An anonymous ex-congregant compiled more than 100 examples of Pastor Josh Whitlow plagiarizing other preachers. Several examples are now up on YouTube.
It's not like they don't have pages and pages of contradictory sermons by the character created over 300 years after the "great life beginning and ending event" of this man-made character, a story that is most likely plagiarized just as a great deal of Bible stories are... both first and second testament.
The Bible and other "holy" books are delivered via a 'spirit' to a man and that gives the claim authenticity, unlike like all the mediums around today (well, to me anyway, they have their followers, some in the thousands garnering very much money). I guess we all should be listening to these scammers and carrying out their messages also, though it'd be more than around hundred people that have committed suicide because of their prophets. I'm ashamed to admit I don't take today's published and profitable prophets seriously. I'm even derisive towards them.
I suspect this preacher is someone who has gone through life always opting for the easy way out. In any event, it is behavior like plagiarizing other people's sermons that has contributed to Christianity becoming the most factionalized religion on the planet. Don't like the church you're attending? Go down the street to the church that tells you want to hear. The staggering number of Christian tribes should be a bigger problem for believers than it is, because it speaks directly to an all-powerful God who couldn't make himself understood.
"The Rocks don't Lie" by David R Montgomery looks at flood myths from different cultures around the world and the geologic facts that explain the events that are sources of those myths. As a geologist and rock nut, I loved it.
What are you telling me that Josh Whitlow's story of him being a fatherless slave boy on a desert planet in a galaxy far, far away is a lie? And I suppose he didn't gain his freedom by winning a pod race, only to become the first Jedi for Christ? What next, are you saying that he didn't go around in a green van with his friends and a cowardly great dane solving mysteries? And I suppose you're going to say that him growing up with a talking map, backpack and a monkey named Boots is also a lie? I just don't believe you people.
“He finds what other people have said, then steals it for himself without giving any due credit, even when they involve personal anecdotes.”
That’s alright, they aren’t really personal anecdotes, they’re fictions and fantasies. Even if there’s a kernel of truth to any of them (doubtful) the story and moral are made up to make the preacher look better. Just look at all the raging atheists that are now the most pious preachers. They even did drugs and rebelled against their parents, dontcha know.
It’s good someone is pointing out the gratuitous plagiarism and dishonesty that comes from it, but the people in the pews have already given up their thinking to these men, they will believe any excuse to ignore the lies.
The christian and jewish way all ends in annihilation. I actually don't know if the other branch of the Abrahamic Patriarchy is nihilistic, it certainly endeavors to control human freedom of thought as do the other branches and their factions.
Next thing you're going to tell me is that religions in general plagiarize other religions. Now that is just crazy talk, especially after Christmas. Now, just let me sit here next to my Christmas tree and Yule log, and think about what I am going to do for Easter.
A pastor stealing sermons promoting hate, exclusion, and violence, etc, I am not surprised. All sermons are from the Christian fascist playbook that the evangelical support!
Oh,c’mon now. He’s just stealing…ummm, borrowing… sermons. It’s not like he’s molesting other people’s kids and claiming they were his own. In fact, he wasn’t even borrowing them. He was imitating them.
And as St. Oscar Levant observed, imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism. Who are you to criticize Saint Oscar Levant?
Besides, writing sermons is hard. Working is hard. Coming up with original thoughts is hard. The end justifies the means, doesn’t it? I mean, look at God being pissed off as hell at America, and sending us Donald Trump. He wants to chastise us, and he chose the perfect vesicle* to do it.
And besides, it’s not like the Christian God and his big brother, the Hebrew God, weren’t doing exactly the same thing. The flood story appears in numerous mythologies. The story of Samson was lifted right out of the story of Hercules, down to the slaying of a lion. Jesus wasn’t the only Savior born of aversion, umm, a virgin, who promised to come back after he died. He wasn’t the only savior crucified with the good of mankind.
And it isn’t as if Christians haven’t been telling stories about other people, including other Christians, that were long on the invective and damnation, but short on fact, logic, experience, and above all, love..
In short, intellectual bankruptcy is baked right into Christianity.
