This news item from the Christian Post, which seems real (see replication here), is absolutely indistinguishable from something that could have appeared in The Onion.
Sal Bentivegna, 28, who did not previously believe in God, had sarcastically asked his mother to “ask your God for a million dollars”.
However, his mother Gloria Bentivegna, follows the Catholic faith, and staying true to her belief refused to ask God for such a thing.
Taking his joke further, Sal then prayed out aloud saying, “God, I don’t know if you’re real or not, but if you are there, please let my mother win a million dollars.”
He added, “If Jesus wants me to believe in him, that’s what he’ll do”.
The following day his mother bought a “Lotto Tree” of unscratched instant win tickets from her Church’s charity auction. Sal was then left absolutely stunned when he found out his mother had won a million.
Realizing that the odds of his mother winning were so farfetched, Sal has now become a firm believer.
He testified, “I can’t shrug off that Jesus had a hand in it.”
Okay, if Jesus wants me to believe in him, he’ll turn P.Z.’s arms and legs into tentacles. I swear I’ll believe then!
Oh, I thought P.Z.’s arms and legs are already tentacles 😉
oh… TENTACLES. I misread that the first time.
What did you think it was the first time?
Testicles.
(In my defence, I have Asperger’s syndrome.
But no elephantiasis.
Yet.)
Post Scriptum:
Perhaps that is why P.Z.’s nemeses say that he is ‘half nuts’?
On second thoughts, don’t answer that.
Ah. Second thoughts, those kinds of thoughts that are hastily replaced with third thoughts. =D
All I can say is, PZ has enough cojones already!
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Really? You have first “hand” experience of this .)
SO useful on those occasions when you want to hold a beer in one hand & hold a plate of food in another but need a tentacle so you can use a fork!
I’ll become a true believer if one of my jesus-freak relatives wins the lottery…at least until the money runs out.
I only takes a million Jesus freaks to make one millionaire!
It takes far fewer than that; they seem too happy to give money to people who claim to be god’s representatives on earth.
My thoughts exactly.
Though from this side of the Atlantic being a $ millionaire looks a little less attractive than being a £ millionaire! It really is not that much money these days – the average house price in Greater London is $670,000.
Wow. That’s actually some coincidence. Guess we’ll have to believe in Jesus now…
Because no one else ever prays to God when they buy a lotto ticket…
…or lies for Jeebus when they get in the news for any reason.
From that guys prospective, you gotta give him a break. If that happened to me, I would definitely call my atheism into doubt.
If you wouldn’t I think you’re being a bit too dogmatic in your beliefs, and not rational enough.
Seriously? You would seriously consider believing that while myriads of people live in poverty and never catch a financial break, suffer from disease, sometimes due to lack of funds for treatment… That while thousands probably prayed to the same god to win the same lottery, some of whom were surely in more acute financial duress than you… YOU won a million dollars, hence Jesus?
There is nothing “dogmatic” or “irrational” about pointing out the glaring flaws in what passes for thinking with that person. Sure, from his perspective it’s understandable, he’s obviously very emotional due to winning the lottery, etc.. But the one thing he’s not is rational. He is, however, extremely self-centered.
Well said!
Im happy you said you “think” , because it implies you haven’t concluded yet. Without detailing it here, I can assure you that if gone is savvy to statistics, one will not need dogmatic for not doubting thier atheism. Your comment ilicited the same initial reaction I get when a Christian says to me “you’re only an atheist because you don’t want to be accountable for your behavior”. I.e., an immediate recognition that they haven’t really learned enough to even begin to engage in a nd intelligent conversation about this”, but that’s the feeling I get after said ignorance is stated as fact, so like I said, I am happy you did not conclude that position. Again, statistics proves the opposite of what many are thinking it does in this story, but you have to understand stats first.
Giving 1 million dollars to atheists to tempt them to convert?
Who the hell does God think he is?
John Templeton?
