One wonders whether you are really christians.

You might try reading the site header.

By the way, we've all heard this spiel before. Is this really the best apologetics this branch of Christianity has to offer?

What is your comments to Malachi 3 verse 8 -11. How about "The widow's offering", Mark 12 v 41 - 44. i am a living testimony. I used to be very poor. When I tried what Malachi 3 says, my life changed. By the way, all funds that are given to the Lord through "his storehose" church is accounted and audited. So please if you do not understand "giving" in churches, look for information from those that are in the know, test what they tell you with the word of God.

You need prayers in order for you to get revelations from God. I understand where you are coming from because I used to think like you do. But I got God's ggrace and now I understand and even preach about giving.

As far as this lawsuit goes, I think it's a nuisance and a frivolous use of the legal system, and would unequivocally be doomed to fail if tried. Perhaps a few prosperity-gospel preachers or faith healers who've been insufficiently careful in their promises could be challenged for false advertising (as I've argued before), but the vast majority take care to make claims vague enough that they can't possibly be proven false.

In any case, our society tends to give wide latitude to religious beliefs, so even the few lawsuits with genuine merit would very likely be thrown out. We atheists should be focusing our effort on promoting a positive picture of nonbelief and attacking the truly harmful aspects of religion, not trying to bully or harass religious groups out of existence.

http://www.earthsgreatestlawsuit.org/

Hopefully they are successful.

Word of Faith preachers include Creflo Dollar (yes, that is his real name, apparently), Kenneth Copeland, Robert Tilton (whose website advertises a book titled How to Pay Your Bills Supernaturally), Joel Osteen, Jan and Paul Crouch, and others.

Creflo Dollar has a wife named Taffi. Unclear if her maiden name was Apple.

Also be careful about criticizing Joel Osteen - lest you anger Walker Texas Ranger (aka Chuck Norris). I saw him in the crowd at one of Osteen's televised services.

Thanks for sharing that, it sounds like you've learnt a hard lesson.

You're certainly not the only person to have mistakenly put their trust in the advice of the church. There's an unfortunate tendancy to trust religious people, especially those in positions of authority, purely because they're religious. In your case, you were lucky enough (bear with me here) to be able to discover the truth and make a change in your life. Those who are hoping to be rewarded or repaid in the afterlife won't be able to complain if they are proved wrong!

Good luck for the future.

James

Thank you for commenting on this topic. The prosperity gospel has done serious damage in my life, and I feel compelled to reveal it.

At the moment I am a Christian, but am challenging my beliefs. As I see it, the biggest problem with Christianity as it exists today is that there are so many different flavors out there, and all of them claim to be the "correct" one. Obviously no one can be confident that they know the truth when he has other Christians telling him/her that they're wrong about this, that, or the other issue. Most Christians will tell you that the Bible contains every truth and every answer to every question. Obviously, this is only if you interpret it correctly, otherwise there are many passages that could be considered false and/or contradictory to other passages. This leads to the question, who is interpreting the Bible correctly? I say nobody is.

The Bible is a compilation of human views of life and God. Sure, there's a common theme, and arguments can be made that all of its authors agreed and wrote nothing contradictory to each other, but you can't ignore that they saw things through their own individual perspectives. It's impossible to interpret the Bible "correctly" because we will never fully understand each individual author's perspective. The only one capable of understanding it all is an all-knowing God. He doesn't speak to us directly though if you believe what the majority of Christians say. We have to rely on what other people say about God. We have to read the Bible to hear God's voice, they say. If all we have to go by is the Bible, then our understanding will never be "correct" because we can't fully understand the Bible.

Anyway, enough of my soap box. My story is a long one, so I'll just tell part of it. If anyone is curious about the rest, I'd be glad to expound upon request.

For a few years I regularly attended a popular, non-denominational, growing, Bible-based, friendly, and what I perceived at the time to be healthy church, similar to Joel Osteen's church. One of the main teachings of this church is the topic of money. The pastor of this church likes to point out how many passages in the Bible relate to money, and since there are so many, he says that it is a very important topic to address. That makes sense. A lot of what this pastor says makes sense. That's why it's easy to believe the dangerous claims that he makes in his sermons. I did just that. I went bankrupt believing that God was going to bless me because I was giving to the church, and am living in guilt and shame to this day, more than two years later.

Before going bankrupt, however, I had turned to the church for financial advice. I took classes on how to budget my money, and was told that as long as I was faithful I would never lack, and I would gain financial favor with everyone I did business with. When it turned out that I was lacking despite my faithfulness in sticking to my budget, and there was absolutely no favor in my finances I went in for personal counseling. The pastor I met with was amazed at how bad my financial situation was. I was over $30,000 in credit card debt at the time and had creditors demanding at least 5 times what I could afford to pay. The creditors were ruthless and didn't even come close to showing me the favor that I was supposed to have on my finances. Rather than working with me, the creditors worked against me. They forced me to choose whether to lose everything and starve to death or declare bankruptcy. After this pastor saw how bad the situation was, he could think of nothing encouraging to say and decided that all he could do was pray with me that God would show me a way to avoid bankruptcy. Guess what, God didn't show me any way out.

Of course, I had made bad choices that created this credit problem. Of course it wasn't the church's fault. Of course, I should've been more responsible with money to begin with. However, for one and a half years prior to the bankruptcy I became responsible with my finances. I was working toward turning my situation around. I was obeying God and doing everything I was supposed to do, as far as the church told me to. And most of all, I was tithing to the church. I gave 10% of my finances (before taxes) to the church. I even gave more than 10% on many occasions, and ended up going into more debt to support my giving. And all of this giving was encouraged by the church, despite the mountain of debt that was in my life. They said I would be blessed and that my situation would work out. The more I gave, the more I would receive, they said. Did I get blessed? Did my situation work out? Did I receive anything in return for what I was giving? Sure, I received. I received a guilty conscience when at last I had to stop tithing because my creditors garnished my wages. Then I received a nice package of shame too when I had to declare bankrupcty to avoid starving to death.

The prosperity gospel is dangerous. It is false, and I am living proof. I am only alive because I stopped believing its false message. However, I am still reaping the "benefits" of guilt and shame for rejecting it. I don't know what to believe about Christianity as a whole right now, but even though I feel guilt and shame, I can say without a doubt that this flavor of Christianity is dead wrong.

Just as a first thought though: churches are not the only tax exempt organizations–there are MANY. Are you and Ebonmuse implying that, to be fair, all tax exempt organizations should start paying taxes? Or does the suggestion only apply to churches and religious organizations?

I believe that bona fide non-profit, non-partisan organizations should be tax-exempt. Churches, however, are both for-profit and partisan organizations. I would be fine with granting tax-exempt status to genuine charitable organizations that operate as part of a church - not to the churches themselves.