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Merged Snake-handling preacher dies by snakebite

Checkmite

Skepticifimisticalationist
Checkmite
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What a twist!

Jamie Coots died Saturday evening after refusing to be treated, Middleborough police said.

On "Snake Salvation," the ardent Pentecostal believer said that he believed that a passage in the Bible suggests a poisonous snakebite will not harm believers as long as they are anointed by God. The practice is illegal in most states, but still goes on, primarily in the rural South.

Coots was a third-generation "serpent handler" and aspired to one day pass the practice and his church, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, on to his adult son, Little Cody.

The National Geographic show featured Coots and cast handling all kinds of poisonous snakes -- copperheads, rattlers, cottonmouths. The channel's website shows a picture of Coots, goateed, wearing a fedora. "Even after losing half of his finger to a snake bite and seeing others die from bites during services," Coots "still believes he must take up serpents and follow the Holiness faith," the website says.

In February 2013, Coots was given one year of probation for having crossed into Tennessee with venomous snakes. He was previously arrested in 2008 for keeping 74 snakes in his home, according to National Geographic. Tennessee banned snake handling in 1947 after five people were bitten in churches over two years' time, the channel says on the show site.
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Amazing - I certainly did not see that one coming.
 
And now, the religious theology Get Out of Jail Free card: His faith was found lacking, and not that it disproves the claim.
 
I have an urge to go to the funeral and do a Nelson Much, "ha ha". I recognize that this is perhaps uncharitable.
 
Snake-handling preacher dies by snakebite
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Impossible.

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;
Mark 16:18
 
I looked at the comments for an article on this and Christians were saying God's always there to help, you just have to use "common sense." I guess we should only suspend common sense when reading the Bible. When **** gets real, go with humans.
 
steve s said:
Impossible.

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;
Mark 16:18
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Actually, the "it shall not hurt them" part only applies to the drinking of deadly things. Jesus made no guarantee that people who take up serpents wouldn't get hurt; he just said that those who believe (and who will thereby be saved) would do the foolish thing and it would be a sign.

Not that Jesus's guarantee of safety would be any damned good, had he said such a stupid thing. Believers have died from drinking poison thinking it wouldn't hurt them.

Other signs, say these verses in Mark (which are, by the way, of doubtful authenticity in the first place, even among Christian scholars), include casting out devils in the name of Jesus and speaking with new tongues (languages). As far as we can tell, no one has ever demonstrated the existence of any demon or the casting out thereof, and it has never been verified that any person was able to suddenly speak in a language that s/he had not learned.

It is hard to see how belief that one is immune from harm in serpent-handling qualifies as a "reasonable" belief or is in any way deserving of respect as a religious belief. About the only positive to come out of this incident is that the poor dead stupid bastard did the deed himself and took the consequences, and didn't compel some other poor clod to do it.
 
C.O.B.R.A. Commander should consider recruiting these guys as Chaplains for his organization.

They have a snake theme, they're fearful anti-government types, and they are completely incompetent.

It's a match made in Cobra-La.
 
I watched that show last season.....like a train wreck of ignorance. Nobody seems to have a real job in that corner of Gooberland but they do seem to have plenty of money to buy ATV's and travel for snake hunting. I thought maybe the congregation was ponying up the cash but these loser ministers can barely scare their own family into attending services. The quicker they are all bitten and die is probably so much the better for the gene pool at large.
 
Brown said:
Actually, the "it shall not hurt them" part only applies to the drinking of deadly things. Jesus made no guarantee that people who take up serpents wouldn't get hurt; he just said that those who believe (and who will thereby be saved) would do the foolish thing and it would be a sign.

Not that Jesus's guarantee of safety would be any damned good, had he said such a stupid thing. Believers have died from drinking poison thinking it wouldn't hurt them.

Other signs, say these verses in Mark (which are, by the way, of doubtful authenticity in the first place, even among Christian scholars), include casting out devils in the name of Jesus and speaking with new tongues (languages). As far as we can tell, no one has ever demonstrated the existence of any demon or the casting out thereof, and it has never been verified that any person was able to suddenly speak in a language that s/he had not learned.

It is hard to see how belief that one is immune from harm in serpent-handling qualifies as a "reasonable" belief or is in any way deserving of respect as a religious belief. About the only positive to come out of this incident is that the poor dead stupid bastard did the deed himself and took the consequences, and didn't compel some other poor clod to do it.
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Perhaps the remarking about handling snakes and drinking poison without harm was meant to function mostly in the same way as the statement that a person with this much faith could move a mountain (i.e., essentially a direction that there's never such a thing as "enough" reverence or faith or whatever on an individual level); as long as one can't move a mountain one knows he could always find some way to be more faithful, and it will be that way his entire life of course.

The mountain-moving idiom worked better than snake-handling for this purpose I think, because obviously it's possible for some people to feel they've arrived enough to attempt to handle snakes (or drink poison, etc).
 
angrysoba said:
Yeah, but surely his ambition of handing on the snake-handling profession to "Little Cody" his son is an honourable attempt at seeing off his offspring.
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No adult who is known as Little Cody can be a fully emotionally mature human being. It's the ultimate in parental dominance.
 
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