John Temptation!
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You made my day. Thanks.
Winning the lottery you entered isn’t a miracle.
Now, if Jesus is real then he will make ME win a million on the lottery this week. It will be MUCH more convincing in my case, because I don’t play it.
+1
Congratulations! You’ve won the Nigerian lottery. Check your e-mail
Old Schwartz prays to God: “Dear Lord, let me win the lottery.”
Schwartz is a pious man, who’s always followed the commandments. He’s a proper shomer Shabbos.
Every week, old Schwartz prays “Dear Lord, let me win the lottery.”
So it goes – week after week, year after year.
Finally one day, Schwartz is fed up: “Lord! I have observed all your mitzvot. I have been a pious man. I have done good by my neighbour. – For years I have asked only one thing: ‘Let me win the lottery’, but even this little have you not seen fit to grant me.”
Then a voice booms from high: “Meet me halfway here, Schwartz. At least buy a meshuggeneh ticket for once!”
Well all the children that were born and lived a life of perpetual starvation and suffering who died yesterday Im sure can bask in Jesus’ glory of helping grandma win the fucking lotto.
Obviously those who are dying already believe so their immortal soul ™ are in no danger. What’s his face needed his faith affirmed else his soul would be lost. Can’t you see why it had to be done?
Yeah, I always thought the same about prayers by football teams. It’s not like Jesus has anything else to do….
Ah, but now Sal can help the starving and suffering children who haven’t died yet.
Those that have? Well, they’re already in Heaven, which is a better place…
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Nah. That wouldn’t be proof of Jesus — it’d be proof of Cthulu fucking with your head.
Jesus would take a pneumatic staple gun to PZ’s hands and feet, impale him with some track and field equipment, let him ripen for a few days, and then reanimate his fetid corpse. You’d be convinced when, instead of trying to eat your delicious braaaaaaaainz, Zombie PZ tried to get you to fondle his intestines. And then insisted that you eat his flesh and drink his blood so that you could join him in the joys of zombihood.
That’s WJWD. Says right there in the Wholly Babble.
If any god decides to answer your prayer, I sure hope it’s anyone but Jesus. Even Cthulu I could handle. but Jesus? Hell no!
Cheers,
b&
“zombihood”
Zombis, is that some kind of bimbo zombies?
Why haven’t I heard of them before? More importantly, are there LOLzombis? Want… perhapz.
I prefer “zombidom” It’s got the sound of those jungle drums.
Zombie Dom – I like it!
Actually, I think a zambi is when your venison steak does the Charleston.
Not to be confused, of course, with a rambie, which is when your lapin au vin grabs the knife from you and heroically fights its way to freedom.
Oh — in case you were wondering, the answer to that eternal question, “What would Jesus drive?”
Duh. A Zomboni.
Cheers,
b&
My lapin au vin never stood a chance, but it went down valiantly.
“God, I don’t know if you’re real or not, but if you are. . .”
Sounds like an ignorant, fence-sitting agnostic to me. Hardly an atheist.
To be fair on the kid, it can be difficult shaking a religious upbringing, and weird coincidences like that can really shake your confidence.
I hope he recovers.
OK, 28’s hardly a kid. But it can still be hard.
Poor little mite!
He’ll recover when he runs out of money and Jesus won’t answer a second time.
If god give me a million dollars I promise to spend almost all of it helping others (with free beer and cookies)… I said my prayer on the toilet when the food was on the way out instead of in.
So does that mean that everyone who prayed but lost the lottery is now atheist?
No, just unworthy sinners.
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Except those who were’t religious to begin with, of course!
No. It just means that everyone who didn’t win lucked out when praying, since only one person is allowed a winning ticket…
…oh wait!
If there wasn’t any chance of winning, why would anyone buy a ticket?
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
Buy?!
What happened to “render unto Caesar”?
