Sincerely Held Beliefs - Angel/Psychic/Seer Daniel Perez

[onager]

NOTE: this is posted in the Atheists/Agnostics Group, a safe haven for the irreligious. If your own Sincerely Held Beliefs are ruffled by this post, contact the Hosts for a full refund.

Along with his nifty supernatural attributes, we can now add "convicted murderer/child rapist/insurance fraudster Daniel Perez."

Is anybody else following the case of Perez, a/k/a Lou Castro? It's a real stunner. Perez ran a sort of commune/cult in rural Kansas. When he got low on cash, he would arrange to kill a disciple and collect their life insurance.

Naturally, Perez recruited people by appeals to their common sense and rational thinking...

Perez claimed he was a psychic and a seer, and told Sarah and Emily’s mom that he was hundreds, maybe thousands of years old. This information made Emily feel cool and special because it felt like she was around something that no one else got to be around...

Emily revealed on Dateline that she shared Perez (who she called Lou)’s bed when she was 10 years old every single night. “He convinced me that this is what I needed to do to take care of him. This was my job,” she said. “He said that for a seer, he needed to have a pure little girl to have sex with him so he could survive. He would validate it with old Biblical stories.”

Her sister Sarah said she felt jealous of Emily because he treated her with more kindness. He raped Sarah “hundreds of times,” as punishment, and justified his actions because he was an angel. He would tell Sarah and others that he would take their souls to purgatory if they disobeyed him.

http://starcasm.net/archives/314057



How, in the Year Of Our Lard 2015, can anybody believe this sort of crap? The kids I can understand. But grown-ass functioning adults? Who put their own kids together with this guy? What the actual fuck?

Surely DU has some theology experts who can explain this to me. It'll have to be a theology expert, I guess. Since I was just reading, in Another Group, that secular dumbasses like Daniel Dennett lack the brainpower to understand the subtle shadings and nuances of religious thought.

[LiberalAndProud]

1. I think that will always be one of life's mysteries. -nt

[mr blur]

2. I believe, sincerely, that 13' green, shapeshifting reptilian aliens control the world*

Respect me! Don't mock my faith just because you can't understand it! Don't offend me by laughing! etc. etc.






(* Donald Trump is one. And Ann Coulter. And Tony Blair.)

[Novara]

3. Because PAFS*

*People Are Fucking Stupid

[RussBLib]

4. PHABFS

People Have Always Been Fucking Stupid

and it takes some effort to overcome the brainwashing and get a real education

Since time began I'm sure a % of humanity has been dirt dumb, gallingly gullible, and susceptible to this kind of psychic garbage.

And, no surprise, there is an ever-ready population of charlatans and hucksters eager to take advantage of that gullibility.

[salimbag]

5. Gotta love the ministry

Provides socially acceptable cover for hucksters, pedophiles, rapists and con artists. I have a couple of childhood friends that became ministers, they are totally BOGUS! Just in it for the easy, tax-free, MONEY!!!

[LiberalAndProud]

6. Let me add the obligatory, "Not all of them."

I am related to some who seek to serve through ministry, so I feel compelled to mention the not-hucksters here.

Even so, I take your point that it is a field easily exploited by the least ethical among us.

[Binkie The Clown]

7. All religions combine elements of fraud, extortion, and child abuse.

Fraud, because they justify everything they do with lies.
Extortion because they take money on threat of eternal damnation.
Child abuse because they brainwash young children with their lies while they children are too young to understand that they are being victimized.

Sometimes they combine all those into one package. When I was a little kid the nuns at the Catholic school used to encourage us to spend our allowances buy something they called "indulgences". For cold hard cash, you could buy your way out of purgatory and into heaven. And since purgatory was just about as bad as hell, we little kids (too young to know better) were told we would suffer horribly unless we gave our allowance money to the church to buy those indulgences (extortion). They even had a chart of how much money it took to buy your way out of X number of days of purgatory. Crass, money-grubbing bullshit aimed at snatching quarters from little kids. And if you consult any Catholic authority today they will tell you that cash for indulgences was eliminated in the 1500's. But as a child, I saw them being sold with my own eyes, so that brings us back to lies, as the foundation of religion, and covers all the bases.

And there's the fact that Pope Paul VI said in 1967 money given for indulgences was only in the form of a free-will gift, and was used to encourage charity. So why did they have to clarify money-for-forgiveness in 1967 if it was banished in the 1500's? More lies upon lies.

[Lordquinton]

9. About that indulgance thing...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/16/vatican-indulgences-pope-francis-tweets

It's a little more complicated than Francis giving them out for twitter followers, but there you have it.

(It's great seeing them try to explain what it actually means, and how we're all misinterpreting what is really going on.)

[LiberalAndProud]

10. Unbelievable.

literally.

[nil desperandum]

16. Indeed

when piling on the made-up methods for achieving nirvana the catholics (full disclosure: I started with these kooks) really have cornered the market in how to get their god to help them make a few bucks...

My personal favorites? Annulments...especially after someone has kids with a spouse...pay a few bucks, have the marriage annulled in the eyes of the church and you are free to marry the person you committed adultery with on your original spouse...

When there's a profit to made in sin and forgiving that sin, count on the catholics to have a method to capture and increase revenue...

It really angers me to see these old folks scrambling to get their payouts in order so they can make it to heaven after they're gone...the church capitalizes on those fears of hell or purgatory and uses that as a cudgel to separate seniors from their money.

[beam me up scottie]

8. 10 years old? Wtf?

The parents who hand over their children to guys like this should get double whatever sentence the rapist gets.


"secular dumbasses like Daniel Dennett lack the brainpower to understand...the subtle shadings and nuances of religious thought."

I think you mean people who anger the faithful and the faitheists by pointing out the problems with treating the bigoted hate speech in the bible as divine directive.

[Binkie The Clown]

11. The demands of religious leaders are quite modest actually:

They ask only that those who tell the truth be silenced.

[beam me up scottie]

13. Slandering atheists is their only recourse now.

It's against the law to torture, imprison and/or burn them at the stake.

[AlbertCat]

12. the subtle shadings and nuances of religious thought."

Which are, of course, made up, evidence free.


Unlike the extremely subtle shadings that are REAL that science and logic dumbasses like Dennett do understand, but the nuances of religious thought ignore.

[beam me up scottie]

14. Are you really qualified to comment on the Emperor's wardrobe choice?

[AlbertCat]

15. Are you really qualified to comment on the Emperor's wardrobe choice?

I have a BFA in Costume Design.

[nil desperandum]

17. Indeed

those subtle nuances of shading are church hierarchy code for contradictions they can't explain and have no basis even in their own bible. Those subtle nuances are called lies and fantasy in the real world. But the world of make-believe is exactly that, no actual physical laws or even any coherent explanations.

Just subtle nuanced shades of fantasy to extort the believers.