I for one am beyond sick of the religious nut jobs who believe their religion trump's science, and encourages other people to ignore science. How well did his prayers work? I think religion is often socially sanctioned mental illness.
It is more than that here. The science denial is just one part of it. There is the political alignment with the far right that gave them the knee-jerk defiance of any directives from a "liberal" government. There is the persecution complex, where anything that they don't like is persecuting them. There is the Free Exercise absolutism, where they think that any restrictions on their worship is somehow unconstitutional. And finally, the fact that it is a megachurch, where the pastor's sense of power over others has become far greater than it should be. All of those things combined to create a shitstorm of superspreaders.
At the height of the pandemic, my brother, pastor of a small and very conservative church, held services completely online. He, at least, understood that large gathering restrictions weren't targeting Christians.
That Free Exercise absolutism is particularly galling when they try to exercise their belief system on anyone and EVERYONE around them, then get bent all out of shape when someone challenges their beliefs and/or their actions, claiming the same right to Free Exercise.
They never figured out that their right to wave their beliefs about ends at the next person's nose. I'm not certain they ever will get that.
The plain and simple fact is that conservative christians cannot stand to have anyone tell them to do something which might be for the greater public good. Christ-like behavior is anathema to them. This is a problem with conservatives in general - and is at the root of the vast dysfunction rampant in our society.
Conservatives hate to be told what to do or how to live. Yet these same conservatives have no problems demanding that everyone else obey their religious dictates without question and to blindly submit to their religious leaders.
It is. The conservative brain has an enlarged amygdala, aka the fight-or-flight part, which is why they are predisposed to aggression and violence. Also, the part of the brain that allows us to deal with ambiguity is underdeveloped, which is why they flock to authoritarianism, people, and groups that claim to have all the answers.
"God doesn't want us to isolate ourselves. All of us need to be in the sanctuary. I don't care what they say, I'm never again going to close the doors, ever."
What does you god need with a buidling, McClure? He's everywhere, isn't he? Sounds like YOU need everyone in your church to collect all that lovely money. Oh, and your bible tells believers to obey the secular law and secular authorities. Yet here you are, arrogantly sinning. Luckily for you, saviordeity isn't real. You wouldn't like the hot climate you'd find yourself in after your earthly life is over.
The bible also tells believers to go and pray in secret, but showboating holymen would rather have their Earthly reward than do as their savior told them.
I’m still lurking at The Christian Post. Whenever anyone points out the “pray in secret”, the rejoinders of “context!” and “you’re cherry-picking” follow swiftly. No matter how showboaty the public praying, it’s never enough to qualify for Jesus’ alleged admonishment.
"Context" – could almost be a Jordan Peterson website. that's the go to whenever you criticise the man. That and the idea that you can't criticise him until you've read every word he's ever written. 😇
Don't you just love it when one of these ignoramuses (ignorami?) so assuredly tells everybody "I was just chatting with God this morning, and God told ME personally that ....."?
"It wasn’t clear on what basis they thought they still had a challenge."
christian persecution. Each ruling, while following the laws, push them further into their delusion.
Is there more possibility to appeal ? If not, the county shouldn't not wait for the passtor to pay but seize the church* and anything registered as belonging to it.
* Depending on the size, it could make a lovely library or community space.
Although I know the way to San Jose (possibly too old a reference) , I am unfamiliar with this building. According to Google street view, it has a lovely multi building complex that would be easily adaptable for anything else that needed a campus. This is not a storefront church, Capitol Expwy. and Almaden Expwy anchor valuable major property to exempt off the property tax rolls!
I was kind of hoping that the county would have some statistics on how many of this nutjob's congregants perished from COVID. I'm betting it wasn't zero and probably accounted for a significant fraction of total deaths in the county as a whole.
And the final piece of their motivations. Cold, hard cash. In addition to the science denial, the persecution complex, the Free Exercise absolutism, the Christian Fucking Privilege, we have greed at the bottom of it all.
