America’s mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it’s still going strong....
What about the Christians who don`t live in the afluent west & wonder where their next meal is coming from. Just another con for the gullible..."go to the Phone....lift the phone now...a promise delayed is a promise deferred....lift the phone now...give your credit card details or send a cheque....God is waiting to bless you. I sometimes listen to this...just for entertainment. Where`s that phone...
Correlation does not imply causation. Because two events are linked in time does not mean one caused the other (the post hoc fallacy, or, in this case, probably the cum hoc fallacy). Just because the prosperity gospel and the housing boom coincided does not mean one caused the other. The media, stubbornly and proudly ignorant of basic reasoning skills, has ignored this truth for ... well, a long time, and constantly pumps out articles like this. I guess getting a sucker punch in at religious types is just icing on the cake. You could make all sorts of outlandish causal relationships out of random correlations. I will be waiting for the "baby boomers caused the great recession" article (if it hasn't already been written). You can also compare the media's absolute fascination with how toothpaste, watching television, vaccines, and almost anything else everyone has done for decades has "caused" all sorts of things. Given a large population, these sorts of correlations will be found. It's like the advanced elderly people who took some medicine a few years ago, and a certain percent died - the media trumpeted this medicine (Alleve?) as the problem, when the same percent of people would have died anyway.
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Dr. Alan Cairns | 3/9/2009
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