Isn't this the way it has always been? Grifter takes from the poor and desperate, and makes sure they stay poor and desperate so he can continue the grift.
Our puny little ancestors survived by banding together, not every man for himself. While that herd instinct may have had great benefits in the past, it can be a millstone around the neck of humanity in the modern world. There is no leader so corrupt and incompetent there will not be people who willingly delegate their thinking to him. We will never run out of those people, and they cannot be reasoned out of what they were never reasoned into. The best we can do is keep exposing the lunatic preachers, and try to limit the damage they do.
Agree completely! What scares me though is the preacher with the bloated orange face and dyed blond hair who has hijacked the gullible minds of so many in this country. Why are so many so easily taken in? I would expect this during the middle ages (and earlier) but today - really? Help me put this in perspective because I don't get it.
Because in this nation (and much of the world) it does not take Intelligence to survive. People can get by in blissful ignorance. Go to work, do what you told, turn on tv, buy what you told, rinse repeat. Much of the 'education' system is focused on rote parroting back. Granted SOME good teachers try and actually get students to THINK, but sadly I hear more about (and in my own growing up) the bad teachers/schools who just want mindless parrots. And religion of course reinforces this.
Which of course means that an intelligent or even semi-intelligent person can take advantage of the mindless sheep.
What we need (imo) is a TEACHER as president. Someone who will get on TV at least once a week and have 'classroom chats' not fireside chats, or preaching from the big white pulpit.
Imagine a president who says "Hi folks, I learned something awesome this week, let me tell ya about how I had fun with Math/science/history (or whatev)"
This is, to me, the US reaping what it's sown: for years now, we've been willing to spend massive amounts of money on the military but far less on education. Somewhere along the way, we stopped valuing education and learning, and now too many of us consider it near sacrilegious to have too much education and thinking going on.
We will be paying for that for some time, I expect. I just hope we start correcting the issue soon.
Even to this day, a student who gets A's and wins a science fair, or maybe gets an article published is insulted and called a 'nerd' or 'geek' by children and adults. Yet a blockhead who needs help understanding a bus schedule but can bash heads and run fast on a game field is called 'Super Star' and 'Hometown hero'
It wasn't just humanity's early ancestors. The early christians themselves survived that way:
And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, according as any man had need. —Acts 2:44-45
I think we need to find the right balance of herd mentality and rugged independence. We need to work as a society, not as a tribe. Tribalism is what religions promote, especially the ones that are run by these obvious conmen. Society works to serve all within and offers help without. It’s difficult to explain here, but there is a difference.
The USA is fighting a battle between society and the rugged individual that defines Americanism. Plus the tribalism of the southern Baptist or evangelical Christianity, which also promotes a certain level of individualism. We can’t have the social safety nets because some of the people who benefit from them are not worthy, based on racism and other bigotries.
I got distracted and lost my train a bit, mainly I’m saying we need to continue to have a certain level of herd mentality, but just not take it too far, and still not take individualism too far either. Which is actually where we are, too far into individualism.
Let's put it simply: Bullock and people like him are 𝗨𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗦. They use people like Jacob and Tammy and Janet to get what they want – money and power and influence – while not really caring at all about their victims. Also, this business about "god calling" someone to do something. The odd thing there is that no one seems to be able to call back to confirm just what Yahweh wants! "I'm sorry, that number is no longer in service!"
Suffice to say that I'm sick to death of Bullock's bullshit and I can't wait for the day when it bites him on the ass.
OT - Sad news. The last of the great, old-school songsters, Tony Bennett is gone at age 96. I loved his work with Billy Joel and Lady Gaga. The man always made GREAT music.
Frank Sinatra, whom Mr. Bennett counted as a mentor and friend, once put it another way.
“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business,” he told Life magazine in 1965. “He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”
You don't get a much more ringing endorsement than that. We're gonna miss you, Tony.
I dunno - it looks like they only do acid damage, so any creature immune to that and without a requirement to breathe (or some method of doing so when inside) would suffer no harm from being inside one.
So a lich, golem, or (potentially) warforged with the proper immunity (via spell or item) could use one as a shelter.
Of course, I did just skim the MM entry, so I might be missing something.
I won't comment on the people who where scammed to give up everything. They are suffering while this asshole thrive.
