There are some people in this world who make you feel like you're talking to yourself. Lion makes me feel like that for some reason I can't seem to put my finger on...

Lion IRC Wrote:Really really really big churches full of thousands of people talking about bible stuff (feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc. etc.) = tons of money going into collection
bowls to ...feed the hungry, clothe the poor, etc. etc

So, which one of these categories does the preacher's million dollar estate fall under?

The preacher needs a million-dollar estate because God don't deal through no broke ass motherfuckers.

But sure, let's give money to churches so they can fix problems their religions are, in large part, responsible for creating in the first place. They can feed the poor, starving Africans living in the awful, war-torn aftermath of the White Man's Burden, starving children which keep being born because contraception is an affront to God.

Places of worship should exist for two reasons: to give comfort for people who need their superstitions, and to be bled almost dry for taxes to support scientific programs, down to just enough to keep them operational. It'd be the first time, ever, that religion would be directly benefiting mankind.

(August 26, 2012 at 6:41 pm)Faith No More Wrote:

Lion IRC Wrote:Really really really big churches full of thousands of people talking about bible stuff (feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc. etc.) = tons of money going into collection
bowls to ...feed the hungry, clothe the poor, etc. etc

So, which one of these categories does the preacher's million dollar estate fall under?

Clothing greed in false charity? Feeding the morally and intellectually indigent?

I'm going to try another approach, see if Lion acknowledges any of this since so far I've been left out in the cold. By the way, unlike any previous anecdotes I may have recounted, this one genuinely occurred.

Yesterday, my Dad received a 'phone call regarding the RSPCA and would he like to make a donation. I'll spare you the details since it's rather a long and painful story, but the upshot is the bloke on the 'phone doesn't actually work for the charity itself; the RSPCA pays an agency to handle all its call centre work. In other words, 15% (the actual figure quoted in the discussion) of all the money donated to the RSPCA is spent hiring an agency specifically to cold-call people and request donations.

Now that might not seem unreasonable; after all, the RSPCA is still retaining 85% of the donated money, though for what allocated purposes we shall probably never know - admin? Stationery? Advertising? The point remains, however, that the more money donated to the charity by people who expect their money actually to go towards helping endangered animals - you know, the sort of thing the RSPCA is supposed to be doing - the greater the slice that is creamed off by their call centre agency merely to beg more money. I'm no mathematician but even I know that 15% of, say, £1,000,000 represents a far greater wodge of wampum than 15% of £1.

I'm not saying that charities are a Bad Thing and people should not give them any money at all. I'm simply stating that the money and other aid that finally reaches those for whom it's intended and who may depend upon it for their very survival can be a mere fraction of what's left after everyone else along the chain has helped themselves to what they clearly see as their share.

I don't want to sound as impatient as I feel right now but I genuinely do want to see the points in this and my previous few posts addressed. Lion, where art thou?

Quote:Who em I? I'm an naive 15 years old chap from EU,who are you?

Goth by any chance, or just a typically pissed-off 15 year old?.

(August 26, 2012 at 4:08 pm)Lion IRC Wrote: Really really really big churches = tons of money going into collection

Imagine if all those same parishioners weren't pushing their money through a church siphon, but rather giving directly to charities across the globe. No 100million dollar auditoriums. No pastors' exorbitant salaries. No massive air conditioning and utility bills, and bonus ... a billion extra people not wasting time in a church pew week after week. Just imagine the good that could be done if we didn't have billions of religious twits spending time on their knees when they could be actually doing something. Imagine all that money wasted on jesus and his henchmen being used for charity instead of church properties, buildings, cars, bank accounts, and all manner of things completely unnecessary. Wouldn't it be nice to see that fat slob of a preacher go and actually earn a living for a change?

"tons of money into a collection" ... what a fucking joke.

Quote:Sure, you can tax those charitable donations - money given from peoples AFTER TAX INCOME - and guess what that will do.

What a huge steaming cup of butt juice. Offerings in a plate are not a charitable donation in the sense of the term "A Charity."
Bill Gates makes charitable donations and writes them off his taxes. Putting your allotted "first of the fruits" into the offering plate is not considered a donation to a charity, nor do the great majority of christians use their few dollars a week as a write-off on their taxes. Most people like yourself don't even keep track of where the money goes and often have no idea how much actual good it even does. I was a strict baptist of 10 different churches for nearly 20 years ... you can't bull shit me.

You see what you want to see, but the truth is, if all the christards gave 100% of their money to charities and never gave a dime to ancient religious cults such as yours, we would likely have storehouses overflowing with goods and a few extra diseases researched out of existence.

(August 26, 2012 at 4:19 pm)Stimbo Wrote: There are some people in this world who make you feel like you're talking to yourself. Lion makes me feel like that for some reason I can't seem to put my finger on...

Sorry Stimbo.

I have a couple of explanations for not replying earlier but I wont bore you.

Actually, yes I will.

