Bible.com Investor Sues Company For Lack Of Profit 181
The board of Bible.com claims that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than to make money on the domain name, but an angry shareholder disagrees. From the article: "James Solakian filed the lawsuit in Delaware's Chancery Court against the board of Bible.com for breaching their duty by refusing to sell the site or run the company in a profitable way. The lawsuit cites a valuation done by a potential purchaser that estimated bible.com could be worth more than dictionary.com, which recently sold for more than $100 million."
There's an easy fix for this (Score:4, Insightful)
If the company is unprofitable, then buy up a majority of the stock and run it how you want - or sell your own stock and go do something else.
No one is forcing investors to own this company.
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If you manage a company for stockholders, you have a fiduciary duty to maximize profit. The article says that the company's founders claim they have a "sacred purpose", but if that's the case, they should have sought out donations, not investments.
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If you manage a company for stockholders, you have a fiduciary duty to maximize profit.
Not true at all, you have a duty to reflect on your stockholders desires maybe, but in this case especially I doubt that many of the stockholders' first priority is to make money. Lets pretend that the majority of people bought stock in Google because of their 'Do No Evil' mantra, and that those people made that position clear at stockholders' meetings. Google would then have a responsibility to the stockholders to stay true to that mantra, even at the expense of profits. The default position is that the
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Articles of incorporation of pretty much any corporation state that it's out for profit, and the wishes of the stockholders matter only in the belief how to generate the most profit.
If their articles don't say that 'sacred purpose above profit', then it's not legally allowed to be so.
Some organizations - say, charities or religious advocacy groups - do have their goals listed differently, but this is not the case, and any shareholder has the right to demand to run the company as a profit maximiser, or the b
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In point of fact the current law is that, for for-profit firms, the board's responsibility is to maximize value to shareholders.
Unless they're in Revlon mode, the board's first legal responsibility is to act in accordance with the articles of incorporation (which may or may not prioritize shareholder value above other corporate goals).
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No, directors have a legal obligation to put the company's interests ahead of their own, and a legal obligation to provide 'good faith' governance in accordance with the corporation's charter.
There is no legal obligation to 'maximize profit' for your shareholders unless the charter specifically says there is, and even then it needs to be balanced against numerous other goals. In addition, you cannot say "maximize profits" without a time context for doing so: if you maximize profits this quarter by hiring
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Ever hear of a "not for profit" corporation, a.k.a, a charity?
Re:There's an easy fix for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Supposedly, the "investor" was given his shares because of a $400,000 debt that the owners could not pay back. Further, the site hasn't been developed because this shareholder has been fighting with the board about control over the company. So I'm guessing he would like to buy up the majority of the stock, if it were possible. Though I doubt he could dump his shares for the 400k they cost him.
Of course Bible.com is a bad business idea to begin with. Everyone has a bible, and there are basically billions of searchable bibles online. Religion tends to be face-to-face, or at least televised. Money in religion comes from donations, not advertising. And, of course, a domain name is not a business idea, it is a business asset. Without a real idea, there isn't a real business.
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Money in religion comes from donations, not advertising.
I wish you had told my church's finance committee this before they looked into buying a 15ft tall caveman cartoon to advertise tithing. Thankfully they balked at the quote, but they printed tons of fliers and some 6ft standups. :(
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I wish you had told my church's finance committee this before they looked into buying a 15ft tall caveman cartoon to advertise tithing. Thankfully they balked at the quote, but they printed tons of fliers and some 6ft standups. :(
So easy, even a caveman could do it?
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Actually this sounds like a pretty cool church.
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It could be worse, the church I go to advertises itself with a runon sentence [ucc.org].
And if you recognize the UCC as being the church that Obama went to and that preached "God damn America!" you'd be right. Same denomination. And, yes, the church organization as a whole fervently backs Jeremiah White, no matter what the members might think. Mainly because he's black, and the vast majority of the church is white. And we're not racist, 'cause we have a black friend. Er, preacher.
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I'd love to own bible.com. I'd sell Bibles on it. I'll give them $10,000 for it.
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Only if you short-sightedly presume that it's only business purpose would be "selling bibles" or "publishing the bible on the web."
