Topic: Religion
After writing about Derren Brown, I had a look at some clips of him on Youtube and checked out some other stuff relating to trickery. This one has me stumped:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUm-zcmswxE
It concerns the televangelist Peter Popoff who was exposed as a charlatan in the late 1980s. Shortly afterwards he declared bankruptcy. Amazingly he's now back doing pretty much the same thing, as the Inside Edition clip exposes.
This time, he gets people to apply for some free 'Miracle Spring Water'. Recipients discover that the miracle only works if you sprinkle the enclosed sachet of 'Dead Sea Salt' over a cheque for $27 made out to him. As the man himself explains 'It's not the water that releases the power, it's your obedience to the instructions of the prophet of God'.
What stuns me is that he's operating under the same name as before. How he can get away with this in the age of the internet I cannot possibly understand. It doesn't take a minute on Google to find out about his past. Words truly fail me.
