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And may I say, some people here seem to grossly overestimate how much is it “all about money”. Guess they can’t imagine any movement being led, organized, and followed by true believers for the sake of true belief itself and not for profit or power…
For the record, that was on purpose. While I hate religion, I’m less annoyed by it if its simply practiced in private instead of believers using it as a club to bludgeon everyone else with it. Long term though, I believe strict enforcement, along with proper education, can eliminate almost all religion from even the private sphere.
People just need something to believe in. As much as Zoroastrianism isn’t practiced today, so can we eliminate the other big religions in the same way. It’ll just take a little longer
so basically you’re saying that religious organizations can be tax-exempt as long as they cease to be religious. Which, to me, sounds kind of like saying that black people will be tolerated as long as they have a light skin tone.
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And good to see you admit you were wrong on all non profits being tax exempt. They aren’t, as you notice.[/qoute]
I said that non-religious non-profit organizations are not taxed, which is true absent a number of exceptions so small that there’s no point in mentioning them. The point is that the only way that relgious organizations could be taxed is if there were a law specifically saying that religious organizations were to be treated as inferior to comparable non-religious non-profit organzations. That would be discrimination.
It is?
Isn’t that presuming that evangelizing is required for religiosity? That, if something doesn’t evangelize, it’s not religious? Because that seems to be the problem **villa **addresses; he has no problem with (or at least, mentions no problem with) the feeding of the needy, the helping of those requiring aid, the teaching of and responsibility for and care of children - just the evangelizing part. Can’t speak for yourself of course, but were I Christian (or religious in general) I suspect i’d identify the former as more necessary to my religion, than the latter. Perhaps you’d disagree, on behalf of yourself and all other religious people?
Even then, that’s taking a strict view of villa’s words. He says that it shouldn’t be allowed if getting soup requires listening to religious indoctrination. I don’t think i’d use such an emotive word there, but he does says “requires”, which implies that if the religious indoctrination were voluntary, he would be alright with it. Even then, perhaps he isn’t being melodramatic, and actually does mean attempts at indoctrination rather than evangelizing - in which case it seems perfectly reasonable that he wouldn’t want such things happening, either in a soup kitchen or school (or anywhere, really). I suspect he is being melodramatic, but going purely by his words it’s not really sure.
All that taken into account, your “so basically” argument seems like a strawman.
Absolutely…
Soup kitchen where you get yourmeal, and have to sit in a room while Father Mike preaches while you eat, not tax exempt. Soup kiqtchen where you get your tray and are told that you sit in one room to eat, or go into another room to eat and listen to Father Mike preach, tax exempt (though not on the cost of the room where the preaching occurs).
I don’t go as far as some on incidental religion. I don’t think a crucifix on the wall of the soup kitchen should disqualify it from tax exempt status, for example.
More to follow rebutting the persecution fantasies when I get home rather than having to type on my phone…
I assume the first sweeps to force everyone into the secular schools will be raids upon Amish one-room schoolhouses and shuls, and not on Sidwell Friend’s Quaker school where the Obama girls go and/or Catholic schools that have just two religion classes/week like mine did while teaching advanced secular cirricula in others (including evolution), right? And I’m sure the winter homeless shelters, AA meetings, and concerts will also go on for free in the giant office buildings that replace the musty old churches and synagogues who can’t afford their new property taxes. And the millionaires who buy their priceless artwork will of course let you stroll into their houses and look at it, like the thousands who visit St. Patrick’s every year can look at them no matter how little money they have.
Good to see you think religious organizations cannot survive without special legal privileges…
No - I am saying their specifically religious activities should not be tax exempt.
Utter bollocks. Religious organizations would not be taxed for their activities on which non-religious organizations would not be taxed. That’s not discrimination.
Why else do we exempt specific organizations from tax?
I would opine that as long as taking and or passing religious classes was mandatory for graduation, then they are legal. Heck I would have only minor issues with public schools having an option for religious classes as long as they are not mandatory for graduation and were given no more weight or budgetary support than any other elective class.
