Spiritualist fraud in England and God is for Suckers

Great Britain is enacting a law that makes it possible to sue "spiritualists" for fraudlent claims that they make by allowing consumers to sue psychics under currently existing consumer protection laws. Psychics and mediums, of course, are freaking out that they might have to prove that they can do what they claim to do, or at least be very clear that they're purely entertainers or clearly state that their results are unreliable. Also unsurprisingly, they're not trying to claim protection as a religion.

I, myself, am all for this. I don't think that religions should be given special protection. A law is a law, and fraud is fraud regardless of the religion or spirituality of the fraud. If I whip up some snake oil in my kitchen and claim it cures all ills, I'd be arrested and put in prison. Why should a faith healer be able to make similar miraculous claims? I think it's silly for them to claim that we should ignore that they lie to gullible people because their con has a religious gloss to it.

And if we should find that religion, itself, is fraudulent . . . well, I think that's a very good question. I largely do think religion is fraudulent with people making a lot of money manipulating the needy, credulous and gullible for their own personal gain. If anyone doubts that religious people can live like kings, look at where the Pope lives - his huge palace is supported by supernatural claims that take money, often from the world's poorest people. I think that this should be gotten out into the open.

But that's not really the thrust of this post. What strikes me as odd is that, at first blush, most atheists do not take this position. Over at God is for Suckers there's a post about these people being subject to consumer protection laws. Oddly, the original poster and most of the comments are . . . pro-religious.

Stardust says, "As much as I would love to see a rational and secular world, I am just not sure if this is the right way to go about it. Obviously, if spiritualists do such a booming business, it is just giving the public something that it wants to pay for." What a bizarre line of argument. I find myself wondering at Stardust's opinion of heroin - the public wants that, too. Or other consumer protection laws - should snake oil salesmen once more be allowed to sharp people? Should despicable people be allowed to take advantage of people in serious illness to make money because "they want it"?

In the comments section: "You can’t legislate morality. And you can’t legislate to prevent humans from acting stupidly. Buyer beware." That's from Old Viking.

And newsamus says, "Why should we care what kooks want to spend their money on?"

Tony Dee says: "This law smacks of 'Big Brotherism' and that scares me. As they say a sucker is born every day and we can’t change that. Can we!"

Then roger ramjett says, "Don’t care if someone wants to pay for advice. They can get it for free from me though. It is entertainment and shouldn’t be banned."

I mean, these people are supposed to be atheists! But time and again they seem to be saying that it's okay for these "spiritualists" to commit fraud.

This is a larger problem, generally, with atheists. It's pretty hard, for instance, to find an atheist - even an atheist - who'll say that Jesus was an idiot. That he made no goddamn sense, that the very few nifty things he said are completely swallowed by bile against women, condemnations against people who wouldn't suck his proverbial cock and frivolous battles with the Pharisees, inane stories and the like. That he said nothing particularly original and didn't even say it in a particularly original way. It is my experience that almost all atheists will struggle with great energy to find reasons to praise the person of Jesus.

Likewise, atheists will be abstractly anti-religious but often have trouble leveling specific critiques against specific religions. Most atheists would rather keep the discussion on the fairly abstract level - in my experience, most discussions about atheists and religious folks are almost totally decontextualized of specific religious content. They'll talk about how the science behind the big bang theory is better than creation mythology, or deconstruct the god of the gaps, or argue that intelligent design is not true. What they won't do is confront religious people who argue with them about their own religion. They won't say, "Sorry, I'm not going to let you weasel out of talking about the details of your faith" and then attack the specific ways their specific religion is racist, sexist, classist, makes mystical claims waaaaay behind anything that can be hidden in the god of the gaps (like how this guy was brutally executed and stayed dead for three days and got up - that's not intelligent design hiding behind irreducible complexity, that's just silly and impossible and not any god of the gaps business). But discussions about religion almost never go in that direction.

Indeed, it is my experience when asking a person what their religion is in a religious discussion, I'm almost always questioned why I feel that's important. Which in addition to being a silly question (it's like getting into a political discussion and hiding what party you're in - why would anyone even want to do that?), it seems to me to demonstrate how taboo specific critiques against religion are - the question itself is odd. (For what it is worth, moving the discussion to the person's particular religion is a very powerful tool for advancing an atheist's point - it's much easier to discuss why the Bible is absurd than to say why metaphysical uncertainty about the origin of life or the cosmos is not justification for belief in an abstract god.)

I feel that the reluctance of a good portion of atheists over at God is for Suckers to be of a piece with that. While being personally atheist, they nevertheless still want to give religious people special treatment. Because there is a vaguely religious component to spiritualism and mediums and astrologers and faith healers, they should be treated differently than secular frauds. Religion, in the minds of many atheists, is still special.

For my own part, I'd like to see that attitude done away with at all levels of society. Religion is just a thing that people do. It is not a special thing. So long as it is a special thing, protected by society and laws in a number of ways, they will continue to do terrible things because they'll be able to get away with it. Like the Catholic Church's official position on pedophilia inside the Church to hide it, to cover it up, and obstruct justice - or faith healers discouraging ill people to seek real medical treatment while picking their pockets. This is real stuff that they get away with, and it hurts real people. It hurts little kids and cancer patients - and that's not even hyperbole! End special treatment for religions today!