There are numerous business ideas which could use 'bible.com' as a domain name - not all of them would be wildly profitable, but I'm sure you could make a go of:
-- Selling religious texts, music, supplies to churches, church groups, and private parties - Amazon.com with a "christian mission"
-- Developing some sort of chris
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You mean, the "investor" voluntarily accepted shares in payment of a debt, in lieu of cash?
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If the executives and/or the majority shareholders don't run the company with "due diligence" exploiting it's profit possibilities, then minority shareholders certainly have rights to hold them accountable and financially liable.
If the 60% holder wants to run the company as a religious charity, then *HE* has to buy the rest of the shares.
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Do your part for the DHS! Leave an extra bag at the airport or a suspicious package anywhere. Test the system!
"'Have your bags been in your possession the whole time?' No, usually the night before I travel (just as the moon is rising), I place my suitcases out on the street corner and leave them there unattended for several hours, just for good luck."
"'Did you pack your bags yourself?' No, Carrot Top packed my bags. He and Martha Stewart and Florence Henderson came over to the house last night. Fixed me a lovely lobster newburg, gave me a full body massage with sacred oils from India, performed a four-way around th
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a dildo with a crucifix handle
Sorry, someone has already come up with that one. My ex-girlfriend had one as well as a baby jesus butt plug. I guess going to catholic school gave her a few, ummmm, kinks?
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Sorry, someone has already come up with that one. My ex-girlfriend had one as well as a baby jesus butt plug.
Um wow...where can I meet chicks like that?
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No they don't. They have a responsibility to do whatever they want to do. If they say shareholders be damned, then shareholders be damned.
You can't invest in an "environmentally friendly" company and sue them because they aren't being as profitable as you think they could be. They might have other priorities.
As a matter of fact, you can (Score:5, Insightful)
Legally companies do have responsibilities to their shareholders. That is exactly how the system is designed to work. Shareholders are entirely within their legal rights to sue their companies for failing to make decisions which are likely to make the company profitable.
Maybe you think that on some sort of social level that isn't how it should work. To a lot of uneducated people, investing is paramount to gambling: you invest, you accept the risk, and then you win or lose, and that's it. But in the real world, investing is very different, and plenty of legal responsibility is heaped upon the board of directors to act in the investor's best financial interest.
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And where exactly is the money going to come from if they do win? It comes out of the company funds which the shareholders own anyway, less lawyer's fees, and the shareholders also have lawyers fees. It is basically the same as suing yourself, and it seems that the only people who can possibly win here are the lawyers.
If the shareholders don't like what's going on, call an EGM and sack the directors.
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Unless the award requires that they sell their assets in order to pay, at which point the investor gets exactly what he wanted.
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It is not the same as suing yourself. What you want is your investment back. If they have to liquidate the company to do that, so be it.
Re:As a matter of fact, you can (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. Legally, the company is required to act in accordance with its charter. Typically, these say something like 'make as much money as possible by engaging in business X'. Sometimes they don't mention money at all, or in the case of companies that do the triple bottom line thing mention money as one of the objectives. When you invest in a company, you are saying that you agree with the company's mission.
Simply not doing the thing that makes the most profit for the shareholders is never grounds for a successful lawsuit. If it were, then every company performing below the top few percent of the stock market would be legally obliged to liquidate its assets and invest them all in one of the top companies.
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Damn straight. That's what I was saying.
Yes, they are legally bound to pay their shareholders in accordance with the agreed upon terms. But the agreed terms are never "make as much money as possible"
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Or are you possible confusing the term "never" with "not always"?
Re:As a matter of fact, you can (Score:4, Insightful)
As he wrote it, he's probably quite correct - I think it's probably quite likely that no corporate charter has listed its sole business goal as "making truckloads of cash."
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Never? Really? I thought the goal of most corporations was to make as much money as possible. Or are you claiming to have read every single corporation charter that is in existence and zero of them stated the goal was to make as much money as possible?
Or are you possible confusing the term "never" with "not always"?
Grand parent probably should have said rarely is the goal "make as much money as possible".
