Who's Stupid Now ?

A couple of Christian pundits have taken me to task for my book _Raptured: The Final Daze of the Late, Great Planet Earth_. The general sense of their comments is:

"Do you think all Christians are stupid, or what?"

To me this question misses the point. None of these Right-wing evangelicals care about my opinion, so why do they ask? Similarly the Pope in Rome (Joe "the Rat" Ratzinger) couldn't care less about my opinion, nor do any of his followers. Obviously, they are not going to be buying my book anyway -- unless they enjoy books that mock loony Right-wing Protestants (as opposed to the loony Right-wing Catholics, who recently elected an ex-Nazi to be Pope).

So why do they care what I say? Why do they even ask?

I think this comes from a deep-seated fear that Right-wing evangelicals have about the leaders of their religion. They look at men like Richard Roberts, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and wonder this same question:

"Do you think all Christians are stupid, or what?"

The reason for this fear, this intense self-depreciation is that these "men of God" these "religious leaders" treat the people in their ministries as if they were complete morons.

For example, when a man dips into funds belonging to the ministry and then spends them on his own personal desires, doesn't this suggest a contempt for Christians? Doesn't embezzling money from a ministry suggest contempt for those people who donated their hard-earned dollars?

For example, Pat Robertson has made himself a millionaire several times over by using his ministry to advance his own private media empire. Some of the transgressions are obvious, like using planes belonging to a religious charity to move mining equipment in Africa, or using the 700 Club program to establish his own television network, which he later sold for many millions. More recently, Robertson has been hawking a high-protein shake and even demonstrated his new muscles in a fake weight-lifting demonstration. Robertson is so arrogant that he believes his followers will have no trouble accepting the idea that a man in in 70s can set a weight-lifting record by using a protein shake!!!

I wonder, when Pat wakes up in the morning, does he ever say:

"I shouldn't do this! The people in my ministry are too smart to ever fall for this silly crap."

Evidently not.

So if Christians want to escape the "stooopiddd" label, maybe they should take their leaders to task for abusing them, over and over and over again.