Following in the esteemed footsteps of disgraced Christian frauds like Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker and Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn says God wants you to send him money to help him retire $5 million worth of debt. And he has one rich sucker on the line to match the first $2.5 million.

I’m thinking about pitching a reality TV show to the Trinity Broadcasting Network: America’s Next Great Religious Con Artist. It would have four judges — Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, Rod Parsley and Peter Popoff — and they would choose the next great faith healer or televangelist fraud.

I wrote last week about Pat Robertson’s perfect prayer scam, where he makes scattershot claims that God is going to do X or Y and when one of the millions of evangelicals have X or Y happen, it proves that the prayer was answered. He recently said that God was going to give a million …

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I grew up watching the 700 Club. It was on in our house every day because my stepmother loved the show. And one of the regular features is Pat Robertson praying and telling unnamed people that God is answering their prayers. It’s done in the form of “there’s someone out there right now with lumbago; …

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A Christian TV show taped in London and broadcast over satellite TV is coming under fire for putting viewers lives at risk by telling them that they’re healed of diseases. The danger, of course, is that they’ll stop taking medication or other forms of medical treatment.

Bishop Eddie Long has had enough legal trouble recently with several male members of his church suing him for coercing them into sex (he settled the suits), but now he has more. Several members of his church have filed a suit accusing him of endorsing a Ponzi scheme run by a friend of his.

Ooh, this is a juicy story. The son of faith-healing evangelist con man Benny Hinn was arrested in Brazil for allegedly beating the hell out of a deaf and dumb man at one of his father’s revival meetings. Two of Hinn’s guards were arrested as well.

I’ll give the fundies this: They never seem to run out of ways to fleece the credulous. Pat Boone is helping push a new Christian scam, selling one square foot pieces of property in Galilee to believers who want to feel like they own a piece of the holy land:

Mike Jacobs, husband of unhinged looney tunes Cindy Jacobs, makes another of their famous uncheckable claims that their five year old daughter can “rebuke” a tornado and make it stop. I bet it was right after the girl finished eating from the bottomless spaghetti bowl.

I believe Ray Lewis is the greatest middle linebacker ever to play football. He also drives me batty with all his “God put me here” nonsense. But I somehow missed this when he reached the pinnacle of absurdity in claiming that the “fact” that God has used him and blessed him proves that he was …

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Here’s a video of one third-rate TV evangelist that highlights all of the dishonest techniques that they use to fleece the credulous. I find the “sow your seed of faith” line hilariously idiotic. If they really believed it, wouldn’t they be sending you money?

There was a debate recently between Christian apologist William Lane Craig and atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg at Purdue University and the Christian Post, unsurprisingly, thinks Craig won. No one wins such debates, of course, but they seem to think that this statement from Rosenberg was a big opening:

Cindy Jacobs is one of the most ridiculous charlatans in the Christian world today. She is always telling stories about how her prayers prevented terrible things that never happened and how God does amazing, undocumented things like making her spaghetti last forever. Now she says that she was the one who prevented the global economy …

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