(Un)holy spam!

[vakkotaur]

One of the things lurking in the mail was a letter addressed only to "Resident - To A Friend." This, of course, screams scummy advertising almost as loudly as the excessively bolded and multiple RED underlined text try to proclaim churchly miracles and the like.

This is the Prayer Rug Scam of the alleged "Saint Matthew's Churches" which exist as

Comments

paper prayer rug

[thepita]

i got one of those the other day....maybe if we find a bunch of them we could tape them together and wallpaper something....

[thecanuckguy]

Sure you have both the name and address of someone on your "fecal roster":

George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC
20500

I hear he's religious. He'll fall for it.

[vakkotaur]

You might want to double check that. Besides, whatever problem he might be, he'll be gone from the scene, at least in any significant way, in a few months.

[thecanuckguy]

Thing that bugs *me* is blogs like the aforelinked stupidevilbastard saying how that this is basically what those who believe in "the fairy tale of God and creation" (my paraphrase of all of the like, not an exact quote) deserve as punishment. I do take umbrage at that; as one who is a devout Christian and one who also hates those religious scams as much as the non-believer community (maybe moreso because it's giving my identified religion a very bad name and is not good press for us. I'm sure that atheists and agnostics have complete asshats too that they want to disown, but I don't know that community well enough to name an example). I'm glad you know the difference between "believers" and "suckers", but sadly, less kind-spirited folk don't.

(BTW, I did enjoy the rest of the comment on his blog, as well as many of the responses, very much, don't get me wrong. Just didn't like where he assumed at because I beleive in God would mean that I would/should fall for that, like that automatically precludes me owning a brain.)

[vakkotaur]

That was merely the first reasonably good explanation of the mess that Google turned up. Religion, or lack thereof, is neither an indicator of genius nor idiocy, as it is also neither an indicator of morality or immorality. Really, when it comes down to it, religion is a tool which like any other tool can be used for good or for evil or left unused.

[luke_jaywalker]

Well said. Conversely, the people who equate religion directly with morality - "he's an atheist, so he's inherently amoral/immoral; they're good Christians, so by definition they're moral people" - piss me the hell off.

[thecanuckguy]

Same here. (From experience it's usually those who self-identify in the category where "moral" people are that make that assumption. How's that saying go, "I am moral, he is good, they are degenerate"?)

[woody_whistler]

We got one of those as well.

I don't recall offhand any Biblical teachings that combine prayers and rugs, and I don't particularly feel a need to hit the old Strong's Concordance concerning the topic. So I tossed it!

[luke_jaywalker]

The letter on the page you linked to says that the church will pay return postage. Presumably this means the thing has a postage paid envelope attached to it.

I understand that the USPS will honor anything this envelope is attached to, adding its shipping cost to the organization's bill. This applies whether the envelope encloses a check, or is taped to the outside of a package containing three or four bricks.