Bearing false witness (i.e., lying) in addition to stealing and coveting. That's 3 Commandments (8, 9 and 10) that Whitlow has violated. A hat trick. And these are just the ones we know about.
apropos of not much, except for Hemant’s article and this entire discussion, i just got this email. In it, while acknowledging that people are fleeing the faith, the writer wants us to send money to fix all of the problems in the church and restore trust.
The solutions to these problems are not surprising; more bibling, more jesusing, more money. This is what I wrote in response:
——
Dear Mr. Ford,
I received this email this morning. Although I know a lot of names in the evangelical world, I don’t know yours. But that’s not overly surprising.
But your email was interesting. Restore trust and send money. Fix the problems of authoritarian power structures and send money. Jesus more and send money. But NOT—assuredly NOT— acting as if your religion actually delivers on the claims it makes about making people better, instilling morality, and all the rest of it.
But you can still send money.
Lest you think that I am one of those anti-religion atheists who hate Christianity and want to see it destroyed, rest assured that I don’t really care what people believe. But I do care very much what they do with it. I am a gay man, out and proud for more years than probably you have been breathing. For 60 years, I have listened to conservative Christianity claim without the slightest basis in reality that “me and mine” are a threat to marriage, family, children, faith, freedom, morality, heterosexuality, decency, public order, and Western Civilization itself, such as it is. And evangelicals overwhelmingly STILL support the worst, most immoral, most corrupt, most dishonest, most incompetent half-of-a-man ever to disgrace the office of the president.
Your email arrived while I was reading an article about Pastor Josh Witlow, coming under fire for stealing other pastors’ sermons. He is an amateur. Virtually every day, I receive another article in my newsfeed about yet another pastor/priest arrested, or convicted, or sentenced for sex crimes against children, often women, and occasionally men. And the never-ending reviling and slandering of gay people, and now transgender people, never stops because it is a never-ending and useful tool for accruing power and money at the expense of innocent people.
Of the world? In the world? Which? You be the judge.
As I said, I have been listening to this garbage for 60 years. I have no idea what you think about it. But I do know that it demonstrates that without the slightest doubt, the moral, intellectual —and yes, RELIGIOUS— rot starts right at the head of the evangelical (and ironic) fish, and runs right to the core of modern conservative Christianity.
As a gay man, my existence is not the problem. My insistence that I have the right to live my life with full participation in society, as I am made, and free of evangelical malice— you call it “love” without a hint of irony— is not the problem. The existence of transgender people is not the problem. And very frankly, until you and yours can see that this campaign of lies and vilification against me and mine— that years, decades, centuries and millennia of reviling and slandering innocent people for the faults of the Christian and heterosexual worlds…
…lies at the very heart of your political and religious movement, and thus at the very heart of the rot…
Bravo. Notice they always want people to send $$$, yet never expect their omnipotent god to remove the rot from their criminal enterprise or fill their coffers and wallets.
It actually gpt flushed. A few years ago, I took pix of church cards in the bowl and sent them to churches. During my hospitalization and rehab earlier this year, I told a preacher to tell his god I am gunning for its hateful ass. I told him his jesus will burn my kid for being Gay, so I want his ass burned.
Wow. A liar for Jesus lying? This is my shocked face :-|
Really, it was only a matter of time before straight up plagiarism happened. They've only got so much to cherry pick from.
It doesn't help that the preachers ran out things to say a long time ago.
It's not like they don't have pages and pages of contradictory sermons by the character created over 300 years after the "great life beginning and ending event" of this man-made character, a story that is most likely plagiarized just as a great deal of Bible stories are... both first and second testament.
The Bible and other "holy" books are delivered via a 'spirit' to a man and that gives the claim authenticity, unlike like all the mediums around today (well, to me anyway, they have their followers, some in the thousands garnering very much money). I guess we all should be listening to these scammers and carrying out their messages also, though it'd be more than around hundred people that have committed suicide because of their prophets. I'm ashamed to admit I don't take today's published and profitable prophets seriously. I'm even derisive towards them.
Slave morality doesn’t need knowledge or the sharing of lived experiences.