I cannot recall seeing "make as much money as possible" in any sample corporate documents, as a matter of fact having that in your corporate charter seems like a really stupid thing to do as your share holders would seem to have an almost cart blanch reason to sue, you made 800% ROI this quarter, but you know you might have been able to eek out an extra 5% so off to court.
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IANAL
The court case Dodge v. Ford Motor Company [wikipedia.org] is often cited on Slashdot as the basis of this meme. The basis of the ruling was that Ford wanted to pay most of the money up front for a smelter plant in order to prevent the Dodge brothers
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But in the real world, investing is very different, and plenty of legal responsibility is heaped upon the board of directors to act in the investor's best financial interest.
Also in the real world, boardmembers and company officers have stacked the deck against ever having to worry about duty-of-care suits. The "how it is" you describe is just as rare and fanciful as the OP's idea that one investor would buy up a failing asset and (attempt to) bring it back to life, falling for the sunk-cost fallacy or some
Re:As a matter of fact, you can (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:As a matter of fact, you can (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true, at least not as stated. There's no obligation to provide "maximum profit" in a specific quarter, or in every quarter.
Corporations can, and often do, take a longer view of profitability, and focus on making wise investments (expenditures!) today that will enhance their profitability later through increased capacity, a better market position, acquisition of a key strategic component, etc.
Corporations that are solely concerned with the current quarter are foolishly shortsighted - so much so that I think you could probably make a good case for that sort of governance being a breach of fiduciary obligations to shareholders.
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The mistake you are making is that you think that investors care about the companies they invest in. They do not - they care about their investments. If you have invested in a company and you win a lawsuit because they didn't perform their duty, all you really want to do is get as much of your money back as you can. If they have to liquidate the company to do it, that is not your concern.
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And when the company you just forced into bankruptcy leaves a bunch of creditors (you included, and probably numerous other companies you've invested in separately) with pennies on the dollar, you don't think this will be a concern?
Recovering your investment is rarely as simple or black and white as you seem to want it to be - it's often simpler and less disruptive to just sell your shares and take the deduction from the loss to offset some of your capital gains and reduce your tax bill.
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Once you drink the Free Market kool-aid Profit is your prophet and you shall have no other gods or prophets.
Re:There's an easy fix for this (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it's completely legit to establish in your documents of incorporation that profit is not your chief goal - you can put moral duties first, and the board would then have a fiduciary duty to those goals over profit. No one does, because it makes it hard to find any investors if you do that.
Bible.com should really have done that, however, if thier intent all along was to focus on prophets over profits, and then the lawsuit wouldn't have merit.
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They know the company is sitting on a highly valuable domain and assume it will eventually be sold. They want to force it now so they can take advantage of it. If they don't want to wait for something that may eventually happen they can sell their stoc
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You can't sue the company for not being profitable, but you definitely can sue the boardmembers if they deliberately reduce the company profitability for their own personal goals (if you can prove this). It doesn't matter if this is done by doing unfairly beneficial deals to the majority shareholders (thus effectively robbing the minority shareholders of their x %) or by stating a "sacred mission" above the corporate charter and refusing to monetize it's most valuable asset.
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Sure you can, you just have convince the people who hold it to sell.
who'd have thought.. (Score:5, Funny)
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He's a nonprophet for profit, not a prophet for nonprofit. Of course that makes this whole thing about false prophets and false profits.
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For lack of ... prophet? (Score:5, Funny)
It's easy, actually (Score:5, Funny)
All you need to make a camel pass through a needle's eye is to grind it very finely.
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"It is easier for a man to enter a camel if he stands upon a box."
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I've always thought that it should be "It is easier to pass a needle through a camel's eye than for a rich man to enter heaven".
If you've ever been around camels, and know their temperament, you'd know how difficult it would be.
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Wood chipper, mortar and pestle, and a lot of patience. Or a freakishly huge needle.
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All you need to make a camel pass through a needle's eye is to grind it very finely.
OR save yourself the mess on the floor and just use a larger needle.
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All you need to make a camel pass through a needle's eye is to grind it very finely.
Will it blend?
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Or, a really big needle.
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Or choose the right needle [wikipedia.org].
Devaluation (Score:2)
What are "Christian business principles", exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think they teach "sell that thou hast, and give to the poor" to aspiring MBAs these days.
