Pious fraud

A pious fraud a term used to describe people who perform fraud in religion (for example, a pious fraud fakes miracles or psychic surgery) because of a sincere belief that the end justifies the means in religious matters.

The "Oxford English Dictionary" reports the phrase was first used in English in 1678. Edward Gibbon was particularly fond of the phrase, using it often in his monumental and controversial work "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" in which he criticized the likelihood of some of the martyrs and miracles of the early Christian church.

William Howells wrote about shamans that they know that their tricks are imposition but that all who studied them agree that they really believe in their power to deal with spirits. According to Howells, their main purpose is an honest one and they believe that this justifies the means of hoodwinking his followers in minor technical matters.

Thomas Jefferson considered much of the new testament of the Bible to be lies. He described these as "so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture". He described the "roguery of others of His disciples", and called them a "band of dupes and impostors" describing (the Apostle) Paul as the "first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus", and wrote of "palpable interpolations and falsifications". He also described the Book of Revelation to be "merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams". While living in the White House, Jefferson began to make his own condensed version of the Gospels, omitting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection, primarily leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible. [THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON: BEING HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, CORRESPONDENCE, REPORTS, MESSAGES, ADDRESSES, AND OTHER WRITINGS, OFFICIAL AND PRIVATE. PUBLISHED BY THE ORDER OF The JOINT COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS ON THE LIBRARY, FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, DEPOSITED IN THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES, TABLES OF CONTENTS, AND A COPIOUS INDEX TO EACH VOLUME, AS WELL AS A GENERAL INDEX TO THE WHOLE, BY THE EDITOR H. A. WASHINGTON. VOL. VII. PUBLISHED BY TAYLOR MAURY, WASHINGTON, D. C 1854]

References

*Howells, William 1962 "The Heathens: Primitive Man and his Religions" New York: American Museum of National History [http://www.amnh.org/] in Robert S. Ellwood "Civilized Shamans: Sacred Biography and Founders of New Religious Movements", article that appeared in the book "New Religions in a Postmodern World" edited by Mikael Rothstein and Reender Kranenborg RENNER Studies in New religions Aarhus University press, 2003 ISBN 87-7288-748-6

External links

* [http://skepdic.com/piousfraud.html Pious fraud] Robert Todd Carroll's skeptic dictionary entry