Even Sai Baba could conjure Swiss watches out of thin air – complete with serial numbers and makers’ marks. No need for ‘buying’ here.
If I pray to Jesus and win 1 million dollars, I … STILL would not believe in him!
As it turns out, atheism is no replacement for a basic understanding of statistics.
while Sal may or may not have changed his mind about Jesus answering prayers, one thing is clear about Sal that has not changed one bit:
Sal is an idiot.
Imagine if PZ won the lotto after a replay of the communion wafer stunt – that would probably drive more christians to atheism than everything the Gnus have ever done. Now that would be something!
Somewhere online, I read somebody’s view of a situation sorta like this; a person who had been an atheist found Jaysus and made a big deal of it. The writer (I think it was PZ talking about Kirk Cameron) summed up the conversion, saying the guy had been an atheist for no good reason, and then had become a christian for no good reason.
If the convertee had never put any thought into his worldview, then what is the point of using him as an example of anything?
Yes – he has gone from being an idiot who did not think to being an unthinking idiot.
When I first read the headline (posted elsewhere), I assumed that the “atheist” had converted _from_ Christianity. That would seem to make more sense. Excessive worldly riches seem incompatible with Jesus’ values. So a supposed prayer to Jesus that successfully (yes, only coincidentally, but it’s “real” for believers) results in riches would seem to invalidate Jesus’ own priorities. That contradiction could make someone become an unbeliever.
What are you? Some kind of Dulcinian heretic?
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Jeebus did it? will delusions ever cease.
I think it’s fine if conversion to Christianity is dependent on winning the lottery. That rather limits the rate quite a bit right there.
I just checked my limbs…still got bones. You people aren’t praying hard enough!
Hey, I’m doin’ my part — I just ate a bacon cheeseburger for dinner, and I stopped on the way home to get a family pack of chicken thighs and some sausage.
Wait.
Something’s not right here.
Oh…you mean we’re supposed to be prAying for you?
Damn.
This is gonna be harder than I thought.
Um…I’ve got some rosemary, used a generous pinch last night in the chicken-with-40-pieces of garlic. Catholics are really into rosemary, right?
…no?
Okay…how ’bout lamb with cod? Cheeses fried in lard…?
Looks like I’ll have to get back to you….
Cheers,
b&
STOP THE PRESSES!
It’s already happened!
Here’s the photographic proof!
We’re all domed! Domed, I tell you! Domed! It’s as bad as if we all turned into Buckminster Fuller clones and shaved our heads!
The Rupture is upon us! That Campy guy was right! And I can’t stop using exclamation points!
PZesus, I beg of you: please forgive me, and eat me first! Or at least second!
Cheers,
b&
I just wanted to point out that, in fact, God did not actually give his mother a million dollars – yes, she won that much money, but something like half of it goes right back to the state in taxes (funny how that works, since most lotteries are state sponsored :)) so she’ll only see something on the order of $500,000, not $1,000,000. If God were actually answering that specific prayer and it was not random chance, she would have won something more like two million dollars.
So really, one cannot say that the prayer was successful – at best, it only half worked.
Strewth! That is only £300,000. You would be hard put to buy a modest house in London for that – as I pointed out above.
So why doesn’t everyone who prays for a million dollars win the lottery? Because Jesus says many are called but few are chosen. So you see, this story proves the Bible is true, yippee!
Sal forgot the important part: test for the reliability of the result.
So the christian god is into bribing people to believe in him now, but apparently can’t be bothered addressing evil throughout the world.
I won the instant lottery three times in a row once. $20 was the biggest ticket though. Which is why I remain an agnostic to this day. We’ve already established what Mr. Bentivegna is. We’re just haggling over the price. (Yes this comment makes no sense at all but it sounds like it should be funny so the hell with it.)
