TheFightingPikachu
Smashing!
Note carefully the use of the word "if" in that sentence. We will see whether it stays simply a hypothetical statement.
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Let's tax churches.
- Thread starter Baba Yaga
- Start date
Note carefully the use of the word "if" in that sentence. We will see whether it stays simply a hypothetical statement.
That would still be a highly suggestive claim.
Aegiscalibur
Add Witty Title Here
If you want a more serious answer, fine. People are better off with "spiritual voids" because they should aim for the truth instead of superficially comfortable illusions.
No objections there.
I'm repeating myself, but if it was fine for churches, why not for others?
Some European countries have a state church while still allowing other religions normally, and their religious problems tend to be smaller than in the US. Of course, the reason is that people don't take the church as seriously, so maybe you shouldn't extrapolate too much.
"American imperialism" actually made me laugh out loud.
Sorry if it came across that way. I've seen too many "appeal to authority" arguments recently.
It's hard to draw an exact line, but I'd mostly allow religious events and public debates. Still, open political activity of religious organizations could be worth banning.
Just speaking in general, the situation in the US shows that religious freedom isn't always as great as it sounds on paper. It easily leads to a situation where the most popular religion is shoved down people's throats, to the point where an atheist may easily find himself discriminated against or under social pressure. So the freedom of the majority to act irrationally can severely limit the freedom of the minority to act rationally.
Considering the Separation of Church and State that is highly unlikely
Yes how dare they, they would be better off not bothering with those people in poverty, they may starve with hunger but they will be free of "Religious Nonsense"
Are you suggesting that religious people are less educated?
Those "illusions" do provide comfort in depression, death, and times of high stress, so I question how you could say a person is "better off" when deprived of that comfort
Because churches hold a greater power on a person through faith than your average organization
Aegiscalibur
Add Witty Title Here
Because truth has intrinsic value. If I had to choose between a slightly depressed person with a clear head and a euphoric person in a mental institution who thinks he is Napoleon, I would pick the former. With your logic, we should pick the latter, but I really wouldn't call it much of a life.
So it's just a rule of thumb then. Alright.
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Except the "truth" is not there for comfort when you need it the most. Furthermore there is no guarantee that what you are saying is the truth, you have no greater proof it is the truth than the preacher pushing the same views on others.
More like acknowledgement of the power churches have, which is why we have such a separation
The Federation
Why Not?
It's fairly easy to see that subsidy via tax break is a higher form of gov't intervention than taxation. I don't know what was going on at the time of the decision, but it probably didn't reflect current scenarios.
They would be better off just giving them food.
I'm suggesting it's easier to make an individual truly believe a fairy tale when he has less understanding of reality.
Taxation requires a greater interaction with the Government as the current IRS scandal has shown.
Almost if not all religions are have a belief that they are required to spread the word of their religion, it would be rather impossible for them to merely just give food and not work on saving their souls as well.
It is and that goes with Athiesm as well, individuals fall victim to whatever "fairy tale" is pushed in the form of science/pseudo science that they do not understand or comprehend, and they blindly believe it as they are unable to question it.
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The Federation
Why Not?
That's debatable. Look at the impacts of subsidizing churches, and the impacts of past IRS issues, and weigh the two. They are both interaction intensive.
Which is why secular charities are infinitely superior to faith-based charities. Being kind for the sake of being kind is far superior to being kind because a God told you to.
Come again? Atheism is a rejection of the God hypothesis and has no doctrine or dogma. It would be hard for even the deluded to call it a faith or a fairy tale, which is why you almost always see creationists trying to frame it that way. No, a rejection of the magic and mysticism you find in religions is a little bit off what anyone could call a fairy tale.
I am only looking at the interaction between a church and a Government, in which case the intense IRS scrutiny leads to far more interaction than subsidies, which largely requires no IRS scrutiny. If you believe this is debatable I again point to the Supreme Court case that landed on my side of the argument.
Really? I have seen numerous atheists on here trump their beliefs and put down others, are you honestly telling me atheists would not push their beliefs while feeding a third world culture? I mean c'mon it is human nature to try to correct some one and bring them upon their beliefs.
There is no proof there is or is not a God, along with many other holes that religion tries to fill in such as the afterlife. By saying there is no God, Atheists are taking that belief in and of itself on faith. They have no way to prove there is a God, they have no way to prove there is not a God, but they are believing their own "fairy tale" to quote you, in saying there is not. Which is why I call atheism a religion, as much as you do not want to admit it, at the end of the day atheism requires just as much faith to fill in the holes in the universe as Religion does.