Is that sarcasm? Because when I researched exactly how many churches and had their tax-exempt status removed over the last God knows how many years since the Johnson amendment – just out of curiosity mind – you could count them on the fingers of one hand.😁
Stop right there, Mikey. Are you telling us that you're fluent in Aramaic and can translate the words of a fictional Middle Eastern deity? This goes beyond mere delusion. Seek professional help ASAP.
Calvary Chapel took a political not a religious stance on public health mandates during COVID. We should all be clear on that. There was never a 'religious freedom' argument to be made in defense of not following public health mandates. Their own Jesus commanded them to 'love one another' and to 'treat others as they would be treated themselves.' Calvary Chapel's response to that was 'but muh freedoms!!!' Like too many other christian denominations, Calvary found loving their neighbors to be WAY too much to ask, especially when they could get so much attention [and donations] for performative assholery.
But the courts batted last. And now their political stunt is going to cost them over $1M. Good. I wish it was more, because every last one of those people likely infected dozens of others, but $1M+ is a good start.
When the courts decided black people were allowed to receive welfare, welfare became something to be ashamed of and required more and more regulations or hoops to jump through. It started with the right wing politicians but the conservative white people on welfare took up the issue and began voting to whittle away the social safety nets despite the fact they were taking away their own aid. The class war we are currently fighting has been going on for generations, disguised as race war, war on drugs, and social justice wars, the same oligarchs have been pitting the poors against each other since the beginning of time. It’s easier to hate the person next to you for looking different than it is to hate the person oppressing you. Then keeping you focused on what the different looking person is doing keeps your attention away from discovering the actual reason you are struggling. We are all three missed paychecks away from being homeless but we are never (maybe rarely, but that is more luck than any hard work and it’s even more difficult now than five years ago) a year or two away from being a billionaire. You have far more in common with your black or LGBTQ neighbor than you do with even the most benign billionaire. Except maybe Dolly Parton, she’s just a national treasure who has actually been through it.
I don't see it as rambling, maybe as letting the steam out to stop an explosion. And you are absolutely correct. Also loved the "Dolly Parton is an national treasure" part.
As fucked up as it is, calvary chapel has a basis to resist common sense : the religious exemption to vaccinations. It should be ended for good since it doesn't rely on science but on superstition. We are seeing the results in texass.
The religious exemption to vaccination spread from a few fringe sects to a significant percentage of conservative churches due to the "own the libs" political ideology and the persecution complex baked into the theology. They would rather have millions of dead believers than have any live atheists.
This case was about masking and social distancing, not vaccinations which, for COVID, didn't exist at the time. The exemption for vaccinations only applies if their sect has a history of not subscribing to vaccines. And even in those cases, parents can still be held liable for not providing appropriate health care to their minor children.
There have been several high-profile cases of parents being prosecuted for failing to provide care for their children that resulted in the children's deaths. We shouldn't assume that wouldn't happen here.
The reason they’re high profile is that prosecutions happen so seldom. It should be the law in every state. There is NO reason that some parents mythical beliefs, without evidence, should allow children to suffer or die. We must someday get to a social consensus that children are Not the parent’s property.
I blame Trump and the right wing partisan talk machine as much or more than I do fundie religious leaders. The right made cooperation with CDC and HHS health measures a political partisan issue. Had they not - had conservatives said mask-wearing, distancing, etc. was not a left-vs-right issue but something everyone should agree on - then I think far fewer fundie preachers would have found these measures were "against their religious beliefs."
IOW, they got politically manipulated. They're still at fault, but IMO fewer of them would've turned so crazy as this without the partisan politics egging them on to do so.
Absolutely. The demonization of densely populated areas (cities that didn’t vote for Trump) vs more rural areas (that did vote for Trump) was on full display. It’s unforgivable. Pouring gasoline on a fire when people are losing their lives.