Lest there be anyone sillently thinking this is an amazing coincidence, or not know how to articulate why it is not amazing at all, I will explain it here why it is not amazing (if it even happened):
Just as I could articulate phenomenal odds of any set of daily mundane characteristics occuring at one time after the fact, it does not make it any more amazing that this son asked for this specific amount of cash that she won BEFORE it happened. While interesting, it is not amazing any more than most mildly amusing coincidences. This is because with the sheer number of lottery winners, say from over $100,000, it would not be surprising to note how many actually prayed or performed any superstitious act specifically to win the lottery.
The reason this is merely interesting and not amazing is because we only have a ‘one time’ attempt (he did not pray any other time his mother played the lottery) and he asked for a specific amount (1 million dollars).
So at most it’s ‘interesting’ because at some point it was almost bound to happen that someone would perform a one-time superstitious act and name a specific amount that is subsequently won. So dude might have converted for a reason as sound as because the tides go in, the tides go out.
And it gets FAR less interesting if dude didn’t really mention specifically $1,000,000. But we’ll just take his word for it, right?
Or that the extent of his reasoning for being an atheist was more than ‘it just doesn’t make sense’. That’s testable, if he is willing to discuss how this event trumped his reasons for knowing why the epistemology for belief in anything supernatural is profoundly flawed. But if he really understood the reasons not to believe, then…
…It could be the case that the tremendous euphoria of winning life changing amounts of money will eventually wear off and he’ll realize it doesn’t make him ‘believe’ any more than before. Which means….
… he may have set him self up for some grief as euphoria often makes us do and say some pretty stupid things. He may have boldly and emotionally announced how he was wrong, how he doesn’t understand it, etc. and that will make it even harder to ‘break it’ to his theistic friends/family, etc. Add ‘tears of joy’ and it’s even more embarrassing to the point it might be a life long secret that he realized he still doesn’t believe.
For his sake, I hope he just wasn’t really a thinking atheist.
Wonder how much of it she’ll give to charity?
I’ve just had a car crash compensation cheque. 5% is going to Amnesty for the 50 years. That’s on top of my monthly donations.
I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:23-24
Sal, if Jesus had a hand in this it is because he hates you and your mother and wants to send you both to hell.
“I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:23-24”
So… Religious teacher tells person with disposable income to dispose of it? I don’t suppose there was a collection plate anywhere about the place.
If true, I don’t hugely fault the guy… The odds of such a thing happening have got to be pretty far against, and plenty of people have believed false things as a result of incredibly unlikely (but ultimately spurious) data.
Put it another way: If the only people who believed in God were the ones who won the lottery one day after first praying to win the lottery, I’d be more than comfortable with the amount of religion in the world.
There was a newspaper article about a lady down the road who has won three big lotteries. There was no mention of prayer in the article. I understand there are several people who have won multiple big lotteries. I wonder if there is any correlation between their religious practices and their success.
No matter how sarcastic Sal was being earlier, it’s like he is pretending that asking Voldemort if he is real will actually get an answer. Sorry, but I think the newly converted, fresh-from-the-bank groveler at Radioactive Zombie Jesus’s mutant feet is either an idiot or taking his joke on his mother to a careless extreme. After all, the sheer number of people who have said that exact same thing and not won the lottery clearly refudiates the existence of God 😉
Everyone’s the big winner, that would be a miracle.
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
(Matthew 19:24)
I have founded reasons to believe it was actually Satan who made her win the lotto, not Jesus. Remember, greed is a deadly sin.
That passage is for losers. For lotto winners, the eye of the needle is much bigger.
There is the joke (which actually has a deep philosophical meaning) about the chap who kept asking God to let him win the lottery. Weeks went by, he kept praying, but nothing happened. Finally a voice boomed down from the heavens: “You have to at least by a ticket!”
Oops.
Sorry – that’s what I get for not reading the whole thread.
Stupid me.
In other news… 10 million other people were disappointed.
None gave up their faith.
Word is Xenu likes to play pranks by masquerading as Jesus…
Why don’t you believe me!!!