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Murder Doll
Button Presser
Both sides are sort of sucking on straws and recycling material....
Also is this debate about tax or about religion? You'd think it'd be easier for people to stay on topic.
Also is this debate about tax or about religion? You'd think it'd be easier for people to stay on topic.
I think he honestly is. There are myriad examples of charitable donations and in-person relief efforts coordinated by atheist or secular groups in the US (go to Patheos and search for relevant terms), and there are just as many if not more examples of atheist/secular groups wanting to work with Christian organizations side by side to help take care of those in need, and being turned away from cooperating to feed the homeless because of ideological disagreements, even though the atheists explicitly promised to refrain from ideological promotion.
Guess how many things there potentially are that nobody can prove there aren't. Give up? Infinite. Unicorns, aliens, and flying spaghetti monsters are just some of the more cliche examples; there are also, potentially, sentient nose hairs, teddy bears made from the felt of Abraham Lincoln's top hat, and robotic ballet dancers selling marijuana in underground caverns on one of the moons of Jupiter. A god is just one of the infinite number of things that nobody can prove does not exist. If not believing that a god does exist makes atheism a religion, then you, BigLutz, are currently a faithful practitioner of an infinite number of religions structured around not affirming the existence of an infinite number of things.
The Federation
Why Not?
They won't, and they don't, and you will be unable to find a single source anywhere to show otherwise. It's not possible for a secular organization to push their beliefs on others when their foundational belief is that people who are suffering need help. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of secularism and atheism.
Once again, a fundamental misunderstanding of what atheism is. Very few claim the belief that there is no God.
Atheism takes no faith, and, in fact, is the exact opposite of everything a religion can be. It does not make any claims, it does not require any belief, it is no a dogma due to lack of tenets. Atheism is the lack of belief, and nothing more. To say it takes faith to doubt the existence of an unknowable being is to be profoundly ignorant of the nature of belief, truth, and reality. Faith requires a claim. Atheism makes no claims.
Now, lets say it did, and I am positively asserting there is no God. Technically, this has as much validity as the claim that there is no Santa or tooth fairy, but because it is part of a religion it's somehow fallacious to rule out God as a reasonable explanation for anything. You must be absolutely teeming with faith, yourself, that my pet dragon Leonard (whose unfalsifiable traits such as invisibility and unquantifiability rule out any methods of testing him) doesn't exist. Or, how about the famous teapot?
The wholes in our knowledge are filled with an admission of ignorance, not a galactic space toad or God, your pick.
I can merely go to this topic in which other faith's and people of faith have been called numerous insults, in a way shaming a person into athiesm. Then again I could point to the various billboards and signs atheist put up proclaiming religion is false and a scam
Athiesm: a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
b : the doctrine that there is no deity
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism
a·the·ism
ˈāTHēˌizəm/
noun
noun: atheism
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
Google Dictionary
a·the·ism
[ey-thee-iz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.
the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2.
disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism
By showing disbelief that such a thing does not exist, or to doubt it does not exist, you are exerting a measure of faith.
By being ignorant there is no reason to believe there is no God, one cannot preclude that it does or does not exist. If we are to take various definitions of athiesm as being the belief that there is no deity then you, yourself are acting on faith in the belief there is no deity.
Profesco said:
I would narrow it down to views on matters more spiritual such as if there is a God, if there is a afterlife, how the Universe was started, etc etc, as Religion must take a bit of a spiritual aspect in it of course. But yes by definition I can be a practitioner of a infinite combination of faith as everyone else is in their own way as they pick and choose what to believe and not to believe.
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Oh. Well, alright. I was hoping to get you to agree that "not believing in X" is not the same thing as a "religion of not-X," but still, there's no faulting your logical consistency here, I guess. We're all members of an infinite number of religions. Fair enough.
Aegiscalibur
Add Witty Title Here
Okay, this is like arguing in the Religion in society thread already. You want absolute proof of moral values, but such a thing doesn't exist.
I can also reject everything you say by throwing "You don't have absolute proof" at you. Do you have absolute proof that being happy (in the sense you understand) is a good thing? No, you don't.
So if someone really prefers to life in a placebo world, there's no absolute proof to show them that would easily convince them otherwise.
You completely missed my point, but whatever. It's nothing more than a circle at this point.