"En fait, toute religion est une secte qui a réussi. On donne d'ailleurs le nom de secte à toute église non officielle qui concurrence les églises officielles."
"Actually, every religion is a sect who prevailed. Furthermore, any non official church who compete with official ones is called a sect."
Bullocks talking points are always pretty much the same but that horrifying belt is new. Is that mini pro-wrestling championships? WTF, man, at long last have you no shame? Heh. I'm hilarious.
It's only the souls of dinos that go there (just like the souls of everything else). The souls of the carnivorous ones feed on the souls of the others. Any competent theologian can tell you that.
"Once Bullock realized they weren’t interested in worshiping him, he effectively shunned the family, leaving them with nothing to show for their faith." but they have Jesus! Aren't they praying to Jesus for what they need? Jesus said that if you prey sincerely and in his name, your prayers will be answered. Bollocks certainly knows that. And "nothing to show for their faith" seems to be a pretty standard product.
"They gave them hundreds and hundreds of dollars." How else do you expect the church to do very well? I am rarely in a position of being unable to make ends meet, but when I am, I'd like to give money to complete strangers who promised me living quarters made of Jell-O.
"Being in the room that day, Jacob said, it quickly became clear that Bullock has an obsession with power." no, that is not being fair. He also has an obsession with money and over identifying with the infinite creator of the entire infinite universe.
"“Robin Bullock caused me to come here and lose everything,” Tammy Partlow told Tread." I know it's really difficult to accept personal responsibility, especially if you're that type of Christian, but you and your husband caused you to go to Talibama and lose what little you had. And you begin that process long before you went to Talibama, giving hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars to Bollocks.
"Instead of welcoming those people, Bullock is treating at least some of them like agents of Satan eager to cause harm." Well, yes.
Matthew 25:35-40 ESV
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
I do hope that these people can get the help that they need. Obviously, they need a great deal of help in order to overcome their own gullibility. As a liberal, I would be voting for them to get the help that they need. But I suspect that that makes me suspect.
Paraphrasing John Ruskin: "There is hardly anything in the world of faith that some man of faith cannot make a little worse, and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider faith only are this man's lawful prey."
I feel sorry for them up to a point. I hope that they get the help that they need. But I doubt they're ever going to get the smarts that they need.
The coffee is starting to kick in at last, and I had another thought. Just the one..
Christians tell us that Jesus offers to us free the gift of salvation if only we will believe. And there it is, Right there. It's not a gift if they have to put the qualifier "free" in front of it. "Free" is intended to put the mind of the mark at rest and make him think that he is getting something for nothing, and it does have a cost: belief.
I learned from my parents 65 years ago that there are no free gifts. I learned from dear Abby 60 years ago that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If this God of theirs loves it so much, why is not the "gift of salvation" for everyone to know, and not just the people that can pay the price of belief?
These people thought they were going to get something for nothing. But as every ConMan knows, the only successful con is the one where people get nothing for something.
Grown adults should see him for what he is and shun him. That they don't gives testament to the damage that religious belief does to the human intellect.
Hey, Honey. Do you know the preacher that looks like Bud lite incarnate? Yeah, the one who looks a vampire, but instead of being vulnerable to dawn's early light, he vulnerable to dawn dish soap. Yeah, that one. The preacher who looks like he uses fortified wine for communion. The one who looks like any picture taken of him will smell like AXE body spray. The one who looks like he has hit on teenage girls while having an obvious cold sore on his mouth. The one, who without a doubt has found a cigarette on the floor and tried to smoke it. Yeah that one. You know what. Why don't we sell everything we have and move next door to him.
Bullock's a con artist, this is what con artists do. You don't blame a tiger for having teeth and claws, they're part of being a tiger. Most Christians like to pretend this guy isn't 'really' one of theirs and also that 'everyone knows he's not a REAL Christian', which is why nothing ever seems to happen to these guys.
Tales of seniors and others giving guys like this everything they own aren't unusual, sad to say. This is one of the the harms that religion do and then deny having anything to do with. It's so bad that churches don't even try to discipline or excommunicate these thieves anymore, they just assume it's someone else's problem and move on. While I'm sorry to hear these folks were deceived and are now suffering for it, I can't claim surprise by any means since this sort of grifting has been going on for years now. Seems to me the real moral of this story is to do your own research before you pick up and move on some religious leader's say-so.