The most common non-religious argument right-wing Christians use against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals is that it is a dangerous, disease-spreading "lifestyle." Irony of ironies.
"Passover recounts how the Israelites, who had been enslaved in Egypt, were led out by Moses under the guidance of God. God intervened by sending plagues upon Egypt, culminating in the death of the firstborn. However, God "passed over" the homes of the Israelites who had marked their doorposts with the blood of a lamb, thus sparing their firstborn."
All you had to do was read that story and say, "God has once again provided us with a way to protect our loved ones from this plague. It's called a mask. Put it on when you gather together." Bonus, no lambs were harmed to invoke this protection.
Yes a religious justification was simple and easy.
But conservative leaders value distrust of government and tribal loyalty so much that they were willing to let people die, rather than tell their followers to trust the government or cooperate with liberals.
There's a long series of jokes and routines about conservatives doing anything - up to literally killing themselves - just because liberals and/or the government told them it wasn't a good idea.
Of all the excuses for not wearing a mask, religious freedom is the most ridiculous. You may have noticed that he got the death rate wrong as well. You don't stand a 99.99 chance of recovery, because the death rate is somewhat north of 1%. This seems trivial until you do the maths surrounding the huge numbers of people who caught the disease. If he wasn't killing innocent people I'd just call it evolution in action. I might still do that.
Interesting to say the least that some US churches where more than happy to misuse scripture to support the Bush administrations unjustified and immoral decision to bomb the men, women and children in Iraq - "we need to support the President and the government" - while at the same time fully dismissing the opinion of other church leaders around the world who said there was no evidence to bomb Iraq and that it was immoral to do so - and then years later ignoring both goverment and scripture and pushing back on Covide health guidelines & restrictions.
Their hypocrisy was deafening and their Christianity, which is strongly mixed with US exceptionalism, nationalism, commercialism and money is grotesque.
I for one am beyond sick of the religious nut jobs who believe their religion trump's science, and encourages other people to ignore science. How well did his prayers work? I think religion is often socially sanctioned mental illness.
It is more than that here. The science denial is just one part of it. There is the political alignment with the far right that gave them the knee-jerk defiance of any directives from a "liberal" government. There is the persecution complex, where anything that they don't like is persecuting them. There is the Free Exercise absolutism, where they think that any restrictions on their worship is somehow unconstitutional. And finally, the fact that it is a megachurch, where the pastor's sense of power over others has become far greater than it should be. All of those things combined to create a shitstorm of superspreaders.
At the height of the pandemic, my brother, pastor of a small and very conservative church, held services completely online. He, at least, understood that large gathering restrictions weren't targeting Christians.
+++ Conservative religion and authoritarian government are natural allies. It is a symbiotic relationship that has dealt humanity nothing but misery.
That Free Exercise absolutism is particularly galling when they try to exercise their belief system on anyone and EVERYONE around them, then get bent all out of shape when someone challenges their beliefs and/or their actions, claiming the same right to Free Exercise.
They never figured out that their right to wave their beliefs about ends at the next person's nose. I'm not certain they ever will get that.
No crazier than the bridge builders...
https://youtu.be/WAoBW3yjlvA
The plain and simple fact is that conservative christians cannot stand to have anyone tell them to do something which might be for the greater public good. Christ-like behavior is anathema to them. This is a problem with conservatives in general - and is at the root of the vast dysfunction rampant in our society.
Conservatives hate to be told what to do or how to live. Yet these same conservatives have no problems demanding that everyone else obey their religious dictates without question and to blindly submit to their religious leaders.
The Authoritarian mantra is 'Rules for thee, but not for me.' I am coming to think that authoritarianism is a genetic personality type.
It is. The conservative brain has an enlarged amygdala, aka the fight-or-flight part, which is why they are predisposed to aggression and violence. Also, the part of the brain that allows us to deal with ambiguity is underdeveloped, which is why they flock to authoritarianism, people, and groups that claim to have all the answers.
