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It has always been a puzzle to me why the exposure of religious charlatans (and let’s be frank, it has been a cottage industry for millennia) is not embraced by religious people as positive

Nobody likes being fooled by a charlatan, and I'm all for exposing them. I have many Christian friends who don't appreciate them either. I will grant that it is certainly easier for a religious charlatan to temporarily fool those of the same religion. Just as it is easier for a "missing link" hoax to temporarily fool Darwinists. But don't mistake that for acceptance in either case! An exposed charlatan has no credibility. Although the point at which they are "exposed" is debated with various biases.

However, it seems you are taking the existence of religious charlatans as evidence against religion. Certainly you must understand this is hardly any kind of valid argument.

There have been cottage industries of all kinds of charlatans, some with fake cures like snake oil, or whatever else. Yes many have been religious. Now science charlatans are somewhat newer. They have only been around sense science has been around. But face it, they are around in spades. They usually fool the non-erudite in any case. Good theologians can spot phony Christianity better than the more gullible common Christian, just as a good scientist can spot scientific quackery better than the gullible public in our science-respecting culture.

Charlatans use fake science, because real science has credibility with people. They also use fake religion because real religion has credibility with people.

No Ender, bringing up charlatans gets you no where except as another distraction.

"However, it seems you are taking the existence of religious charlatans as evidence against religion. Certainly you must understand this is hardly any kind of valid argument."

Not at all. You keep forgetting that I am not an atheist. So how can I have anything against religion? For at least the tenth time in this discussion you have started tilting at windmills imagining them to be giants rather than actually arguing with what I have said. I gotta tell you... that got old several days ago.

The existence of religious charlatans merely justifies skepticism. And that is all I pointed out. Why you have again over reacted and understood that to be an attack on religion in general is still a puzzle to me.

I remain amazed at how many of your posts are arguing against some imaginary person who has not even shown up on this thread. Why is that? Are you having a crisis of faith and arguing with your own internal voices? Because I'm not the right guy to help you with that.

Piltdown Man.

Piltdown Man was even used as evidence by Clarence Darrow in the Scope’s Monkey Trial, which is certainly amusing. The hoax ran for 40 years.

And of course right now we have ‘anthropogenic global warming’, which the high priesthood of the science establishment has been selling us for a good number of years. AGW is science, you know, or so we’ve been told, and doubters have been held up as the heretics they are.

Alas, it now seems that some of the AGW evidence has, er, been faked. The Church of Scientism is being surrounded by superstitious peasants wearing Hayek and Popper masks, jeering cries of “Positivism!” as they hurl rocks and garbage at the hunkered down high priests of scientific charlatanism.