I suspect this preacher is someone who has gone through life always opting for the easy way out. In any event, it is behavior like plagiarizing other people's sermons that has contributed to Christianity becoming the most factionalized religion on the planet. Don't like the church you're attending? Go down the street to the church that tells you want to hear. The staggering number of Christian tribes should be a bigger problem for believers than it is, because it speaks directly to an all-powerful God who couldn't make himself understood.
Christmas? Stolen from Pagans. Easter? Likewise. Shit, even the Old Testament is a shameless ripoff and mangling of the Tanakh.
Gives the biblical "laying on of hands" a whole new meaning.
Biblical flood? Stolen from The Epic of Gilgamesh. Likely other examples, too.
Dying and rising savior gods, the concepts of heaven and hell, nothing they have is original to them.
Multiple levels of the afterlife in Greek and Norse mythology.
Dying and rising gods had been a religious motif common to the eastern Mediterranean for at least a thousand years at the time Jesus supposedly lived.
"The Rocks don't Lie" by David R Montgomery looks at flood myths from different cultures around the world and the geologic facts that explain the events that are sources of those myths. As a geologist and rock nut, I loved it.
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
― Thomas Paine
𝐴𝑠 𝑤𝑒’𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑎𝑟 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑜𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑛, 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑏𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦.
Hemant used nice language to say "Christian Fucking Privilege".
To P-ass-tor Josh Witless...
Stop me if you've heard this one: Thou shalt not steal.
Oh, and there's also prohibitions against coveting,
What are you telling me that Josh Whitlow's story of him being a fatherless slave boy on a desert planet in a galaxy far, far away is a lie? And I suppose he didn't gain his freedom by winning a pod race, only to become the first Jedi for Christ? What next, are you saying that he didn't go around in a green van with his friends and a cowardly great dane solving mysteries? And I suppose you're going to say that him growing up with a talking map, backpack and a monkey named Boots is also a lie? I just don't believe you people.
Such cynicism!
“He finds what other people have said, then steals it for himself without giving any due credit, even when they involve personal anecdotes.”
That’s alright, they aren’t really personal anecdotes, they’re fictions and fantasies. Even if there’s a kernel of truth to any of them (doubtful) the story and moral are made up to make the preacher look better. Just look at all the raging atheists that are now the most pious preachers. They even did drugs and rebelled against their parents, dontcha know.
It’s good someone is pointing out the gratuitous plagiarism and dishonesty that comes from it, but the people in the pews have already given up their thinking to these men, they will believe any excuse to ignore the lies.
Regardless of what he tells the sheeple, his own or plagiarized sermons are all lies.
The death cult can only survive by lying.
The christian and jewish way all ends in annihilation. I actually don't know if the other branch of the Abrahamic Patriarchy is nihilistic, it certainly endeavors to control human freedom of thought as do the other branches and their factions.
Next thing you're going to tell me is that religions in general plagiarize other religions. Now that is just crazy talk, especially after Christmas. Now, just let me sit here next to my Christmas tree and Yule log, and think about what I am going to do for Easter.
A pastor stealing sermons promoting hate, exclusion, and violence, etc, I am not surprised. All sermons are from the Christian fascist playbook that the evangelical support!
Oh,c’mon now. He’s just stealing…ummm, borrowing… sermons. It’s not like he’s molesting other people’s kids and claiming they were his own. In fact, he wasn’t even borrowing them. He was imitating them.
And as St. Oscar Levant observed, imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism. Who are you to criticize Saint Oscar Levant?
Besides, writing sermons is hard. Working is hard. Coming up with original thoughts is hard. The end justifies the means, doesn’t it? I mean, look at God being pissed off as hell at America, and sending us Donald Trump. He wants to chastise us, and he chose the perfect vesicle* to do it.
And besides, it’s not like the Christian God and his big brother, the Hebrew God, weren’t doing exactly the same thing. The flood story appears in numerous mythologies. The story of Samson was lifted right out of the story of Hercules, down to the slaying of a lion. Jesus wasn’t the only Savior born of aversion, umm, a virgin, who promised to come back after he died. He wasn’t the only savior crucified with the good of mankind.
And it isn’t as if Christians haven’t been telling stories about other people, including other Christians, that were long on the invective and damnation, but short on fact, logic, experience, and above all, love..
In short, intellectual bankruptcy is baked right into Christianity.
* yes, that’s the word.