“I am coming to think that authoritarianism is a genetic personality type.”
Which suggests evolutionary fitness. Sigh.
It makes and tries to enforce rules of reproduction and behavior based on any excuse they can find.
👆🎯
"God doesn't want us to isolate ourselves. All of us need to be in the sanctuary. I don't care what they say, I'm never again going to close the doors, ever."
What does you god need with a buidling, McClure? He's everywhere, isn't he? Sounds like YOU need everyone in your church to collect all that lovely money. Oh, and your bible tells believers to obey the secular law and secular authorities. Yet here you are, arrogantly sinning. Luckily for you, saviordeity isn't real. You wouldn't like the hot climate you'd find yourself in after your earthly life is over.
"God doesn't want us to isolate ourselves. It hurts my P&L statements."
FIFY
P&L ?
Prophet and loss
Maybe it should be PP&L - Prophet Profit & Loss! 😁
Profit & Loss ... the backbone of any evangelical grifter!
The bible also tells believers to go and pray in secret, but showboating holymen would rather have their Earthly reward than do as their savior told them.
I’m still lurking at The Christian Post. Whenever anyone points out the “pray in secret”, the rejoinders of “context!” and “you’re cherry-picking” follow swiftly. No matter how showboaty the public praying, it’s never enough to qualify for Jesus’ alleged admonishment.
"Context" – could almost be a Jordan Peterson website. that's the go to whenever you criticise the man. That and the idea that you can't criticise him until you've read every word he's ever written. 😇
I have never listened to any of his talks. I tend not to trust the thinking abilities of the people who like him.
The irony.
I suspect they know that there is no heavenly reward— money doesn’t work in heaven does it? 🙄
What's the point of all that self-denial (for the peons) if you don't get to (humble?) brag about it?
It's hard to be humble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdZ5wY9XxdA
Don't you just love it when one of these ignoramuses (ignorami?) so assuredly tells everybody "I was just chatting with God this morning, and God told ME personally that ....."?
Pompous pricks, aren't they? Yet they're the first to project and falsely call nonbelievers arrogant.
Even their claim of being the lowest of sinners smacks of arrogant humble-bragging.
Starting to think Goebbels learned from The Church and not the other way around.
God told me personally – exactly what I wanted to hear. Funny coincidence that.
"What does you god need with a buidling, McClure?"
Same thing he needs a starship for.
The SOB should be charged with every death linked to his actions. There is no statute of limitations on murder.
“Kicked Adam & Eve out of the Garden of Eden”
This you, God?
"It wasn’t clear on what basis they thought they still had a challenge."
christian persecution. Each ruling, while following the laws, push them further into their delusion.
Is there more possibility to appeal ? If not, the county shouldn't not wait for the passtor to pay but seize the church* and anything registered as belonging to it.
* Depending on the size, it could make a lovely library or community space.
Although I know the way to San Jose (possibly too old a reference) , I am unfamiliar with this building. According to Google street view, it has a lovely multi building complex that would be easily adaptable for anything else that needed a campus. This is not a storefront church, Capitol Expwy. and Almaden Expwy anchor valuable major property to exempt off the property tax rolls!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsTqSPMZAg8
State Supreme Court and then SCOTUS as I understand the laws, but no guarantee either would take up the case.
I was kind of hoping that the county would have some statistics on how many of this nutjob's congregants perished from COVID. I'm betting it wasn't zero and probably accounted for a significant fraction of total deaths in the county as a whole.
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑛𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡. 𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑑.
And the final piece of their motivations. Cold, hard cash. In addition to the science denial, the persecution complex, the Free Exercise absolutism, the Christian Fucking Privilege, we have greed at the bottom of it all.
I am surprised that they did not take their tax-exempt status away from them.
Only the IRS can do that.
And the IRS can't even make e-File easy anymore, despite the cost savings to themselves.
