14 Comments

Wacky facts to be sure, but holding charlatans accountable for fraud doesn’t trouble me much; this is one area that is likely underlitigated.

Might well be a good suit, but shouldn’t a potential donor wonder why the church needs another million bucks if the world is in fact going to end.

I agree, this is one area I think is under-lawyered. There’s a lot of “religious” fraud around, and maybe litigation can help cut down on the overwhelming volume of it out there.

Frank, your comment assumes people are rational about these things. But like the best con-men, a lot of these religious frauds exploit the fact that the brain doesn’t work entirely rationally, and the mark can be tricked into going along with things for a long time before they realize they’re being played.

Dismiss with prejudice under the “healthy sheep” doctrine.

False prophets are to be stoned, or at the very least defrocked by the church. If the prophetic utterance was made by a body above the local church then they should willingly return the money with an apology. I don’t see that happening.

Do you think Australian civil law would uphold a death penalty decision made by a church court?

Ted

well, i am of two minds about it. on one hand, if you promise the world will end next tuesday and you know it won’t, then that is classic fraud. on the other hand, if you sincerely believe that the world will end next tuesday, and it doesn’t, no fraud.

and the fear is that people who do the second will be mistaken for those who do the first, so that people will lose money in court because they can’t convince people of the sincerity of belief. which is troubling.

So call me against it, for that and the rule with religious fraud should be “buyer beware.”

Anyone dumb enough to believe some cult’s doomsday predictions and, even worse, take action pursuant thereto, should be neutered or spayed so as to alleviate the threat he/she poses to the gene pool.

they should have joined the church of the sub genius instead only 30 bucks lol

I don’t have a problem with the law protecting some level of buyer’s remorse and prohibiting people from keeping unearned money obtained with false promises. However, I have a serious problem if the sincerity of the beliefs are going to be investigated or if courts are going to award punitive damages for “religious fraud”.

I think we can draw a fairly bright line at what the money was supposed to buy you. If they money was supposed to get you something tangible and it didn’t, you’re entitled to it back. If the money was unearned and you want it back, you’re entitled to at least some of it back.

But we can’t treat religious tenets as elements of a fraud without trampling over freedom of religion.

Why shouldn’t be treat religious tenets that have been proven conclusively false as elements of a fraud? It’s one thing for the courts to make judgments on matters of faith such as whether Jesus was the Messiah, but surely they can make fair and objective decisions as to whether the world came to an end in 1914. If a religion makes such patently false claims, it is objectively a false religion. That doesn’t mean that persecution is warranted, but I see no reason why the courts should not be able to make such determinations.

Because claims are not logical propositions. If a person says “your wife is cheating on you”, it is not rational to response “interesting, you have just stated a logical proposition that may or may not be true”.

When a person *claims* something, they are not just mentioning a logical proposition, they are vouching for it. A person who says “your wife is cheating on you” is normally understood to be saying “I have reason to believe your wife is cheating on you”.

This is a claim that can be investigated. Did they actually have reason to believe that? Whether or not your wife is actually cheating on you is irrelevant to the question of whether their claim was justified.

When a person makes a religious claim, how can you investigate whether they were justified in making that claim? These are not strict liability questions.

I am a member of the US Holocaust Museum. The Museum sends me information about the wonderful work they do. Those who contribute to the Red Cross know about its blood bank program and its disaster relief.

What would a doomsday prognosticator do to justify its funding? If you have no programs, then solicitation of funds would be fraud whether or not everybody involved truly believed the end was near.

If you hire a weatherman to make weather predictions and he doesn’t show up, that’s actionable. If you hire a weatherman to make weather predictions using the latest scientific methods and he predicts the weather based on where darts land, that’s actionable.

If you hire a weatherman to make weather predictions based on where darts land and the predictions are not accurate, that’s not actionable. If you hire a weatherman to make weather predictions based on the latest scientific methods and he does but the predictions are not accurate, that’s not actionable.

What is never relevant is whether the predictions are accurate. We don’t hold people responsible for things outside their control. What is relevant is whether there was a meeting of the minds over what would be done, how much would be paid, and so on.

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