How many self-proclaimed atheists actually define atheism as "the doctrine that there is no God"? Not many. Most define it as the lack of faith or belief in gods or religious dogmas in general.
So we are all members of an infinite number of religions. Good job redefining the word "religion," I guess.
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TheFightingPikachu
Smashing!
Nope. Not letting this debate die that easily.
Actually, that article said a bunch of things that were downright strange, right from the get-go:
Second, what exactly does tax exemption have to do with doing (not-necessarily defined) things wrong? Specific, tax-related things, sure, but just saying "things" is not enough. Sounds almost like an argument that the Founding Fathers should have thought about the Crusades while writing the Constitution.
Additionally, we may be getting into an area where "discrimination" fails to adequately capture what is at stake. While it looks an awful lot like this person would be faulting a church for firing an atheist for engaging in activities that work against the church's interest, I doubt any atheists would have a problem with an atheist organization firing someone who became a Christian and engaged in actions that went against the interests of the organization.
It is flatly untrue that the substantial profits of some churches are unlike other tax-exempt entities. Even this article (which overall suggests caution in saying that non-profit executives are being paid a lot) indicates that some have significantly high salaries.
This ignores the already-mentioned idea of atheist churches, which moves the debate squarely into the realm of objective fact and, might I add, Constitutional protection. I have no problem with atheist churches counting as churches as the Supreme Court has apparently allowed.
Furthermore, I have no problem with other non-theist non-profits being exempt from taxes. In fact, I'm pretty sure it already happens, which leads me to the second part of this post.
What is the real issue?
There are two separate questions to be asked here, and, giving the best reading possible to the various arguments presented, they do in fact fall under one of these two categories:
1. Did the Supreme Court make the right choice regarding the taxation status of churches?
If what has been discussed so far in this thread is correct, the Supreme Court held that, essentially, churches should be given a special kind of non-taxable status, so that the government should have less entanglement with religious organizations. Apparently, this is supposed to come at the cost of not being able to directly engage in political actions. This question is worth asking since it is not wise to simply side with something because it is the law. Is it correct?
2. If the Supreme Court made the wrong decision, does that mean churches are ineligible for any kind of tax-exempt status?
Presumably, that is what some of the following arguments are trying to prove (or at least, it is better than assuming they weren't trying to prove anything specific, although that is a possibility):
All of these arguments--indoctrination, not allmen, I mean churches doing charity work, and alleged criminal actions are all fairly easy to give one response to:
None of that disproves anything about taxation status. The Catholic Church may have done things wrong, but the people who have done things wrong should be held accountable, not every member. (The wording of that one I found particularly unfair despite being Protestant myself.) There is no law that as soon as you engage in indoctrination, you lose taxation status. And charitable helping the poor (per se) is not required to be a non-profit (although you must be doing some sort of free service, or else I'd be hard pressed to understand what it even means to be tax-exempt).
There is no problem with an atheist group being tax-exempt even if all it does is puts on free lectures showcasing people who say that Jesus was black, that Jesus was a Martian, that Jesus didn't exist, that Jesus was a Marxist, that Jesus was an atheist, that Jesus was a Buddhist, etc. I don't even care if the same person advocates all those ideas (as the logical consistency of those definitely pushes it into the realm of indoctrination of the least sensible kind).
The same is true of other fields as well. If, as I think is the case, art museums can be tax exempt if they do not charge money, there is no necessity that the art be particularly good. I may think every single painting, sculpture, or whatever is very much inartistic. Some of the art may have even been made by people who advocated criminal activities. None of that matters for the tax exempt status of the institution.
In fact, to bring the discussion back to various groups which in some way or another promote a viewpoint, I rather like the idea of laws allowing different groups to advocate their ideas to people who want to listen. I am very much saddened by the undercurrent of hostility inherent in so many mentions of proselytizing.
So to give my answer to the two questions directly, I am not sure about whether the Supreme Court got it right. It seems to depend in part on whether they had good reason to credit Jefferson's famous "wall of separation" comment made in a letter. This was very probably an incorrect thing to do (and in fact, gets into deep issues of Constitutional interpretation that shed a lot of light on current attitudes toward the meaning of "separation of church and state"). But that in no way disqualifies churches from being a tax-exempt organization like everything else.
That's obviously not all coming from the poor.
Actually, that article said a bunch of things that were downright strange, right from the get-go:
It is highly questionable that "the media" treats religion with enormous sensitivity and deference.