Isn't this the way it has always been? Grifter takes from the poor and desperate, and makes sure they stay poor and desperate so he can continue the grift.
Religion was born when the first con-man met the first fool.
And religion will die when the last person of faith is strangled by the entrails of the last atheist by an AI servitor via Roko’s Basilisk.
Paraphrasing Denis Diderot.
Nothing new, in humor or opinion, under Sol Invictus.
Dammit! You've doomed us all!
Solenoid Robots - "Buzz click whistle". (Roger Ramjet. He's our hero!)
Indeed
Our puny little ancestors survived by banding together, not every man for himself. While that herd instinct may have had great benefits in the past, it can be a millstone around the neck of humanity in the modern world. There is no leader so corrupt and incompetent there will not be people who willingly delegate their thinking to him. We will never run out of those people, and they cannot be reasoned out of what they were never reasoned into. The best we can do is keep exposing the lunatic preachers, and try to limit the damage they do.
Thank you. It's too early in the morning for me to come up with something as good as that, but it is sort of where I was going with my comment up top
Agree completely! What scares me though is the preacher with the bloated orange face and dyed blond hair who has hijacked the gullible minds of so many in this country. Why are so many so easily taken in? I would expect this during the middle ages (and earlier) but today - really? Help me put this in perspective because I don't get it.
Because in this nation (and much of the world) it does not take Intelligence to survive. People can get by in blissful ignorance. Go to work, do what you told, turn on tv, buy what you told, rinse repeat. Much of the 'education' system is focused on rote parroting back. Granted SOME good teachers try and actually get students to THINK, but sadly I hear more about (and in my own growing up) the bad teachers/schools who just want mindless parrots. And religion of course reinforces this.
Which of course means that an intelligent or even semi-intelligent person can take advantage of the mindless sheep.
What we need (imo) is a TEACHER as president. Someone who will get on TV at least once a week and have 'classroom chats' not fireside chats, or preaching from the big white pulpit.
Imagine a president who says "Hi folks, I learned something awesome this week, let me tell ya about how I had fun with Math/science/history (or whatev)"
This is, to me, the US reaping what it's sown: for years now, we've been willing to spend massive amounts of money on the military but far less on education. Somewhere along the way, we stopped valuing education and learning, and now too many of us consider it near sacrilegious to have too much education and thinking going on.
We will be paying for that for some time, I expect. I just hope we start correcting the issue soon.
Even to this day, a student who gets A's and wins a science fair, or maybe gets an article published is insulted and called a 'nerd' or 'geek' by children and adults. Yet a blockhead who needs help understanding a bus schedule but can bash heads and run fast on a game field is called 'Super Star' and 'Hometown hero'
It wasn't just humanity's early ancestors. The early christians themselves survived that way:
And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, according as any man had need. —Acts 2:44-45
Now they see communism as the spawn of Satan.
I think we need to find the right balance of herd mentality and rugged independence. We need to work as a society, not as a tribe. Tribalism is what religions promote, especially the ones that are run by these obvious conmen. Society works to serve all within and offers help without. It’s difficult to explain here, but there is a difference.
The USA is fighting a battle between society and the rugged individual that defines Americanism. Plus the tribalism of the southern Baptist or evangelical Christianity, which also promotes a certain level of individualism. We can’t have the social safety nets because some of the people who benefit from them are not worthy, based on racism and other bigotries.
I got distracted and lost my train a bit, mainly I’m saying we need to continue to have a certain level of herd mentality, but just not take it too far, and still not take individualism too far either. Which is actually where we are, too far into individualism.
Let's put it simply: Bullock and people like him are 𝗨𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗦. They use people like Jacob and Tammy and Janet to get what they want – money and power and influence – while not really caring at all about their victims. Also, this business about "god calling" someone to do something. The odd thing there is that no one seems to be able to call back to confirm just what Yahweh wants! "I'm sorry, that number is no longer in service!"
Suffice to say that I'm sick to death of Bullock's bullshit and I can't wait for the day when it bites him on the ass.
“When you get the message, hung up the phone.” - Ram Dass (AKA Richard Alpert)
OT - Sad news. The last of the great, old-school songsters, Tony Bennett is gone at age 96. I loved his work with Billy Joel and Lady Gaga. The man always made GREAT music.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/21/entertainment/tony-bennett-dead-at-96/index.html
From the NY Times article:
Frank Sinatra, whom Mr. Bennett counted as a mentor and friend, once put it another way.