Re:What are "Christian business principles", exact (Score:5, Insightful)
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Evil!
Re:What are "Christian business principles", exact (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "liberal" when an individual or corporation decides to do these things. It's considered "liberal" when the government forces individuals to do these things, or extracts money from individuals and corporations in order to do these things themselves.
Many conservatives participate in a lot of charity, I'm not sure why you consider those two things to be mutually exclusive.
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Republican also support everyone paying for what charities they give to. It's called a tax deduction. If the republicans really believe that forcing tax dollar that go to cause is wrong, the would all be repealing tax deductions, and remove all support to religion out of the government.
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Wait... so the government saying "You gave some of YOUR HARD-EARNED money away to a group that matches your principles and whose mission you support, so we will take less of your money away in taxes" is somehow... government-sponsorship for religion?
You realize that the tax money the government would collect is NOT 'their' money to begin with, right?
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It can be. It really all depends on what else they decide not to take your hard-earned money for donating to.
Tax break for donating to First Baptist Church of Podunk but not ASPCA or ACLU or a non-religious battered women's shelter or something like that? It may not be promotion of a religion but it certainly smacks of promotion of religion. The distinction between "donate money and we'll take less tax dollars" and "we'll take your tax dollars and donate money" is fairly small.
That said, I suspect th
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Yeah, "it can be" - except it ISN'T. If the laws were completely different, murder *could* be legal, too. But it's not, because we don't live in alternate-reality-bizarro-world where up is down, left is right, and the ASPCA and the ACLU and a host of other non-secular charities aren't eligible for tax-deductible status, but religious organizations are.
Publication 78 from the IRS [irs.gov] is pretty clear on
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What are you smoking? Really? I'm surprised progressives aren't picketing Chick-Fil-A for favoring Christians (except for Seventh-Day Adventists and SD Baptists, of course) by choosing Sunday. I guess a social conservative might complain if the Chick-Fil-A was actually a chain of nudie bars that preferred locations near elementary schools, but other than that most non-leftist people think a company should get to set its own policies as long a
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most non-leftist people think a company should get to set its own policies as long as they don't break any laws.
That last bit is kind of redundant. EVERYBODY tends to think a company should set it's own policies *as long as they don't break any laws*. The argument usually revolves around just what those laws should entail ;).
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I'm surprised progressives aren't picketing Chick-Fil-A for favoring Christians (except for Seventh-Day Adventists and SD Baptists, of course) by choosing Sunday.
This would have made perfect sense before the days of the five day work week and part-time labor. But those days are long gone and a chick-fil-A employee has no reasonable expectation that he or she will work six days per week.
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They are also a heavily Christian organization. My ex wife works there and asked me not to tell them about the fact that she cheated on me with her now husband who was a Asst. Manager. She was afraid he would get fired for it.
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I'd have concerns about her ethics.
Dude, she's an adulteress. I think that says volumes about her morals AND ethics. You don't reach my age without suffering a lot of pain, and the worst pain I ever suffered was from Evil-X's repeated adultery. Worse than arthritis, worse than a head-on car wreck, worse than getting kicked in the nuts.
Adultery's one of the big ten "thou shalt nots" for a reason.
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Yeah, because they put CRACK in their chicken nuggets. Have you had them? There is certainly SOMETHING highly addicting they add.
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Strangely, they also seem to require their employees to say, "Have a blessed day." at the end of each purchase. It smacks of moneychangers in the temple to me, but it is the 2nd best chicken sandwich franchise. I've always wondered if there's a lawsuit waiting to happen there.
What's the best, you ask? A little chain called Big Chick in the dirty south puts them to shame. Amusingly, they require their employees (who are mostly rotund females) to wear shirts featuring the franchise name.
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Not open on Sundays? That seems like a pretty dumb decision to me. They say they do it so their workers can have a day off, etc., but most workers already have days off; the 9-5 crowd gets weekends off, but others get other days off. In a service industry, you need to serve your customers when they want to be served. For most people who work 9-5 jobs, they go to the malls (the typical location for a Chick-fil-a from what I saw in the South when I lived there) on weekends, because those are the days THEY
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Admit it: if they dispensed ketchup into paper cups (how would that go over in the drive-thru, BTW), you would complain that they're cutting down old-growth forests. The fact that you are spewing your pedantic drivel over the internet tells me that you probably make compromises in your own life in order to participate in civilization.
