Heh. In the '30s, long before I was born, my Jewish aunt married a Catholic. For many that might have been scandalous, but my grandfather didn’t mind because my new uncle believed in the important thing - the Brooklyn Dodgers.
I’m pretty sure my grandfather was an atheist, but he died in 1964 long before that was a position anyone but a rabble rouser admitted to.
When we push through a change to the Pledge of Allegiance to say “one nation, under no god,” get back to us. Or when politicians say “no god bless America.” Or when wacko atheist preachers infest parks and college campuses.
To be sure, those fighting hard against “atheist” evolution and “atheist” science don’t want to put up with us. Though it is not atheism they object to as much as rationality.
Being Jewish, my ancestors had a long history of not being put up with by Christians. I grew up in a mostly Jewish neighborhood so I didn’t feel it, but I know someone who was the only or one of a very few Jewish families in a little town in California, and she sure felt not put up with.
But at least atheists don’t get burned for being atheist any more. In the West at least.
Because we pay for all your tax breaks?
what tax breaks?
Charitable contributions? Atheists can make them also.
The billions of dollars worth or real estate owned by various churches that pay no property tax while absorbing far more than their share of serviices.
Originally the Pledge of Allegiance did not mention God at all. The original text of our current version (circa 1942) was “one nation, indivisible” with no “under God”. The God phrase was added in 1954. The motivation shouldn’t be surprisingly, as President Eisenhower was in favor of it and said:
From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty… In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.
Yep, no religious motivation there… 
[/sarcasm]
I’m well aware of that, which is why I put in “under no god” and didn’t just omit mention of god. I wanted a version that was pushy. I don’t consider omitting all mentions of all the various gods out there as being pushy, though I’m aware some Christians disagree.
But probably zero Jews. And zero deists, to be fair.
Exactly. The last time I saw the numbers, it was $93 billion in lost property tax. WaPo says $82.5 billion in 2013.
Schools dont pay taxes , nor do parks. And that is such a tiny amount.
We all use and benefit from those, both as individuals and a society.
We don’t all benefit from whatever it is that others derive from their religion.
No, that is the figure if churches were taxed on their income. But of course if they were, we’d all have to pay taxes on gifts received. When your parents were sending you to that expensive college, you’d have to pay income taxes on their support. Not to mention, of course churches have expenses, and dont earn much in the way of profits- much like many large US corps. So, pretty much, even if churches were taxed on contributions received- (which again, would make all gifts taxable) they wouldnt pay much tax on their net. The people who write that study (who are Secular Humanists, do note) dont seem to understand net vs gross and how taxes on businesses work. 60 Fortune 500 companies paid no Corp income taxes.
60 Fortune 500 Companies Avoided All Federal Income Tax in 2018 Under New Tax Law – ITEP.
There are tax exempt hospitals corporations that clear tens of millions of dollars in margins and pay no income tax on those margins and pay no property taxes for their considerable land holdings…same with colleges. Should we tax them also?
The property tax exemption is small, since "State and local governments collected a combined $526 billion in revenue from property taxes,…"https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/projects/state-and-local-backgrounders/property-taxes
If you dont go to a church- you dont benefit from it- much. Of course many poor people do, which means that helps everyone.
If I dont go to a park, do I benefit from it? No. I dont have kids, why do I benefit from schools?
I do not understand this. Culturally Muslims in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan … have been saying “Khuda Hafiz” (meaning goodbye) for centuries but recently (past 10 years or so) it has been changed to “Allah Hafiz”. If old culture drives these phrases, then how do you explain this change ?
Mangled the formatting
No, that is false;
Last summer, several newspapers, blogs, etc. picked up on this article written by Dr. Ryan T. Cragun and two of his students, estimating that tax breaks for churches and other religious organizations cost government $71 billion per year, and like many other crazy things on the web, this doesn’t seem to want to go away.
Simply put, the $71 billion number has some very serious problems.
Dr. Cragun gets $35 billion of his $71 billion number by taking the estimated donations to churches from a 2009 survey by Giving USA of $100 billion, and applying the 35% corporate tax rate to that. But anyone with even a smidgen of knowledge about tax law knows this isn’t the way it works. We don’t have a tax on GROSS INCOME; rather, the tax is on net income.
If churches were treated as taxpaying businesses, then they also would get to deduct their operating expenses and depreciation from their gross revenue in order to reach a taxable income number. Because churches don’t have to file a Form 990 or any other financial report, no one really knows what their “net profits” are, but I can verify that the several Catholic parishes I have belonged to during my life have had essentially zero net profits: they spent almost all their revenues on operating expenses, except for the occasional capital improvement (a new parish center or church renovation) which would produce depreciation deductions over time. In other words, churches wouldn’t have $100 billion of taxable income; their “profit” after operating expenses probably is close to zero in most cases. … But let’s assume I’m wrong, and churches have pre-tax profits equal to, say, the average pre-tax profit margin of the S&P 500 for the past twelve years. That pre-tax margin appears to be something like 9.2% … But let’s be generous and round that number up to a 10% pre-tax margin. Now you’re talking about net profits of $10 billion, not $100 billion, and Dr. Cragan’s $35 billion subsidy suddenly becomes $3.5 billion.
But even that is wrong. Under current law, donations to churches probably wouldn’t be income even absent tax exemption, since donations likely would be considered gifts under Section 102, which are excluded from the income of the recipient (Section 102 applies to all taxpayers, not just charities). So unless Dr. Cragun is suggesting that we should repeal Section 102, his actual subsidy number is now zero. …
So now we’ve whittled Dr. Cragun’s subsidy number down to $30 billion. But that’s still pretty large. What about the rest of it? Well, the largest chunk of what’s left is his estimate of a $26 billion loss via property tax exemption.
That cite goes on to debunk even that $26B property tax figure.
You do realize that Khuda Hafiz means God Protect You? Khuda being the Urdu/Persian word for God and Hafiz being the Arabic word for protection.
Regardless, I was very clear that some uses are meant to signal religion - like Have a Blessed Day. Insha’Allah, of course has been around forever, even in the Indian subcontinent. Probably Allah Hafiz is a “I’m holier than thou” change, but the meaning the saying hasn’t actually changed.
So, what is worse? A College professor who doesnt know the difference between Gross and Net Taxable income- or a College professor who does know the difference but lied his ass off on a 'study" he published to prove his Secular Humanist point of view? Since we have seen poster after poster on this SDMB that do not understand that and dont understand marginal tax rates, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume ignorance.
Exactly. It was previously claimed that these phrases are used because of thousands of years of culture behind them. But admittedly here you are saying it is not always so - which goes back to @Eonwe ‘s point “ cultural tics and traditions are in fact powerful ways that societies maintain the status quo.”
It’s not about the meaning of the phrases but the religious connotations they carry.
I literally said that some of the phrases are intentionally religious. But it seems like you’d rather make your point that I’m completely mistaken as opposed to reading my post.
You still completely ignored Insha’Allah, which is what I literally stated was due to Islamic cultural dominance in favor of Allah Hafiz which I never addressed at all (think of it as under the Have a Blessed Day in my original post). Will you say that you were incorrect on Insha’Allah and perhaps admit that a lot of these phrases are due to religion being culturally dominant as per Shakespeare being culturally dominant.
The blogger on that site whom you’ve quoted says
So granted the high number was wrong, it’s still fantastically high. And it only includes church/mosque/temple real estate property, no other religious-owned property.
And they pay no capital gains tax either. And no sales tax. And no corporate income tax.