In Which My Bullshit Detector Finally Melts

Readers (somebody is reading this thing, right?) may be getting a bit tired of the whole Grease-Spot Jesus thing, especially now that the auction on eBay has ended and Deb Serio has made her money. Still, now some new things are coming out in her statements that I think bear comparison to what she'd said before the auction. For instance, here's something from the Lynchburg, VA News & Advance:

She said some people have told her she shouldn't profit off Christ's likeness.

But to Serio, an active Lutheran, the mark on the garage floor isn't a sign from above - it's just a smudge.

"I don't consider myself someone who needs a Christ-like image to fortify my beliefs. ... There are some people who need this kind of thing to sort of start them on their faith journey. I don't. That's why I don't mind parting with it," she said.

That seems a bit different from what she said back when this story first appeared:

It is there and maybe it's there for a purpose.

Seems a bit odd, doesn't it? Assuming that the image had appeared there for a purpose, wouldn't one assume that the purpose would have involved the people living in the place at which the image appeared if one is to credit its appearance to intelligent and omnipotent authorship in the first place? If this purpose had involved somebody else, wouldn't the image have appeared at somebody else's house without involving a schoolteacher from Virginia receiving hard currency in the process? Or is the implication simply that Jehovah intended that Ms. Serio receive precisely $1525.69, and if so why exactly that amount?

I must say, the needle on my bullshit detector has deflected far into the red zone on this one.

The Associated Press story also contains the following comment in the course of an interview with Serio:

An active Lutheran, Serio considers the smudge just an odd occurrence _ not a sign or miracle.

The story in the News & Advance is, if the credit is to be believed, not simply taken off the AP wire, but was written by a staff member at the paper, one Matte Busse, so ostensibly we have a couple of independent sources reporting that Serio said the same thing once the auction ended. Could this be correct; could the woman who initially posited that the "image" appeared on her garage floor for some purpose, who told reporters that they took it so seriously that they feared stepping on it and promised it daily that they would "be good" as they left home now be saying that it's really just a smudge that has no divine powers, isn't miraculous, isn't a sign from above? Could that really be smoke beginning to pour from my overloaded bullshit detector?

EDIT @ 11:53 AM, 8/10/07: I sent email to Matt Busse asking him to follow up on the story and he informed me that "I wrote the story for The News & Advance, which then sent it to the AP, which then rewrote it & distributed it to its member news organizations. This is pretty common practice & is how most of the AP stories get out there. That's why some of the quotes are the same in both stories." So, to be fair, the quote really only came from one source, that being Mr. Busse.

If it isn't, this line will surely make it burst into flames!

I really never thought I'd get any, to be honest," she said. "I know that sounds sort of naive, but I put it up there as sort of a lark, thinking, 'Well, who knows who's out there.' I'm surprised.

— Lynchburg News & Advance

Catch that one? Here's a person who, according to her eBay profile, has been selling there for nearly eight years giving us a "Golly gee whilikers" line of crap when her initial take was

I kept thinking of that grilled cheese sandwich, remember the grilled cheese sandwich that sold for like $30,000...

— Original story, WSET-TV

I must say that it's rather rare to find a con artist who so blatantly calls bullshit on him or herself, but my poor detector is glowing the most marvelous shade of reddish-orange right now. I suspect I may need a new one after this.

A final thought; if someone intentionally misrepresents an MP3 player they sell on eBay, it's considered fraud, is it not? If I sell you something that I claim is an iPod but deliver to you something called an ePlod manufactured in a sweatshop in Senegal, I would be barred from selling on eBay, correct? So why is it that after making the claims Serio made about this "image of Jesus Christ" can she now clearly contradict herself by saying that it's "just a smudge" and not be considered to have defrauded islandoffthecoast who, unless he/she is even more foolish than I can comprehend, never would have shelled out more than $1500 for a sealant smudge on someone's garage floor?

This is just another one of those circumstances in which religion serves as an excuse/exception to normal reasoning, isn't it? Ah, this fellow says it better than I can, I suppose!

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