bluntly in an interview with Slate:

Ice sheet loss is non linear by nature.  You push the ice sheet one way, they do not react; you push them more, they start reacting; you keep pushing and they fall apart...  If we get there, we won't be able to fix it.

Among the scarier predictions of the Hansen et al. paper is a sea level rise of five to nine meters.  Do you recognize what this means?  The states of Florida, Delaware, and most of southern Louisiana would be underwater.  As would the nations of Bangladesh and the Netherlands.  All of the world's coastal cities would be inundated, with the exception of a few that have higher ground, like Seattle and San Francisco -- which would then become a string of islands.  This isn't talking about frost-free winters and warmer summers, and having to run your air conditioner more; this is talking about turning a significant proportion of humanity into eco-refugees.

Climate scientist Anna Liljedahl, of the University of Alaska, has said that the trends she's seeing are evidence of runaway warming.  The situation in the Arctic is dire.  The permafrost is experiencing widespread melting, with a resultant additional contribution of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere:

The scientific community has had the assumption that this cold permafrost would be protected from climate warming, but we’re showing here that the top of the permafrost, even if it’s very cold, is very sensitive to these warming event...  At the places where we have sufficient amounts of data we are seeing this process happen in less than a decade and even after one warm summer.

We have reached the point where ignoring the facts and ignoring or ridiculing the predictions of the people who are trained to understand the Earth's systems is a profoundly immoral stance.  There's a principle from Roman law that applies here: "Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit."  "Those who remain silent, when they should have spoken up, may be considered to have agreed."  If you support politicians who are complicit in hoodwinking the American citizenry with regards to the magnitude of this problem, you participate in that immorality and bear some of the responsibility for the outcome.

Which in this case, is increasingly looking like it will be horrific on a scale we have never seen before.

The Texas flood fossils

I get really fed up with the media.

I make a significant point in my Critical Thinking classes that there is no such thing as unbiased media -- that even the decision of what qualifies as news introduces a bias into reporting.  Add to that the slant that every news source has, and it underscores how important it is to take what you see, read, and hear with a big ol' pinch of salt.

But still.  There are times that poor reporting just pisses me off.  Take, for example, the story that appeared on KCEN-TV, out of Temple, Bell County, Texas last week, wherein we find out that a man in Tyler, Texas has found some fossils in his back yard that were deposited during the biblical Great Flood.

Tyler resident Wayne Propst was poking around in his aunt's front yard when he found some fossilized shells.  He cleaned them up with a toothbrush, then called a "fossil expert" named Joe Taylor who confirmed that they were from the time of Noah.

Propst was thrilled.  "From Noah’s flood to my front yard, how much better can it get?...  Now all I got to do is go in front of my aunt's house and pick up something from back when it all began.  I don't even have to search anymore.  What's really interesting to me is we're talking about the largest catastrophe known to man, the flood that engulfed the entire world."

Yes, and we're also talking about an event that left behind no geological evidence whatsoever, and therefore almost certainly never happened.  But don't let that stop you.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Propst's aunt, Sharon Givan, who owns the property where the fossils were found, was equally excited.  "To think that like he says that we have something in our yard that dated back to when God destroyed the earth.  I mean, how much better could anything be," Givan said.

Which brings up what is, to me, the most troubling thing about the whole Noah's Ark story.  This is supposed to be an edifying tale, right?  About a guy who listened to god and he and his family got saved from destruction?  But what the religious seldom focus on is that according to the bible, everything else on Earth died.  Animals, plants, infants, children, people from other cultures who had no part in what was happening.  It is, honestly, one of the most unpleasant stories in the entire bible (and there's a lot of competition in that regard).

I got in a discussion with a biblical-literalist Christian about this one time.  How, I asked, can you justify the death of little babies because god decided that everyone but Noah's family was too wicked to live?  How can babies be "wicked?"

And she said -- no lie -- "God knew that the babies would grow up to be evil just like their parents, so he killed them to wipe out the evil in the land, root and branch."

Which is one of the most flat-out amoral statements I've ever heard.  Genocide?  Including women, children, and infants?  No problem, as long as god says they deserved it.  My general impression is that a god who operates on that kind of basis would hardly be worthy of worship.

