LastWeekTonight
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2015–2018
20:06 · 43M views · Aug 17, 2015
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on televangelists and the 'seed faith' prosperity gospel. It looks at how US tax law lets preachers extract money from poor viewers, and how easy it is to start a church.
HN cites it in threads on churches, tax exemption and religious fundraising, as the go-to explainer on seed faith televangelism.
9 comments from Hacker News
Many people believe in the mistaken "no pain, no gain" philosophy. People seem to believe that somehow the universe will recognize their sacrifice and reward them accordingly. John Oliver did an excellent piece on a new crop of so-called "seed faith" televangelists that have popped up to fleece poor people that believe in this philosophy [1]. The reality, of course, is the opposite. The most successful people I have known have all started their businesses while their lives were relatively stable. That doesn't mean they started off rich, but it does mean they weren't spending all of their time trying to figure out where they were going to sleep or where their next meal was coming from. These days, it is wholly unnecessary to quit your job or move to SV to make a startup happen, and doing so is counterproductive in almost all cases. [1] this video
Not sure why you're getting so many down votes, but I completely agree with you. Some of his shows were incredible a few years back, two that come to mind: Televangelists[1] and Debt Buyers[2]. [1] this video [2] [LINK]
> what's the economic return on proselytizing? Interesting question. I did a quick check. It looks to be incredibly profitable, at least for main stream religious organizations (which tend to also be tax free). The two top links for googling "profit of church" are: Eg: From CNN: " 1. The Vatican Bank has $8 billion in assets The Vatican Bank, which has about $8 billion in assets, has often been at the center of scandal and corruption since it was founded in 1942. Pope Benedict began the process of cleaning the bank up, and Francis has continued that work. " [LINK] " THE Sydney Catholic archdiocese controls funds worth more than $1.2 billion and has regularly made multi-million dollar tax-free profits. The royal commission into child sex abuse heard the archdiocese banked surpluses of between $7.7 million and $44 million between 2004 and 2007, a period during which the Catholic church was aggressively defending a claim for $100,000 brought against it by former altar boy John Ellis. " [LINK] I believe John Oliver had an excellent analysis of how proselytizing tends to victimize the poorest section of society. this video
This reminded me of something similar: televangelists asking people for "seed faiths". If you haven't heard about this yet, check out this video from Last Week Tonight: this video
Agree that we're pretty much in line. Your arguments echo those you might hear from a "dissenter" type in the "spiritual but not religious" movement [0]: [LINK] > ... personally I think that 'men of the cloth' are criminals of the worst order, they willingly and knowingly spread mental viruses that cause great harm to society. I think this is probably the place where we differ the most. I think the people you discuss certainly exist. I think there's also people in those positions for the right reasons. As usual with any potential stereotype, it's important to look at individuals as individuals. (That said, the "seed faith" movement [1] needs to be nuked from orbit.) [0] Not that I'm aligning you to the movement. I'm just noting the similarity. [1] this video --- On the aside of my usage of "DAE", in this particular case it's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference along the lines of "preaching to the choir". That is, I don't think it would be a stretch to say that any argument presented as "rationality vs dogma" would have a population heavily leaning towards the former in this forum.