(November 1, 2023 at 5:17 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote:

(November 1, 2023 at 5:02 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: (Bold mine)

I’ll give you any odds you like that it won’t be.

Boru

Would you call Sai Baba's religious organization nonharmful just because they have food pantries?

I wasn't saying any religious organization is harmless if it runs a food pantry. I was pointing out that not everything religious organizations do are harmful.

I'd make a modification to the claim. It's not the case that every thing done by religious organizations is harmful, but it is the case that everything done by -theistic- religious organizations is harmful. Often, when we comment on the folly or misdeed of religion, we are actually commenting on a specific theistic religions misdeeds and folly.

(November 1, 2023 at 6:57 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(November 1, 2023 at 6:42 pm)Angrboda Wrote: It doesn't matter.  He won't answer the hypothetical, for Reasons[tm].

Angr, I -have- answered the hypothetical.  Even when it looks, especially from the view of a hungry person, that religious charities and direct food charities are a good thing.  Objectively speaking and by the numbers - they are not.  They actually exacerbate hunger and poverty.  I do not want it to be this way, I have worked for years in this sector not because I thought it was this way....this is just me, as I said, spilling the beans about organizations that give away beans.

Want to change it?  Don't give a food pantry canned goods.  Give it cash money to build a walk in.  Even the charities themselves are better served by cash infusion.  You'll still be a part of the perpetuation of the problem, but you'd at least be closer to doing whatever you think religious food pantries are doing.

No, you haven't. You keep talking about consequences that are tangential to satisfying the man's hunger even after having been reminded that the hypothetical calls for excluding those consequences. You simply doubled down on your patently defective answer. And I don't really care why. You do this over and over and over again. You get off on an irrelevant tangent in a discussion and no amount of trying to get you back on track will sway you from your course. Are you this bad at listening to your wife? I have my suspicions.

(November 1, 2023 at 6:57 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(November 1, 2023 at 6:42 pm)Angrboda Wrote: It doesn't matter.  He won't answer the hypothetical, for Reasons[tm].

Angr, I -have- answered the hypothetical.  Even when it looks, especially from the view of a hungry person, that religious charities and direct food charities are a good thing.  Objectively speaking and by the numbers - they are not.  They actually exacerbate hunger and poverty.  I do not want it to be this way, I have worked for years in this sector not because I thought it was this way....this is just me, as I said, spilling the beans about organizations that give away beans.

Want to change it?  Don't give a food pantry canned goods.  Give it cash money to build a walk in.  Even the charities themselves are better served by cash infusion.  You'll still be a part of the perpetuation of the problem, but you'd at least be closer to doing whatever you think religious food pantries are doing.

They exacerbate hunger and poverty......by giving away food for free? I'm not following your logic on this.

I know right? Yet..that's exactly how it plays out. Impossible problems, ludicrous solutions. The hungriest and poorest people in the world work in food production. Discuss.

(November 1, 2023 at 7:06 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: They don't have to be.  Some of the shadiest shit ever done has been done by cute old grannies who bake apple pies between fucking people.

Food banks and direct food aid are strongly correlated with continued food insecurity.  Discuss.

Why discuss that? I'm pointing out that to support his argument that nothing good comes from religion, he's deploying an obvious bullshit argument. He'd rather do that than admit that religions may do good things at times.

Be it noted that I am not saying religions are a net positive, just to burn that strawman while it's still just a pile of hay. Read the exchange again.

Yeah I get that, I also think that at least some religions are a net positive. Just not the ones running pantries and kitchens at present. The reality of the charitable food space is a fucking horror show, at present. Not just because it's filled with dominionist pieces of shit, but because it's also filled with Not That™ that hasn't yet learned a crucial and objective lesson. That as immediately satisfying as all of their work is....and it is...it's not helping, it's making things worse.

The people who, ultimately, send folks to a food pantry's way will not stop until the same people at the pantry pick up torches and burn those facilities down. The charitable food space actually already knows this, already feels this in their own operations, and does not have the resources available to change the script. 60 billion usd a year might help......

-but that's earmarked for religions.....so I'm not interested in entertaining fucking christianity as a net positive. It's not. Christianity holds us hostage to the problems it purports to solve....for profit.

(November 1, 2023 at 7:23 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Yeah I get that, I also think that at least some religions are a net positive.  Just not the ones running pantries and kitchens at present.

So uh......is Islam a net positive, then?

It's a good thing I have a therapy appointment Friday. Thanks to Nudger, I now know that I harmed myself by eating dinner.

(November 1, 2023 at 7:25 pm)Ahriman Wrote:

(November 1, 2023 at 7:23 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Yeah I get that, I also think that at least some religions are a net positive.  Just not the ones running pantries and kitchens at present.

So uh......is Islam a net positive, then?

Nope, yet another abrahamic.  A problem for all of the same reasons as any other.

(November 1, 2023 at 7:29 pm)Angrboda Wrote: It's a good thing I have a therapy appointment Friday.  Thanks to Nudger, I now know that I harmed myself by eating dinner.

You have no idea, lol.  I'm a dinner focused guy who thought "fuck it, lets solve the simple problem of dinner" because I had been so effected by the hungry I'd met as a member of the us armed forces.  Turns out, the problem is more subtle than I imagined at the outset.  Yes, chances are, you have acted against your own interests by eating whatever you ate for dinner.  Shouldn't be that way.  Absurd world, ludicrous solutions.

So, again, to push a point, religious food charities are not a net positive.  I'm not sure they're even a local and immediate positive.  In most cases, as far as I can tell, they're the opposite of that, as many of my own intuitive ideas about how to solve hunger were the opposite of the actual solution to hunger. They are certainly not, if they're any other thing, excuses for the specific religions actions as a good act. They're not good acts. As I mentioned before, christian charity isn't even in the wheelhouse of a good act (and, most often isn't even even the wheelhouse of charity....). Not in the wheelhouse of good, literally cannot solve the issue. What's left? Gotcha answered. Yes, there -is- a problem with christian charity feeding the hungry. Obviously. Manifestly. Objectively. Undeniably.

It's still not handled and they've been around for what 2k years.....?