But I digress.

The contents of this story should not really surprise anyone who lives in the United States.  There is still a strong thread of fundamentalism here, especially in the southern states, and young-earth creationism is alive and well (and the fight against teaching it as science in public schools is ongoing).  But why in the hell is it considered news that a guy believes in Noah's Ark?  We don't have news stories with titles like, "Hoboken Woman Still Getting Messages From Magic Unicorn."  (Although I have to admit, I'd read that article.)

The worst part is the last line in the article, which says, and I quote: "For the record, we have not independently verified if the rocks are in fact historic."  Meaning what?  You're gonna send a reporter down to look at the fossils and say, "Okay, they look like they're from the Great Flood to me?"  You haven't radioisotope dated them yourself?  You are unaware that fossils are, in fact, old?

Or that you're considering, heaven forfend, asking an actual fucking paleontologist to weigh in on this?

I know that a lot of media has devolved into clickbait and/or pandering to the whims of whoever wails the loudest, but is it too much to ask that we expect that news sources at least attempt to present real news stories in as unbiased a manner as they can manage?  The media gets away with this bullshit because we as consumers tolerate it.

It's time to demand more from our newspapers, radio and television news, and online media.  When you see or hear a story like "Tyler Man Says He Found Fossils From Noah's Flood," write or call in to let them know that it's unacceptable.  There always will be trash news sources -- I doubt The Daily Mail is going anywhere soon -- but the only way things will change is if we start letting the powers-that-be know that we expect more.

I'm so blue

In today's contribution from the "There's Always A Stupider Claim" department, we have one-upped yesterday's post about tachyon-infused jewelry with a site that tells you how to make "Blue Solar Water."

According to the site with the euphonious name "Ho'oponopono," making "Blue Solar Water" is simple.  Here's how a "Blue Solar Water" enthusiast, Mabel Katz, explains it:

1. Get a blue glass bottle. Any color blue, from light blue to dark blue will work.
2. Fill with tap water and cover with a non-metallic lid -- cork, plastic, even cloth wrapped with a rubber band will work because the purpose of the lid is just to keep the dirt and bugs (that Love Blue Solar Water) out.
3. Place in the Sun for an hour or more.  Mabel comments that when left longer, it is sweeter.
4. When done, your Blue Solar Water can be stored in the refrigerator in any container -- glass, plastic, etc.
5. ENJOY!  How Much Blue Solar Water to drink?  Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len once shared that, for the sole purpose of CLEANING memories, he drinks a gallon and a half of Blue Solar Water a day!

So, yeah.  "Cleaning memories."   Katz tells us that it's useful for erasing your memory, which I find a troubling idea.  I already have to re-enter a room three times to remember why I went there.  I'm not sure I need anything that's going to make me forget more than I already do.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But that's not its only use.  Check it out:

- Add some to your Coffee, Tea, Cocoa, Juice, etc.
- Add Blue Solar Water to everything you cook -- Pasta, Soup, Oatmeal, scrambled eggs, etc.  Remember, just a drop of Blue Solar Water will solarize all of it.
- Add some Blue Solar Water to your washing machine when washing clothes.
- Spray some in your dryer.
- Add it to your radiator to make your car hummmm.
- Add it to your bath water.
- Spray yourself with Blue Solar water after showering.
- Spray rooms with Blue Solar Water.
- Gargle with it.
- Wash Floors with it.
- Wash your car with Blue Solar Water.

These are just a few of the ways that we have used Blue Solar Water.  Have FUN with it and be Creative in finding new ways to CLEAN with Blue Solar Water.

I have to admit, that none of these are a problem, if it floats your boat (and I'm sure that "Blue Solar Water" will make your boat not only float, but "hummmmm.")  After all, it's just water.  Like, plain old water.  So if you get a happy feeling by spraying water all over your house, then don't let me stand in your way.