First, "religion" is not a single entity. Is this author charging all religious organizations with the wrongdoings of some religious organizations?
Second, what exactly does tax exemption have to do with doing (not-necessarily defined) things wrong? Specific, tax-related things, sure, but just saying "things" is not enough. Sounds almost like an argument that the Founding Fathers should have thought about the Crusades while writing the Constitution.
This may be a matter of how one words it. An individual doesn't have to pay to speak out in public endorsing one politician over another, so wording it that way sounds a bit unfair.
The emphasis I've added to the above paragraph highlights an extreme irony. Is this author saying that discrimination is fine as long as you pay taxes?
Additionally, we may be getting into an area where "discrimination" fails to adequately capture what is at stake. While it looks an awful lot like this person would be faulting a church for firing an atheist for engaging in activities that work against the church's interest, I doubt any atheists would have a problem with an atheist organization firing someone who became a Christian and engaged in actions that went against the interests of the organization.
It is flatly untrue that the substantial profits of some churches are unlike other tax-exempt entities. Even this article (which overall suggests caution in saying that non-profit executives are being paid a lot) indicates that some have significantly high salaries.
This ignores the already-mentioned idea of atheist churches, which moves the debate squarely into the realm of objective fact and, might I add, Constitutional protection. I have no problem with atheist churches counting as churches as the Supreme Court has apparently allowed.
Furthermore, I have no problem with other non-theist non-profits being exempt from taxes. In fact, I'm pretty sure it already happens, which leads me to the second part of this post.
What is the real issue?
There are two separate questions to be asked here, and, giving the best reading possible to the various arguments presented, they do in fact fall under one of these two categories:
1. Did the Supreme Court make the right choice regarding the taxation status of churches?
If what has been discussed so far in this thread is correct, the Supreme Court held that, essentially, churches should be given a special kind of non-taxable status, so that the government should have less entanglement with religious organizations. Apparently, this is supposed to come at the cost of not being able to directly engage in political actions. This question is worth asking since it is not wise to simply side with something because it is the law. Is it correct?
2. If the Supreme Court made the wrong decision, does that mean churches are ineligible for any kind of tax-exempt status?
Presumably, that is what some of the following arguments are trying to prove (or at least, it is better than assuming they weren't trying to prove anything specific, although that is a possibility):
All of these arguments--indoctrination, not all
None of that disproves anything about taxation status. The Catholic Church may have done things wrong, but the people who have done things wrong should be held accountable, not every member. (The wording of that one I found particularly unfair despite being Protestant myself.) There is no law that as soon as you engage in indoctrination, you lose taxation status. And charitable helping the poor (per se) is not required to be a non-profit (although you must be doing some sort of free service, or else I'd be hard pressed to understand what it even means to be tax-exempt).
There is no problem with an atheist group being tax-exempt even if all it does is puts on free lectures showcasing people who say that Jesus was black, that Jesus was a Martian, that Jesus didn't exist, that Jesus was a Marxist, that Jesus was an atheist, that Jesus was a Buddhist, etc. I don't even care if the same person advocates all those ideas (as the logical consistency of those definitely pushes it into the realm of indoctrination of the least sensible kind).
The same is true of other fields as well. If, as I think is the case, art museums can be tax exempt if they do not charge money, there is no necessity that the art be particularly good. I may think every single painting, sculpture, or whatever is very much inartistic. Some of the art may have even been made by people who advocated criminal activities. None of that matters for the tax exempt status of the institution.
In fact, to bring the discussion back to various groups which in some way or another promote a viewpoint, I rather like the idea of laws allowing different groups to advocate their ideas to people who want to listen. I am very much saddened by the undercurrent of hostility inherent in so many mentions of proselytizing.
So to give my answer to the two questions directly, I am not sure about whether the Supreme Court got it right. It seems to depend in part on whether they had good reason to credit Jefferson's famous "wall of separation" comment made in a letter. This was very probably an incorrect thing to do (and in fact, gets into deep issues of Constitutional interpretation that shed a lot of light on current attitudes toward the meaning of "separation of church and state"). But that in no way disqualifies churches from being a tax-exempt organization like everything else.
UltimatePokemonExpert
Experienced Trainer
I'm going to just sit here and silently support TheFightingPikachu. I'd say something but.... I'm not intelligent enough to debate these sorts of things if I'm being honest.