Quote:The reason Churches have a property tax exemption is because they are there to serve the community.

Dear, there are times when you are so engagingly naive!


Churches exist to serve themselves.

Further backed by 
http://www.pnwumc.org/news/how-churches-...eir-money/

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Serve the community my ass

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(January 19, 2018 at 1:30 pm)pool the matey Wrote: If you could make religion illegal, as in, a complete ban on anything and everything that is religious, would you do it or not?
I ask this because a lot of atheists I know think religion is the root of evil. Most of the atheists I know would prefer if religion just disappeared, so I'm guessing they would make it illegal in a heartbeat.

Nahhhh... banning it would only make it seem cool to teenagers.

If we thought religion should be illegal, wouldn't we have started by banning religionist from the atheist forum? Do we have a rule here that makes religion even slightly bannable?

Christian's need to feel persecuted has created yet another imaginary situation.

Yeah sure serving the comunity , maybe monastarys do that but the church , in my country spent half a milion euros to buy a bell. How is that helping the comunity? We have a lot more churches than hospitals ,basically the church is the most profitable and influential institution in Romania. And like every coruptet institution, it is based on nepotism.

(January 19, 2018 at 5:26 pm)paulpablo Wrote: Ok so if it's just a comparison between people who have been brought together with mainly religious motivation to commit organized acts of violence then I'd agree that would be more dangerous than a group of disorganized people, purely because they're more organized and efficient. 

I havent even -begun- to reference "organized acts of violence".   Amusingly, the faithful can band together to do gods work in complete conceptual benevolence..and, predictably, it -amounts- to "organized violence" against whomever their cult declares to be icky.  From the goodness of their hearts, legitimately.  -and that's because god hates sluts and {insert} and {insert} and {insert} and {insert} and {insert} and {insert}..........

Now go and find me some meaningful comparison to secular humanist organizations, on that front?

Quote:The bottom line of my reasoning for wanting to eliminate religion is because I think it's a fictional waste of time.  But it doesn't have anything to do with it being used as a tool to organize military groups that I think have an unreasonable goal.  I think there would be a comparable situation if there were no religion and it was purely secular military groups with unreasonable goals.

Militant groups are the least of my worries, and mostly because even the religious suddenly understand what's wrong with their religion when someone believes it enough to get militant.  True evil is as american and unassuming as apple pie - because it flies under the radar as "piety".  As soon as some nutter breaks the silenty code that no one should get too religious with their religion, I -know- that all I need to do is point and cock my head sideways and the american religious block will gladly sign off on my storming their compound at 0-dark thirty and shooting granny while she sleeps in her bed....and when I'm done they'll thank me for my service. This is a concrete reality.

We don't have a problem assaulting the branch davidian compound.....but we leave the RCC's pedo carousel alone, in fact, we give them billions in religious welfare, because they're "wholesome" - regardless of how many virgins they sacrifice to the volcano.

GJ, us.

I rembered , we had a priest were I live who didn't wanted to play the game of the church. Guess what happened to him? Fired.

(January 19, 2018 at 6:32 pm)Khemikal Wrote:

(January 19, 2018 at 5:26 pm)paulpablo Wrote: Ok so if it's just a comparison between people who have been brought together with mainly religious motivation to commit organized acts of violence then I'd agree that would be more dangerous than a group of disorganized people, purely because they're more organized and efficient. 

I havent even -begun- to reference "organized acts of violence".   Amusingly, the faithful can band together to do gods work in complete conceptual benevolence..and, predictably, it -amounts- to "organized violence" against whomever their cult declares to be icky.  From the goodness of their hearts, legitimately.  -and that's because god hates sluts and {insert} and {insert} and {insert} and {insert} and {insert} and {insert}..........

Now go and find me some meaningful comparison to secular humanist organizations, on that front?  

Again I think the comparison is faulty because you're adding "humanist" in there.  So now the task is not just to find non religious groups for this comparison but they have to be humanist.  If they're humanist then I agree that there probably is no comparable group, but the absence of religion doesn't equate to being humanist necessarily.

A more fair comparison would be between religious groups and people who aren't specifically religious.  Or people who are religious but without it featuring in their activities.  For example I don't think there's an argument for the Italian mafia being violent because of their religion.  Rather they are violent despite their religion. 

I agree that religion can be a tool for organized violence, organized shittiness as you put it previously.  Just not with the comparison laid out between humanist non religious people and violent religious groups.
And I do believe that religion is just one tool that can be used to organize violence, other tools can be comparably effective.