That’s a false dilemma; there are secular charities, and the government can help people directly. The only reason for the focus on faith based “charities” is because the point of this program is to funnel money to believers, to chip holes in the separation of church and state. It has nothing to do with any desire to help people.
Because giving to charity is the subject of the thread, more or less.
Speaking of things that are false…Ahem!
If they actually cared about helping people, they’d just use secular charities or direct aid from the government, and therefore completely sidestep church and state issues. The reason for insisting that faith based “charities” get government money is to funnel government money to religious organizations. And the believers want the money so they can push their delusions, not because they actually care about helping people. Caring about helping people requires that they actually care about people and not the imaginary welfare of their imaginary souls. Actual charity is antithetical to religion, or close to it, because actual charity requires that you care about the welfare of actual people, not the welfare of self indulgent fantasies.
Would you care to provide any evidence that anything you say is true?
Direct aid steers too close to socialism. It wouldn’t fly politically.
I agree that would be the better solution, but I don’t think we’ll see Obama go too liberal on any issues. So far he has proven astute at coming up with the best ideas that both conservatives and liberals will swallow.
If for no other reason, because the charities already have the infrastructure set up so that the additional money goes to supporting the work of the charity. If the government set up an agency itself, a lot of money would go to setting it up.
Also, with a charity, in addition to receiving government funds, it can also receive private donations, so the government only has to fund part of it. Put these two things together, and that makes it cheaper for the government to fund existing charities than to set up its own organization.
Yes, but only on the part of the culture it’s immersed in, not the organization itself:
[
](International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement - Wikipedia)
It seems to me that if you cared about helping people, you wouldn’t begrudge a homeless man getting a meal just because the hand that delivers his food belongs to a person of faith.
When it hands out food on one hand and, for example, spread lies that encourage the spread of AIDS with the other hand, yes I begrudge it. A few soup kitchens won’t make up for the immense harm religion does.
And once again, you are attempting to create a false dilemma; religion simply isn’t necessary for that food to be distributed in the first place; secular organizations could do so instead, without the destructive effects of religion. It’s simply trying o latch on that charity like the parasite it is.
Not to mention that religious charities are often used to working with a shoestring budget. At the risk of raising the hackles of certain posters, I suggest that this may be partially because the volunteers within these organizations are religiously motivated. That’s not to say that there are no secular charities that don’t operate with similar frugality; rather, it’s just that most religious charities are very frugal indeed.
Do you really want to trust the US government to use funds efficiently? Not gonna happen anytime soon.
What if we make them pinky swear that they won’t spread those lies? Can they feed the hungry then?
It’s true, religion isn’t necessary to help the needy. They just happen to be doing a lot of it. Maybe you can convince the homeless that it’s better to go hungry and sleep outside than to be exposed to the evil of religion.
So even though they have repeatedly demonstrated with their actions that they truly care about the practical physical welfare of the people they help , you’re certain they really don’t and it’s just a ploy used too spread their lies. Tell me again how you’re not paranoid.
You might think differently if you were a hungry child at a soup kitchen.
http://www.cultnews.com/archives/000322.html Scientology has charities. We can be suspicious of their motives. They are recruiting. You can easily see it when it is a less respected religion. If you are outside the religion you see it more clearly.
Catholic charities are doing it for the same reason. Some of the people working for the charities may be more altruistic. But,the church is a business competing for membership.
With F-BIs, the money passes from the taxpayers to the government to the charities to the persons needing relief. Why are the charities a necessary step in that chain? Is that more efficient?
ABSOLUTELY.
You’re acting as though a comparable percentage of the funds is lost at each step of the process. That’s simply not the case. Thanks to the F-BIs, the charities get to spend the funds (within limits imposed by this program, of course). Without the charities, the government would either have to use existing agencies to spend the funds or form some entirely new agencies to do so.
The US government is notoriously slow and inefficient. Religious charities can spend the money more frugally and efficiently, and they can produce more rapid results. There’s a reason why people cringe at government bureaucracy, y’know.
Part of the problem is that you’re thinking of the government as some monolithic entity. It is not. Rather, without the charities in place, the funds would have to pass from the moneyholders in government to some lower-ranked agency. In other words, you don’t reduce the number of steps involved simply by removing charities from the equation. Rather, you replace one step (government coffers -> charities) with a less efficient step (government coffers -> specific government agencies).
And you might think otherwise if you were dying because the local missionary lied to you about AIDS and condoms.
Why would I believe them ? They wouldn’t hesitate to lie if it helped spread their religion. Lie, or cheat, or steal, or threaten , or worse.
Ah, yes, the charming practice of sermonizing at what amounts to gunpoint. Which I’m supposed to admire them for.
But they’ve demonstrated the exact opposite.
Because they’ve been told to o often by the Right that they believe it. Do you have any actual reason to assume that a religious bureaucracy is better than a government one ? And is it the kind of “efficiency” that the Catholic Church got with it’s schools by paying the nuns so little they ended up subsisting on dog food ?
And while we are speaking of reputations, religions have a history of diverting funds towards the leadership or into pushing their beliefs, even when doing so was fatal to those they were supposedly “helping”.
I’m afraid secular charities might lie as well, and funnel the money to administrators and other bad stuff. Better to not have charities at all. The risk is too great.
They have guns?? Really? No wonder you don’t like them.
They have? They didn’t actually feed the hungry, and provide needed services to the needy, for decades? I’d better tell the volunteers at the soup kitchen. They actually think they’re doing it. The fools.
Hey!! It works for China.
Yes, but they are less likely to.
Don’t distort what I said. I said “what amounts to gunpoint” in the very passage you quoted.
When they had no other option.
Actually feed the hungry?
I thought having guns amounted to gunpoint,
Well. I suppose we could let the needy decide how needy they are and whether the potential danger of someone saying Amen or praise Jesus, Allah, Krishna, is too much to risk for food , clothes , and shelter. Nahhhhhhhh!
I’m sorry, what does volunteer mean again?