1. Thread split. Lost it for a bit.

2. Reading on a 2” wide screen in a couple of instances, (probably in between commercial breaks.)

3. I don’t actually read every single post. Sometimes it’s deliberate TLDR / NWMT. Sometimes I simply miss the scroll. Sometimes I just don’t have time to read/respond to every single post in the thread even if I wanted to. But also, I often take longer than 24 hours to eventually get around to reading an individual post so please be patient. I dont think you've been kept waiting all that long.

4. If you want me, in particular, to respond, try something like @ Lion or Hey Lion what do you think about…blah blah blah.
I read your post #4 which didn’t even mention me. Neither did your post #6. Or your following post #8 Or the one after that post #20.
Or the one after that #25. And in post #27 you even wrote "…pay no attention to me.” Who were you talking to?
Furthermore, when you use the word Luddite and I have absolutely no reason to think you are talking about me, why would I feel the need to respond?
In any case, there’s nothing Luddite about wanting to deal with “ the terrible plight of these poor people… the poorest people in the world… all the innocent and hurting people’’ whose pictures you agree are emotionally charged. (Those emotions are called empathy, guilt, sorrow. Nothing Luddite about that PAL!)

There’s a few contradictions in your posts. Lets start with this. You ask of Hollywood, how many bellies do you reckon could be filled with those sort of budgets? (An admission that many bellies could.) But then you say …”the money that put the Eagle on the Moon was spent here, on Earth, where it got recycled into the economy.’’ Can’t Hollywood use your faulty attempt at a trickle down economic argument too?

No they can’t. Because of another in economics.

---

BTW - I'm totally cool with people posting "show-off" stuff as fodder for like-minded thinkers in order to gain more in-group respect
...if thats what they want to do.

Theres an atheist guy on another forum I visit who posts excruciatingly long screeds of hyperbole, way out of proportion to the short and simple one-liner by the theist to whom he is supposedly replying.

He might like reading his own prolix and revelling the atheist applause but after you've seen the same 1000 word post over and over again - even written 15 different ways - it's just a wall of noise.

Thanks for acknowledging, finally. I recognise it might not have been personal but it can come across as being ignored. My posts may not have mentioned you by name, and I understand your not wanting to pore through every post word for word; though I would have thought you'd want to follow a thread which you yourself began (well, hijacked, but let's not dwell on the past). However even a brief glance as others managed to do should have told you I was referring to points which you raised. Still, no real harm done.

I think you're confusing some of the points I was trying to raise, however unintentionally or otherwise. For instance, my use of the word Luddite had, clearly and unambiguously, nothing to do with dealing with the plight of the world's poorest people and everything to do with the attitude, as I perceived it, of wanting to end space exploration in order to redirect the funds in that way. That's sort of what the name Luddite means; a person who sees technology as a dehumanising threat and thus wishes to destroy it. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in the circumstances but it does seem to me that you may be intentionally misunderstanding my words, if not actively distorting their meaning in context. If so, please refrain from doing this. I for one do not take too kindly to such dishinest people and I know others are of similar opinion in that regard.

Next: when I brought up Hollywood's titanic budgets and asked how many people could be fed by such, I was simply trying to make the point that many millions of various currencies are spent on all sorts of things every day. I wasn't asking it of Hollywood; I was asking it of you. It seems rather ridiculous and quite hypocritical to object to funding for space exploration when it represents a tiny fraction of the amount spent in these other areas, yet make no mention of objection to any of such funding. As I pointed out, supported in diagrammatic form (bottom half of post #20), NASA's budget represents a mere fraction of the USA's annual spending and it's only been lessened over recent years. I simply asked why you weren't directing your quite legitimate protests towards the major offenders.

Finally, when I wrote about paying me no attention, I wasn't talking to you but responding to Homo Sapien's rather bleak view on humanity's future, to which I was rather curt and thus apologising for the attitude I took. I rather suspect you know this already, since you chose to quote only the part of my words that suited your purpose. Please do not do this again; it is deliberately misquoting and against forum guidelines, viz.:

Quote:3. Quoting Others Accurately.
When using the quote function to quote other members, you may quote in whole or in part, but do not change the quoted text in any way. Breaking this rule will result in staff intervention. Depending on the circumstances surrounding the misquote(s), you may be warned or banned. Adding to the quoted text for clarification (ie. bolding, numbering, italics, etc.) is okay provided you indicate that the bolding and/or italics are yours and not the quoted member's and provided it doesn't change the meaning of the quoted text.

Regardless, since you seem confused about what I wrote and the context of its meaning, I suggest you go back and re-read my words. I prophesy you won't do so, though.

(August 26, 2012 at 6:41 pm)Faith No More Wrote:

Lion IRC Wrote:Really really really big churches full of thousands of people talking about bible stuff (feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc. etc.)

So, which one of these categories does the preacher's million dollar estate fall under?

Well, the poor preacher has to eat something too, bet he's really hungry after all that money collection and worshiping..