Should Governments regulate fraudulent religions?

https://www.google.ca/search?source=hp& ... CgTyqsYAOA

Fraud is a broad term that refers to a variety of offenses involving dishonesty or "fraudulent acts". In essence, fraud is the intentional deception of a person or entity by another made for monetary or personal gain. Fraud offenses always include some sort of false statement, misrepresentation, or deceitful conduct.

Most governments and countries have fraud laws of some kinds. They generally interfere with religious fraudsters only when physical harm is being done to our gullible citizens yet ignore the monetary theft that the fraudsters fleece from their victims. Prosperity ministries are the most flagrant of these immoral religions, but all religions based on demonstrable lies would be included in this question.

Our governments are quite good at acting against obvious fraudsters yet seem reluctant to protect our more gullible citizens when it comes down to religions.

Religions, to me, get a free pass to lie and steal all they can from victims, especially the older citizens even when governments know about the fraud.

I begin to see the inaction of governments on these religious fraudsters as a dereliction of duty.

Do you?

Regards
DL

In my opinion all religions are frauds but the newer religions are easier to expose and prove as frauds. Scientology and Mormonism can be easily shown to be based on lies and deception but only because they were created in recent years. We know the actual background, credentials and reputation of L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith. Still, they are no more fraudulent than Islam and Christianity.

I know that's now what you're asking. My answer is that anytime a religion can be shown to teach untruths they should be exposed as fraudulent. Scientology and Mormonism should be treated as complete frauds. The teachings of Christianity that we know to be untrue should be exposed as such. For example: All of Genesis, Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, etc...

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And you want to jump into this particular pit of vipers why?

Me? I would be delighted if we could simply shore up the wall between government and religion. As Mr. O'Connor writes, "all religions are frauds." Where would government regulation begin and end? Nope, an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications. (I stole that line, from Heinlein, I think.) If government becomes more involved with religion than it is today, God help us.

Hmmm, got the mouse and elephant thing backwards the first time. I wonder what Freud would say?

I ran across some discussion of this a few years back, and the upshot seemed to be that claims made about future lives, aliens, supernatural rewards and punishments and all the other mythological weirdness can be reasonably regarded as something people can see for themselves are not verifiable. If we use caveat emptor for house sales, vacations, and cars, which can be investigated, surely we are not going to discard it for trips to heaven after you die.

Whether or not I have the legal theory right, this strikes me as reasonable. If I go to a doctor and the doctor totally misleads me and tells me to try expensive therapies with no result, I might conceivably have grounds for a malpractice suit. But if I go to a faith healer and don't get healed, would I really get any sympathy from people if I argue that I gave them a lot of money and nothing happened?

"But he said God would cure me of my lupus if I just demonstrated my faith with a gift!"

The business of deprogramming people who have been brainwashed by cults is the interesting middle ground. In general, once they get off the strange wavelength and start interacting with regular people again, they are happy that their parents or spouse paid a deprogrammer to kidnap them. But the practice has been abused dramatically and in a few cases successful suits were brought against the deprogrammers with horrific methods cited.

Parents have paid to have these crude methods used to get (adult) children away from Pentecostal churches, leftist political groups and even a lesbian relationship, according to Wikipedia. As Litwitlou pointed out, it is difficult for governments to determine the line for legitimate (though weird) views vs. really dangerous ones.

Chris OConnor wrote:In my opinion all religions are frauds but the newer religions are easier to expose and prove as frauds. Scientology and Mormonism can be easily shown to be based on lies and deception but only because they were created in recent years. We know the actual background, credentials and reputation of L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith. Still, they are no more fraudulent than Islam and Christianity.

I know that's now what you're asking. My answer is that anytime a religion can be shown to teach untruths they should be exposed as fraudulent. Scientology and Mormonism should be treated as complete frauds. The teachings of Christianity that we know to be untrue should be exposed as such. For example: All of Genesis, Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, etc...

I agree with you.

The tough part is getting our fraud laws applied and enforced against the fraudsters who are lying for cash which is the crime.

A suggestion of how to get those fraudsters into court is what I seek most of all.

I do not know any constitutional lawyers who can be questioned on the freedom of speech issue which religions hide behind so that they may have the freedom to fleece the most gullible and vulnerable of us.

Oh well. Perhaps some day I will find one.

Regards
DL

Litwitlou wrote:.
And you want to jump into this particular pit of vipers why?

Me? I would be delighted if we could simply shore up the wall between government and religion. As Mr. O'Connor writes, "all religions are frauds." Where would government regulation begin and end? Nope, an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications. (I stole that line, from Heinlein, I think.) If government becomes more involved with religion than it is today, God help us.

Hmmm, got the mouse and elephant thing backwards the first time. I wonder what Freud would say?

Government is already involved in regulating religions as shown in the resent decision to outlaw bigamy.

All I want them to do is apply and enforce the fraud laws that are already in place.

Regards
DL

Harry Marks wrote:The business of deprogramming people who have been brainwashed by cults is the interesting middle ground. In general, once they get off the strange wavelength and start interacting with regular people again, they are happy that their parents or spouse paid a deprogrammer to kidnap them. But the practice has been abused dramatically and in a few cases successful suits were brought against the deprogrammers with horrific methods cited.

Parents have paid to have these crude methods used to get (adult) children away from Pentecostal churches, leftist political groups and even a lesbian relationship, according to Wikipedia. As Litwitlou pointed out, it is difficult for governments to determine the line for legitimate (though weird) views vs. really dangerous ones.

Well, since religious lies have created homophobic and misogynous religions that discriminate against half the population without a just cause, I think it would be quite easy for a decent lawyer to make a case showing the damage to society that religions are responsible for based on their lies.

I cannot fathom a judge not seeing it and finding for lie based religions.

It get's complicated and I do not have the legal knowledge to even judge what happened in the case shown in this link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22I_AM%2 ... ld_Ballard

It looks like the judges screwed this case up and fudged what could have been a landmark case. I am not sure though.

Perhaps the more astute minds here can dither it out. My head hurts after reading it too many times.

Regards
DL

Sounds like an effort at thought control to me. Secular groups can promote homophobic ideas, but if a religious group does it, they are suddenly dangerous frauds? People can privately believe that women should be subject to their husbands, but if they cite holy writings, they are committing fraud? Get real, DL.

Harry Marks wrote:Sounds like an effort at thought control to me. Secular groups can promote homophobic ideas, but if a religious group does it, they are suddenly dangerous frauds? People can privately believe that women should be subject to their husbands, but if they cite holy writings, they are committing fraud? Get real, DL.

Every law is thought control, a demand and compulsion for us to discriminate, on pain of punishment, against certain actions and people ideas. We are to discriminate, for instance, against murderers and rapists etc. and those who harm society in various ways.

Why would you exempt immoral religions from common and intelligent law?

You should want the good religions to dominate. You do want good religions to dominate. Right?

Or do you enjoy a sprinkling of evil religions?

Regards
DL