There's a problem, however.  I live in upstate New York, where the sun only comes out when it thinks no one is looking.  How can I "solarize" my water when the sun isn't shining?  Well, fortunately, Mabel Katz is way ahead of me:

[A] very small amount of Blue Solar water, even one drop, added to regular water will solarize it.  You can also solarize it under an incandescent clear light (blue bottle) for an hour, or an incandescent blue light (clear bottle) for an hour.

So that's convenient.  She even has an answer for what to do when you run out, or don't have time to "solarize" any more water:

You can also use it mentally. Mentally repeat "Solar Water"  This will work when you REALLY cannot prepare it or have access to it.  God will do it for you ONLY when you cannot do it physically.

Which raises magical thinking to a whole new level.  "Here's how to make the magic water... but really, all you have to do is think about magic water and the magic will happen!"

So anyhow, many thanks to the loyal reader who sent me the link.  It's a little troubling that every time I think I have plumbed the depths of human gullibility, I find that there are many more circles of hell still below me.  Maybe I need to gargle with some "Blue Solar Water" and erase the memory, because if I do any more headdesks, I'm gonna end up with a concussion.

A jewel of a scam

As if there weren't enough ways to prey upon the gullible, in the last few years there has been a dramatic rise in offers for "energy jewelry," which includes necklaces, bracelets, anklets, earrings, and so on, all of which are somehow supposed to improve your health.  I thought this was worth investigating, so I did a Google search for "energy jewelry" -- and it resulted in over 42 million hits. Here are a few from the first page, chosen randomly:

• EnergyMuse -- leading the world in holistic crystal energy healing and jewelry.
• Jewelry to harmonize the body's energy fields, auras, and chakras!
• Energy Shop jewelry, designed to fit your dreams!  Each gemstone has been individually energy-charged and smudged.
• Energy-ring.com specializes in energy healing gold and silver jewelry, and improves reiki, chakra, and psychic energy by using the Earth's magnetic field through induction coil rings.

And so forth. I checked a few of these sites to see about cost, and the prices seemed mostly to start at $25 - but they went as high as $1500.

That should pay for a lot of energy, I'd think.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So, the basic idea is, give us large quantities of money, and we'll send you a piece of jewelry.  If you wear it, it'll harmonize your psychic energy fields (which don't exist), rearrange your chakras (which don't exist), and improve your aura (which also doesn't exist).

One has to wonder if there's a money-back guarantee.

My all-time favorite fake-energy-jewelry vendor, however, is Takionic.  This company claims that their products "align the body's atoms" so that one can "tap into the limitless energy of the tachyon field."  (Isn't the "tachyon field" one of the things Geordi LaForge was always blathering on about on Star Trek: The Next Generation, in situations where he had to explain why Data was suddenly remembering the future, or something?  That and a "rip in the space-time continuum."  "Captain, if we can introduce a tachyon field into the rip in the space-time continuum, I think we might just be able to return us to our own universe and stop Data from answering questions we haven't asked yet, all before the final credits."  "Make it so, Mr. LaForge.")

Actually, if you're curious, tachyons are hypothetical faster-than-light particles proposed back in 1967 by physicist Gerald Feinberg, which have never been observed and which most scientists believe do not exist.  So it's kind of peculiar that here we have a company that has such an unlimited supply of tachyons that they can sell products full of 'em.

Because if you visit the site (not recommended unless you want to do repeated headdesks), you will see that Takionic has a huge variety of products that will allow you to access this energy source.  It doesn't stop with jewelry -- oh, my, no.  They have tachyon-capturing blankets, eyemasks, headbands, wristbands, night cream, massage oil, belts, scarves, sport suits, toothpaste, and water.  Here are a few of their special offers, right from the front page of the website:

• Just a few drops of refreshing and wholesome Takionic Water under your tongue will brighten up any kind of day.
• Tap some beautiful, opalescent Takionic Beads to acupressure points, trigger points, or on any tender spot on your body. We hear many reports o relief of pain.
• Slip on a pair of comfortable Takionic Insoles to soothe your sole(s). Great if you have to be on your feet all day long.
• Need to win a game or improve your grades?  Sharper concentration. Greater focus. Clearer thinking. All possible with a Takionic Headband.
• Wear a smile. Wear a Takionic belt. For any strenuous activity when you neeed more endurance and a little help to smile your stress away.
• Make your pets happier - animals, too, love this natural energy.
• Grow healthier plants and vegetables with the Takionic Water.
• Improve the taste and vitality of your food and drinks.
• Harmonize your environment with the Takionic Beads and Belt.