When are Christians NOT stealing other people's things? Seth Andrews even did a video on this, which I'm sure many of us have seen and posted
youtu.be/KNik8niSrrY
A preacher that's full of shit? Hardly worth writing about.
I believe you stole that thought from me.
Bearing false witness (i.e., lying) in addition to stealing and coveting. That's 3 Commandments (8, 9 and 10) that Whitlow has violated. A hat trick. And these are just the ones we know about.
“ https://mailchi.mp/julieroys.com/dec-appeal-2025-restoring-the-church?e=69ca489a63
apropos of not much, except for Hemant’s article and this entire discussion, i just got this email. In it, while acknowledging that people are fleeing the faith, the writer wants us to send money to fix all of the problems in the church and restore trust.
The solutions to these problems are not surprising; more bibling, more jesusing, more money. This is what I wrote in response:
——
Dear Mr. Ford,
I received this email this morning. Although I know a lot of names in the evangelical world, I don’t know yours. But that’s not overly surprising.
But your email was interesting. Restore trust and send money. Fix the problems of authoritarian power structures and send money. Jesus more and send money. But NOT—assuredly NOT— acting as if your religion actually delivers on the claims it makes about making people better, instilling morality, and all the rest of it.
But you can still send money.
Lest you think that I am one of those anti-religion atheists who hate Christianity and want to see it destroyed, rest assured that I don’t really care what people believe. But I do care very much what they do with it. I am a gay man, out and proud for more years than probably you have been breathing. For 60 years, I have listened to conservative Christianity claim without the slightest basis in reality that “me and mine” are a threat to marriage, family, children, faith, freedom, morality, heterosexuality, decency, public order, and Western Civilization itself, such as it is. And evangelicals overwhelmingly STILL support the worst, most immoral, most corrupt, most dishonest, most incompetent half-of-a-man ever to disgrace the office of the president.
Your email arrived while I was reading an article about Pastor Josh Witlow, coming under fire for stealing other pastors’ sermons. He is an amateur. Virtually every day, I receive another article in my newsfeed about yet another pastor/priest arrested, or convicted, or sentenced for sex crimes against children, often women, and occasionally men. And the never-ending reviling and slandering of gay people, and now transgender people, never stops because it is a never-ending and useful tool for accruing power and money at the expense of innocent people.
Of the world? In the world? Which? You be the judge.
As I said, I have been listening to this garbage for 60 years. I have no idea what you think about it. But I do know that it demonstrates that without the slightest doubt, the moral, intellectual —and yes, RELIGIOUS— rot starts right at the head of the evangelical (and ironic) fish, and runs right to the core of modern conservative Christianity.
As a gay man, my existence is not the problem. My insistence that I have the right to live my life with full participation in society, as I am made, and free of evangelical malice— you call it “love” without a hint of irony— is not the problem. The existence of transgender people is not the problem. And very frankly, until you and yours can see that this campaign of lies and vilification against me and mine— that years, decades, centuries and millennia of reviling and slandering innocent people for the faults of the Christian and heterosexual worlds…
…lies at the very heart of your political and religious movement, and thus at the very heart of the rot…
Your campaign is doomed to failure.
Bravo. Notice they always want people to send $$$, yet never expect their omnipotent god to remove the rot from their criminal enterprise or fill their coffers and wallets.
I wanted to point that out in my email to Lance Ford, but I thought the sarcasm might destroy the message.
And, it never got read... I bet it hit the circular file fast. If you want it read, mae it short. 2, maybe 3 paragraphs.
SHORT paragraphs.
I got ONE card this year from some preacher that did not even mention a church. Times are tough.
Money''s tight and times are hard
Here's your lousy xmas card.
I have a vague suspicion that you were not entirely thankful for this card.
It actually gpt flushed. A few years ago, I took pix of church cards in the bowl and sent them to churches. During my hospitalization and rehab earlier this year, I told a preacher to tell his god I am gunning for its hateful ass. I told him his jesus will burn my kid for being Gay, so I want his ass burned.
I just did some research after sending my email. No surprise, but Lance Ford is in the business end of religion.
Google him yourself and see. Either he is entirely clueless, or he is cynical beyond belief.