aikido7

While traipsing through cyberspace, I came upon a March 26th article posted at the Slate.com website. The piece was written by Dahila Lithwick and concerned the rise, fall and newest meltdown revelations of "Miss Cleo" of TV's "Psychic Hotline."

The quotation that caught my attention seemed to have a real bearing on the literalized fantasy world of popularly accepted Christian dogma and
the evanglical/fundamentalist take on biblical writings.

In its original context, Lithwick is describing the USA version of "truth in advertising" when it comes to psychic claims, but the quote clearly has a more disturbing application to misinformed--though popular--biblical exegesis:

The bizarre lesson in all this: The more preposterous and unprovable one's claims, the less subject they will be to legal tests and legal scrutiny. If I run an ad that says I'm a dentist, I may be off to prison. If I say my cat is the messiah, I'm in the clear. So long as that's the case, the Miss Cleos of the world are free to launch their preposterous claims at the public, just wearing different hats and faking different accents. Sigh. I see Miss Cleo in our future for a long, long time....

Toto

<a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2063700" target="_blank">Link</a>

Hey, my cat is the messiah.

boneyard bill

I don't know who Miss Cleo is. Is she claiming to be a Christian fundamentalist? Otherwise what does this article have to do with Christian fundamentalism?

Of course, it wouldn't surprise me if she's making that claim. Fundamentalism is really a kind of New Age Christianity. It has some things in common with traditional Christianity but departs from it in many ways as well. Of course, Christianity began as a charismatic cult so anyone who founds a charismatic cult can claim to be returning to "true" Christianity.

Toto

Hi bb - either you been hiding out in a cave for the past few years or you don't watch TV.

Miss Cleo claims to be a Jamaican shaman, and she sells her psychic services (say that 10 times fast) via TV ads.

I think Aikido7 wants to compare the credibility of fundamentalist Christian claims to that of Miss Cleo, neither of which can be disproven in a court of law.

Boshko

Not really BC&A, Misc. Religion is the most appropriate forum I can think of, so off it goes...