Is that sarcasm? Because when I researched exactly how many churches and had their tax-exempt status removed over the last God knows how many years since the Johnson amendment – just out of curiosity mind – you could count them on the fingers of one hand.😁
"God doesn't want us..."
Stop right there, Mikey. Are you telling us that you're fluent in Aramaic and can translate the words of a fictional Middle Eastern deity? This goes beyond mere delusion. Seek professional help ASAP.
God talks to him, dontcha know.
Amazing how YHVH speaks a language that didn’t exist at the time of the 'events' in the bible.
It's too bad they didn't go after the Pastor as well, since he's the face and leader of the church.
Calvary Chapel took a political not a religious stance on public health mandates during COVID. We should all be clear on that. There was never a 'religious freedom' argument to be made in defense of not following public health mandates. Their own Jesus commanded them to 'love one another' and to 'treat others as they would be treated themselves.' Calvary Chapel's response to that was 'but muh freedoms!!!' Like too many other christian denominations, Calvary found loving their neighbors to be WAY too much to ask, especially when they could get so much attention [and donations] for performative assholery.
But the courts batted last. And now their political stunt is going to cost them over $1M. Good. I wish it was more, because every last one of those people likely infected dozens of others, but $1M+ is a good start.
I love these places (not just churches!) whose members cry about "but muh freedoms," but not one word about "but muh responsibilities!"
It's always the one and just about NEVER the other. WHYIZZAT? 🤔
As long as it's not women freedom to choose.
That would require them to acknowledge the fact that women are also people.
🎯🎯🎯
Because if they add responsibilites, they have to be nice to the people they hate.
When the courts decided black people were allowed to receive welfare, welfare became something to be ashamed of and required more and more regulations or hoops to jump through. It started with the right wing politicians but the conservative white people on welfare took up the issue and began voting to whittle away the social safety nets despite the fact they were taking away their own aid. The class war we are currently fighting has been going on for generations, disguised as race war, war on drugs, and social justice wars, the same oligarchs have been pitting the poors against each other since the beginning of time. It’s easier to hate the person next to you for looking different than it is to hate the person oppressing you. Then keeping you focused on what the different looking person is doing keeps your attention away from discovering the actual reason you are struggling. We are all three missed paychecks away from being homeless but we are never (maybe rarely, but that is more luck than any hard work and it’s even more difficult now than five years ago) a year or two away from being a billionaire. You have far more in common with your black or LGBTQ neighbor than you do with even the most benign billionaire. Except maybe Dolly Parton, she’s just a national treasure who has actually been through it.
Sorry, I got to rambling.
I don't see it as rambling, maybe as letting the steam out to stop an explosion. And you are absolutely correct. Also loved the "Dolly Parton is an national treasure" part.
We'll ramble along with you wherever you go. :)
Especially if it's to a Dairy Queen for Ice Cream Cake.
Your ramblings tend to be far more eloquent than my carefully considered statements. Keep rambling, Val!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h9MxNn8P7w
"Be nice to people who'
re inferior to you"
Tom Lehrer, of course. My church would eschew sermons and simply play his records.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY
As fucked up as it is, calvary chapel has a basis to resist common sense : the religious exemption to vaccinations. It should be ended for good since it doesn't rely on science but on superstition. We are seeing the results in texass.
The religious exemption to vaccination spread from a few fringe sects to a significant percentage of conservative churches due to the "own the libs" political ideology and the persecution complex baked into the theology. They would rather have millions of dead believers than have any live atheists.
And then they turn around and claim that the virus was somehow targeted to kill them, since their death rate was higher.
If so, the person who designed it was incompetent.
Also, where the hell in the Bible does it say no vaccines? What's the verse?
I think 8 states have measles cases now. But that was a few days ago.
And my bride mentioned that whooping cough cases are way up too.
Maybe this is the actual Rapture.