I haven't seen a styrofoam cup there, but then I've never bought any hot beverage.
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Apparently, they teach "invest thy money in dubious internet businesses, and then sue them".
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Obviously, you did not get your BBA / MBA from a strict Christian University, and there are quite a few of those around. They teach that its not a sin to make money, what you focus on is conducting your business in a fair and ethical way, and don't engage in practices that hinder your faith.
In this summery, however, the problem is that the investor is 1) ignorant of what he is investing in, 2) obviously doesn't share their views, and, probably most importantly, 3) is trying to find a way to make money off o
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Basically, Christian business principals are:
1) don't screw your customer
2)don't sabatage your competition or engage in espionage
3) Don't try to circumvent the law
4) Treat your employees fairly
5) Treat your stockholders fairly
6) Treat your partners fairly
Overall, not a bad business model. You conduct yourself in that fashion, people will respect you, and will give you repeat business.
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It's full of ads (Score:3, Interesting)
Every once in a while I'll google around for a quote that I know is Biblical, simply because I want the chapter and verse.
bible.cc is one site that comes up in Google when you do that. It has multiple translations and languages even!
Bible.cc has bookstore links and just a few small ads. Bible.com has an interstitial, and comes off as "megachurch Christian" rather than Bible-study oriented.
That they failed to capitalize seems likely; but if every board that failed to capitalize were liable, it'd be a different world, or would it? I've held a number of stocks where there were shareholder class actions, and have always marveled that anybody would want to essentially sue themselves. The only winners are the lawyers. Suits like this are usually just a sign that the company is circling the drain.
There's really "nothing to see here. Move on".
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I used to keep an online bible (holy-bible.us), but I let the domain lapse. I had one chapter per HTML page, with anchors at each verse. I still regret letting it lapse.
No wonder it failed, it broke the 10th Commandment (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe if it was set up with little or no regard for profit (like Wikipedia, [wikipedia.org]) it would have had God's blessing and succeeded?
He should read his own website (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawsuits among Christians [bible.com] are a no-no in the Bible.
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Yeah, the problem is that everybody has their own interpretation.
Just look at the US. Supposedly the vast majority of the people there are christian. But it's so litigious of a place that clearly nobody cares what the bible has to say on that matter.
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Few even bother to read the bible. I keep telling my friend Tammy she should quit thumping her bible and read it. This is not a Christian nation no matter what that wolf in sheep's clothing Pat Robertson says. This country's religion is the worship of money. The churches are full of hypocrites.
Let us pray to the god of mammon:
Our money, who art in the bank,
Hallowed be thy name.
My kingdom come, my will be done on earth as it is in space.
Give us this day our gourmet foods, our luxury cars, our yachts and our
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Also, "If a man sues you for your coat, give him your cloak as well".
My God but that's an ugly site, no wonder they're being smited.
Inevitably it will lead to this (Score:2, Funny)
internet magic at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Tithe? (Score:2)
Why does bible.com need shareholders? (Score:2)
I don't understand how and why they need shareholders if they have no plan to be profitable.
I find... (Score:2, Funny)
...your lack of profit disturbing.
But if it made a profit.... (Score:2)
wouldn't it be "a profit without honor?"
Bible.com? (Score:3, Insightful)
What next- bible.biz?
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It should be a .org, and based in Ireland. Bible.org.ie!
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Why are you amused it's a .com if it has shareholders?
On a side note, an .edu requires it to be an accredited school [educause.edu]. I do not think a bible qualifies as a college.
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Probably because he's actually read the bible?
What's even funnier is a church here in town, berean Baptist Church, has a .biz extension (berean.biz). Needless to say, I don't attend that one.
Have they not heard the Good News... (Score:2, Interesting)
... as brought to you by Supply Side Jesus [youtube.com]?
Commenting on it even more so (Score:2)
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And yes, the pun about Jesus's grave is fully intended.
I don't think that word means what you think it means...