No, no, no raids will be necessary, just bit of oversight from the district political officer, a bit of neurosurgery on the faculty, and the school can go on as before. Same policy as for the clergy.
I would be willing to bet that they would, but it would be a much bigger deal than it is now. You wouldn’t see people like I all too frequently, renting a small business occupancy, calling it a church, living in an area in the back of said church, and trying to live their lives as much as possible under the umbrella of NPO status.
Opening a church would be little different than any other small biz.
Forget taxing the rich, tax the churches 
Who from the looks of it, do have more money than god.
Well, at least you’re honest.
Well, my own church had to tear down and sell its school and its “air rights” to make vital repairs to its remaining buildings. On the same site that had educated generations of immigrants and slum-dwellers*, the developers built condos that start at $1.5 million. Oh, but it’s OK, everyone is free to visit the Starbucks on the first floor. 
So yeah, there are places that would vanish if the property tax protection was removed. You’re asking inner-city or even rural institutions to compete with the resources of WalMart or Donald Trump or whoever wants to buy the land. Does a place like Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem not pay for itself by attracting tourists and guests to the neighborhood?
I’ve volunteered for the soup kitchen there and all they did was, once about 500 people had gotten their food, we had a moment of silence. That was it. No indoctrination aside from the fact that the folks were in the old auditorium that had been the lower church had a few dusty statues in the corner.
Well, after* Kelo v. New London* pretty much nobody is safe from that even in his own home so it would be tough for many people to weep for the churches.
But yes, unless accompanied by a concerted campaign to drive out religion itself, the proposal would in practice simply finish off the marginal parishes/meetings/congregations while leaving the field to back-porch volunteer-clergy services on the one extreme, and to the already powerful, prosperous and influential congregations able to hire competent tax accountants and lobbyists, on the other.
Based on what happened to both Judaism and Cristianity in Al-Andalus (where anybody who wasn’t a Muslim paid more taxes than those who were), I think you’re wrong in how different the results would be for both faiths.
Religions have survived direct bans, with different degrees of persecution, in many instances. Direct persecution creates martyrs, and thus backlashes.
In any case, count me as another one who doesn’t think you have to use any power you’ve got; I wouldn’t either install a state religion or forbid religion.
I would love to see the abolishion of organized religion because I feel that it does great harm to people, is nothing but superstitions and non facts and feel that it is a racket. It annoys me no end that religious groups like Churches (and Mosques, Temples what have you) that gets a tax exemption, with a lot of so called Protestant “Mega Churches” that are raking in the money with concerts, seminars, performances, gift shops (well, Bookstore and I have seen them in several churches.
The only way that religion can be stomped out is to find a cure for death. Most religious people are religious because they want to please their god(s) and enter Heaven and not go to hell. Death is the greatest fear and it is a healthy fear. It is more comforting to believe in life after death than non existance. I cannot even to begin to wrap my head on non existance.
If I was a dictator, I would simply make religion and religious books like the Bible and the Koran illegal and the churches closed and either destroyed or turned into other uses. Throw the clergymen into prisons, and indoctrinate the people the best way possible of the evils of organized religion and how the Fearless Leader (me) liberted the masses from that superstitious nonsense. I would show films to the young of the nation of people in psychiatric hospitals because they are deranged from religion and hear testimonies from wives, spouses and children of religionists on how they were abused and maligned.
As dictator, I would replace religion with love of the State, the new Social System and Nationalism. I would differ from the Communists and have free reign Capitalism.
Sounds pretty evil and this has been tried in Communist countries and especially in places like Albania in the past and now North Korea. Even in North Korea, there are people of religion, when having a Bible means a trip to a horrid concentration camp with the whole family in tow.
The above about what I would do as a dictator is a fantasy, but I would make religion pay taxes and treat churches like businesses that offer services like any other. The Vatican must love America, all those churches, members and no taxes. I also do believe that religion is a mental illness. If I was the Fearless Leader, Bill Maher would be my Minister of Propaganda.