Yes, you read that right.  They're selling you (not you personally, I hope) tachyon-infused water. For $35 for a 17-ounce bottle.

Me, I'm wondering if I missed my calling.  If there are people out there who will buy a plastic bottle of tap water for $35, I'm thinking I could be making a helluva lot more money doing that than being a public school teacher.

Anyway, I hope you haven't already been bamboozled by any of these folks and their pseudoscience.  I can categorically state that not one of the claims made by any of these folks -- not one -- has passed any kind of rigorous scientific test.  So, the bottom line is, if you want to be healthy, then eat right, exercise, don't smoke, and don't drink and drive.  Your jewelry may make you look nice, but it's not really going to help you out in any other way.

I'll just finish up by putting in a plug for the one bit of energy-jewelry that does perform as advertised.  It is the Placebo Band, sold for just $5.99 at ScamStuff.   It comes in many lovely bright colors, is labeled "PLACEBO," and has a nice holographic logo on the front.  It comes with the following disclaimer:

"Placebo Band doesn’t come preprogrammed in any way.  If you wish to have your band 'imbedded with frequencies' we suggest placing the band prominently on top of or in front of the largest speaker you have while playing your absolute favorite song ( e.g. "Groove Is In The Heart" by Dee Lite).  Not only will you have listened to something that improves your mood straight away but you will be reminded of the song and that good feeling every time you wear Placebo Band."

ScamStuff also promises to replace your Placebo Band for free if it explodes for any reason.

Who could pass up a deal like that?

The enemy of my enemy is... um... wait.

In today's news from the Unintentional Irony Department, we have religious wingnut and young-earth creationist Ted Cruz calling the anti-GMO cadre "anti-science zealots."

"People who decide that is what they want, they can pay for it already, but we shouldn’t let anti-science zealotry shutdown the ability to produce low-cost quality food for billions across the globe," Cruz said. "GMOs help to provide food for people across the globe and strengthen farms across the nation...  The people who oppose GMOs and want to buy organic food can do that."

Then, because there is no bizarre news story that someone can't comment on so as to make it way more bizarre, we have Ted Cruz being called out by none other than Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams of Natural News, who believes that vaccines cause autism and that the United States government is deliberately and callously killing us all with "chemicals":

[Cruz] insults all those Americans who share ever rising concerns over food pesticides, herbicides and chemical contaminants that the scientific literature overwhelmingly proves can cause cancer.  If only guns could provide personal protection against pesticides, then Ted Cruz might find himself on the right side of this argument... but that's not how chemistry works.  Chemicals are insidious, slow, invisible killers that commit violence on a cellular basis, day after day, meal after meal, until the victim is rendered diseased and ultimately dead.  The primary defense against chemical violence is CHEMICAL AVOIDANCE.

Yup.  That'll work.  Avoid all chemicals.  Presumably including water, oxygen, vitamins, proteins, DNA, and RNA.  Because "that's how chemistry works."

Ted Cruz, as visualized by Mike Adams

He then hits Cruz where it hurts -- his faith:

Perhaps even worse than the betrayal of fundamental constitutional principles of liberty, by going all-in for Monsanto, Ted Cruz joins forces with the most evil corporate entity on planet Earth.  Because Ted Cruz claims to be a supporter of Christianity, Biblical principles and God's creation, his betrayal on GMOs is far more than a political betrayal; it is spiritual treason against God.

And if you haven't already done enough damage smacking your head against your computer keyboard, Adams goes on to tell us that humans were intended by god to do selective breeding, but not to do any other kind of genetic modification:

Monsanto has taken a corn crop that was perfected through natural selective breeding by early humans, then turned it into a food POISON that damages the kidneys, liver and reproductive organs.  This is a treasonous act against humanity, Mother Nature and even God. 

