(August 30, 2012 at 9:19 pm)Undeceived Wrote: So you think nonprofits should pay taxes? People in the church already pay taxes. You want their freely-pooled money split to the government a second time?
The problem is what defines a nonprofit. I'll be honest, I don't see many secular charity organizations' members wearing gators and lizardskin shoes or finely-tailored suits all that much...and even the few that wear somewhat decent clothing often do so because of outside financing eg. their own personal income from another line of work. The problem is that a lot of heads of churches use the donated money for their own personal gain; megachurches come to mind. I've seen more than a few BMWs being driven by pastors who have no other line of work.
Of course, religion individuals will always claim that their faith is "necessary," and I will agree, in the same way that a meth-junky finds meth to be necessary.. It's only necessary in your mind but your life will continue just fine and in all likelihood will be better without it. It's a crutch, not unlike how a drug is a crutch, something to make you feel better, to fill a void that you can fill with far more productive things. If all the religious individuals in the world spent half the time they waste worshiping on something like actual charity work like directly feeding the homeless in their communities...or maybe working cooperatively on scientific pursuits in, say, agriculture, to find ways of growing crops more efficiently to minimize the costs of food further, to make it more affordable, or to grow fundamental crops in regions they cannot otherwise grow easily, or ways to easily provide water to regions that have no running water, or ways of getting people into space to carry out more research that can lead the way to greater technological breakthroughs, or working on cures for debilitating, currently incurable diseases.
If you guys spent half the time you WASTE praying instead on this stuff the entire world would be accelerating almost lightspeed-levels faster in development. But no. You will claim that your religions are essential as food and water, wasting your time, on fictitious claims, you will waste your time defending that which is fundamentally indefensible, you will fritter your precious limited lives away on begging a nonexistent deity to aid you when you could instead aid yourself and those around you.
*snorts*