I prefer Blondie's version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCdS7O248g
This case was about masking and social distancing, not vaccinations which, for COVID, didn't exist at the time. The exemption for vaccinations only applies if their sect has a history of not subscribing to vaccines. And even in those cases, parents can still be held liable for not providing appropriate health care to their minor children.
Unfortunately parents are not held criminally liable for failing to take children for medical care in most states.
There have been several high-profile cases of parents being prosecuted for failing to provide care for their children that resulted in the children's deaths. We shouldn't assume that wouldn't happen here.
The reason they’re high profile is that prosecutions happen so seldom. It should be the law in every state. There is NO reason that some parents mythical beliefs, without evidence, should allow children to suffer or die. We must someday get to a social consensus that children are Not the parent’s property.
I agree. There should be a federal law mandating that parents exercise a duty of care for their minor children.
But some states have laws specifically exempting parents. Idaho is one.
But this is CA.
I blame Trump and the right wing partisan talk machine as much or more than I do fundie religious leaders. The right made cooperation with CDC and HHS health measures a political partisan issue. Had they not - had conservatives said mask-wearing, distancing, etc. was not a left-vs-right issue but something everyone should agree on - then I think far fewer fundie preachers would have found these measures were "against their religious beliefs."
IOW, they got politically manipulated. They're still at fault, but IMO fewer of them would've turned so crazy as this without the partisan politics egging them on to do so.
The leadership in the church was complicit in the political manipulation. Leaning hard into the reich wing narrative furthers their goal of theocracy.
Absolutely. The demonization of densely populated areas (cities that didn’t vote for Trump) vs more rural areas (that did vote for Trump) was on full display. It’s unforgivable. Pouring gasoline on a fire when people are losing their lives.
The most common non-religious argument right-wing Christians use against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals is that it is a dangerous, disease-spreading "lifestyle." Irony of ironies.
It’s always projection with that lot.
Consider the book of Exodus
"Passover recounts how the Israelites, who had been enslaved in Egypt, were led out by Moses under the guidance of God. God intervened by sending plagues upon Egypt, culminating in the death of the firstborn. However, God "passed over" the homes of the Israelites who had marked their doorposts with the blood of a lamb, thus sparing their firstborn."
All you had to do was read that story and say, "God has once again provided us with a way to protect our loved ones from this plague. It's called a mask. Put it on when you gather together." Bonus, no lambs were harmed to invoke this protection.
Yes a religious justification was simple and easy.
But conservative leaders value distrust of government and tribal loyalty so much that they were willing to let people die, rather than tell their followers to trust the government or cooperate with liberals.
"Bonus, no lambs were harmed to invoke this protection."
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
There's a long series of jokes and routines about conservatives doing anything - up to literally killing themselves - just because liberals and/or the government told them it wasn't a good idea.
Turns out these aren't fiction in some cases.
It took me a second to get this.
Of all the excuses for not wearing a mask, religious freedom is the most ridiculous. You may have noticed that he got the death rate wrong as well. You don't stand a 99.99 chance of recovery, because the death rate is somewhat north of 1%. This seems trivial until you do the maths surrounding the huge numbers of people who caught the disease. If he wasn't killing innocent people I'd just call it evolution in action. I might still do that.
Interesting to say the least that some US churches where more than happy to misuse scripture to support the Bush administrations unjustified and immoral decision to bomb the men, women and children in Iraq - "we need to support the President and the government" - while at the same time fully dismissing the opinion of other church leaders around the world who said there was no evidence to bomb Iraq and that it was immoral to do so - and then years later ignoring both goverment and scripture and pushing back on Covide health guidelines & restrictions.
Their hypocrisy was deafening and their Christianity, which is strongly mixed with US exceptionalism, nationalism, commercialism and money is grotesque.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3267f6ec0188f2dcaf90336d1ab54bcc1eed14c83c781a7c97da80c3715d8e33.jpg
That is one heckin' chonker of a puddy-tat.
Furball?
CAT: "Me-"*pantpant*