By supporting Monsanto, Ted Cuz[sic] is openly encouraging a devious corporate entity that systematically violates the laws of Mother Nature and believes that Man's engineered (poisonous) seeds are superior to God's seeds that gave rise to nutritious corn via natural selection (humans working in harmony with nature to gradually shape phenotype genetic expression of food crops).

And the coup de grâce comes at the end, where Adams calls Monsanto "Monsatan" and says that by supporting GMOs, Cruz is "aligning himself with the devil."

So we first have climate change and evolution denier Ted Cruz calling the anti-GMOers anti-science, and the vaccines-cause-autism, chemtrail-believing anti-GMOers countering that Cruz has sold his soul to the devil.  Me, I'm wondering what I should think.  My inclination is to let Adams and Cruz fight to the death, because either way, rationalism wins.  But the whole thing reminds me again of the Senegalese saying I have quoted more than once:  "There are forty different kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense."

Prayer for pay

One of the inevitable downsides of a blog such as this one is that I tend to focus on negative stuff.  People who believe (and peddle) nonsense, charlatans, hoaxers, dupers, swindlers, and thieves.  And the world being what it is, a sizable percentage of the aforementioned no-goods never get caught, never get stopped, never have to recompense their victims what they've stolen.

Today I'm going to look at a case where the good guys won.  The story, which was sent to me by a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia, starts out like so many of the others -- but then ends on a happy note.

The scam was the brainchild of one Benjamin Rogovy of Seattle.  It was a website called "Christian Prayer Center," where you could sign up to have prayers said for you (or for a friend or loved one) -- as long as you donated.

All major credit cards accepted, of course.

More insidious still was that if you signed up and gave Rogovy your credit card information, you were put on a list for "continued prayers," and billed monthly -- unless you specifically clicked "No, Thank You."  And as you may have experienced with other such auto-bill sites, once you were on the monthly billing list, getting off of it wasn't easy.

Complaints began to roll in, some coming from as far away as Singapore.  Unfortunately, there was little the authorities could do.  Because the Christian Prayer Center was a licensed business, and it's hard to see how you could claim that you hadn't gotten what you'd paid for (no one said your prayers were going to be answered, after all), Rogovy was making money hand over fist from people who were either desperate or gullible or both.

Finally, however, Rogovy stepped over the line by including fake testimonials and made-up religious leaders as a way of increasing his take.  And it worked, for a while; records show that he raked in $7.75 million from over 165,000 people over a period of three years.  Hard as that is to believe.  But once the false information started showing up, that gave Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson leverage to go after the sly bastard.

And he succeeded.  Last week, as part of a settlement, Rogovy agreed to return millions of dollars to the people he'd bilked.  "What I will not tolerate," Ferguson said in a statement, "is unlawful businesses that prey upon people —taking advantage of their faith or their need for help— in order to make a quick buck."  A Facebook page appeared called "Christian Prayer Center SCAM" warning people away from the site.

People seeking a refund for money they've sent to the Christian Prayer Center and its sister site, Orcion Cristiana, have until June 12, 2016 to file a claim with the Attorney General's office.

The one cloud behind all of this golden lining is that people like Rogovy rarely ever go away.  As we saw this week with Peter Popoff, the lure of relieving the faithful of their filthy lucre is simply too tempting.  Until the Attorney General's office mandated that it be shut down, the Christian Prayer Center's website had a sanctimonious message stating, "We thank you for all the prayers, and we cherish the opportunity to have created a place where Christians could meet to support each other."  As of the writing of this post, the Center's Facebook page was still up, with a pinned post at the top of the feed saying, "If the Christian Prayer Center adds value to your lives and you think online prayer is important, please type "Yes" or "Amen" to our wall!  We love to hear praise reports and testimonials," and the following image:

Because apparently the answer to "What Would Jesus Do?" is "use false claims to take money from people and claim he's praying for them, but actually doing nothing."

So it's to be hoped that the judgment against Rogovy will put a stop to the money pouring into the Christian Prayer Center.  The problem is, of course, that even if this puts Rogovy out of business, there's always another swindler waiting in line.

If there's a sucker born every minute, as P. T. Barnum observed, there are probably two thieves born in the same amount of time.