“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business,” he told Life magazine in 1965. “He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”
You don't get a much more ringing endorsement than that. We're gonna miss you, Tony.
Was wondering why I just heard a Tony Bennett song ("The Good Life") on KEXP's Morning Show. John Richards doesn't usually play his music.
Now John is playing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," which was also recorded by Frank Sinatra.
(a song written by a gay couple)
And with K.D. Lang.
Bullock claims he saw a dino in heaven, the 5 houses of Jesus and YHVH inside a Jello-O cube? Is he trying to put Kat Kerr out of the crazy business?
Or to woo her.
With woo-woo?
You are not Jesus but you got me 😁
:D
But were those dinosaurs driving tractors?
Or riding around in bubbles?
How did the dinosaurs access Wi-Fi to communicate on social media?
Sounds like that TTRPG campaign concept you jot down at 3am and can't make heads or tails of the next day.
Not that I speak from experience or anything.
Nope, not me.
Nope.
I don't think a D&D gelatinous cube makes a comfortable home.
https://i0.wp.com/thenerdsofcolor.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/4C60D43D-32B6-4D2B-A0A5-53903A99956F.jpeg?resize=768%2C958&ssl=1
I dunno - it looks like they only do acid damage, so any creature immune to that and without a requirement to breathe (or some method of doing so when inside) would suffer no harm from being inside one.
So a lich, golem, or (potentially) warforged with the proper immunity (via spell or item) could use one as a shelter.
Of course, I did just skim the MM entry, so I might be missing something.
All right, you've got me. Since Yeshuah bin Yosef is a lich, he'd be perfectly fine inside a gelatinous cube.
OT : my sister went to see DM and we 3 had a nice chatting on video*. She will pick me up next time she will go.
* I also had to guide her from the parking lot to DM room. Luckily I am not prone to seasickness 😅
Who was it who said "I love the poorly educated"?
The same guy who holds a bible upside down and backward in front of a church he never saw the inside of.
But if it brings someone comfort, what harm can there be? (Tm)
Ray or Southern Comfort?
You are banana.
"And that, my Liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped."
"This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes."
https://www.atheistrepublic.com/sites/default/files/flying-spaghetti-monster.jpg
Is that you, XJC? ;)
I won't comment on the people who where scammed to give up everything. They are suffering while this asshole thrive.
"En fait, toute religion est une secte qui a réussi. On donne d'ailleurs le nom de secte à toute église non officielle qui concurrence les églises officielles."
"Actually, every religion is a sect who prevailed. Furthermore, any non official church who compete with official ones is called a sect."
Bullocks talking points are always pretty much the same but that horrifying belt is new. Is that mini pro-wrestling championships? WTF, man, at long last have you no shame? Heh. I'm hilarious.
Rodeo reject.
If you look close, he's wearing it over his shirt.
Like a giant belly chain. It's weird, man. Weird.
"he saw a dinosaur in Heaven"
To be fair, if I died and found myself in Heaven, I would expect to be able to ride a T-Rex.
All Theropods Go to Heaven?
What would carnivorous dinos do in heaven? Can't eat anything. Can't breed. They can't even die to escape their situation.
It's only the souls of dinos that go there (just like the souls of everything else). The souls of the carnivorous ones feed on the souls of the others. Any competent theologian can tell you that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGQOjMDaX48
What does anyone do in heaven? Other than get bored after the first couple trillion years.
I almost replied, "Not twice" but, then, you'd already be dead. Saddle up!
Bang a gong. 😉
Get it on. 😎
I'd come in on the puns but I'm a saur loser.
A dino pun thread when I have other stuff to do?
Yabba dabba don’t
Do you want to compsognathus me ?
"Once Bullock realized they weren’t interested in worshiping him, he effectively shunned the family, leaving them with nothing to show for their faith." but they have Jesus! Aren't they praying to Jesus for what they need? Jesus said that if you prey sincerely and in his name, your prayers will be answered. Bollocks certainly knows that. And "nothing to show for their faith" seems to be a pretty standard product.
"They gave them hundreds and hundreds of dollars." How else do you expect the church to do very well? I am rarely in a position of being unable to make ends meet, but when I am, I'd like to give money to complete strangers who promised me living quarters made of Jell-O.
"Being in the room that day, Jacob said, it quickly became clear that Bullock has an obsession with power." no, that is not being fair. He also has an obsession with money and over identifying with the infinite creator of the entire infinite universe.
"“Robin Bullock caused me to come here and lose everything,” Tammy Partlow told Tread." I know it's really difficult to accept personal responsibility, especially if you're that type of Christian, but you and your husband caused you to go to Talibama and lose what little you had. And you begin that process long before you went to Talibama, giving hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars to Bollocks.
"Instead of welcoming those people, Bullock is treating at least some of them like agents of Satan eager to cause harm." Well, yes.
Matthew 25:35-40 ESV
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
I do hope that these people can get the help that they need. Obviously, they need a great deal of help in order to overcome their own gullibility. As a liberal, I would be voting for them to get the help that they need. But I suspect that that makes me suspect.
Paraphrasing John Ruskin: "There is hardly anything in the world of faith that some man of faith cannot make a little worse, and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider faith only are this man's lawful prey."
I feel sorry for them up to a point. I hope that they get the help that they need. But I doubt they're ever going to get the smarts that they need.
The coffee is starting to kick in at last, and I had another thought. Just the one..
Christians tell us that Jesus offers to us free the gift of salvation if only we will believe. And there it is, Right there. It's not a gift if they have to put the qualifier "free" in front of it. "Free" is intended to put the mind of the mark at rest and make him think that he is getting something for nothing, and it does have a cost: belief.
I learned from my parents 65 years ago that there are no free gifts. I learned from dear Abby 60 years ago that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If this God of theirs loves it so much, why is not the "gift of salvation" for everyone to know, and not just the people that can pay the price of belief?
These people thought they were going to get something for nothing. But as every ConMan knows, the only successful con is the one where people get nothing for something.
Something I read about the trend of letting attractive women into nightclubs for free "When it's free it means you are the product.
Thus Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Outlook.com, etc.
𝑇𝐴𝑁𝑆𝑇𝐴𝐴𝐹𝐿 - 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝐴𝑖𝑛'𝑡 𝑁𝑜 𝑆𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐴𝑠 𝐴 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑐ℎ.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, T̲h̲e̲ ̲M̲o̲o̲n̲ ̲i̲s̲ ̲a̲ ̲H̲a̲r̲s̲h̲ ̲M̲i̲s̲t̲r̲e̲s̲s̲
Robin is for the birds.
Grown adults should see him for what he is and shun him. That they don't gives testament to the damage that religious belief does to the human intellect.
I simply don't understand how anyone at all can take even a quick look at Bullock and not realize AT ONCE that he is, at very best, a crackpot.
How many people voted for drumpster in 2016 and 2020 and would vote again for him in 2024 ?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3pk3A_QSINI
Follow the bullock, you better be wearing good shoes, because you are gonna step in a lot of bullshit.
Hey, Honey. Do you know the preacher that looks like Bud lite incarnate? Yeah, the one who looks a vampire, but instead of being vulnerable to dawn's early light, he vulnerable to dawn dish soap. Yeah, that one. The preacher who looks like he uses fortified wine for communion. The one who looks like any picture taken of him will smell like AXE body spray. The one who looks like he has hit on teenage girls while having an obvious cold sore on his mouth. The one, who without a doubt has found a cigarette on the floor and tried to smoke it. Yeah that one. You know what. Why don't we sell everything we have and move next door to him.
Bullock's a con artist, this is what con artists do. You don't blame a tiger for having teeth and claws, they're part of being a tiger. Most Christians like to pretend this guy isn't 'really' one of theirs and also that 'everyone knows he's not a REAL Christian', which is why nothing ever seems to happen to these guys.
Tales of seniors and others giving guys like this everything they own aren't unusual, sad to say. This is one of the the harms that religion do and then deny having anything to do with. It's so bad that churches don't even try to discipline or excommunicate these thieves anymore, they just assume it's someone else's problem and move on. While I'm sorry to hear these folks were deceived and are now suffering for it, I can't claim surprise by any means since this sort of grifting has been going on for years now. Seems to me the real moral of this story is to do your own research before you pick up and move on some religious leader's say-so.
Good luck to the Partlows and Mrs. Ndegwa.