(December 11, 2014 at 7:28 am)strawdawg Wrote: I think the smaller churches that struggle to pay the light bill should remain tax exempt.I don't see why. I'm all for government not being allowed to suppress religion (within reason; if your religion requires annual sacrifices of virgin girls, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is that way). But neither is it required to guarantee the success of religion any more than it should be required to guarantee the success of any company or any other endeavor. If you can't pay for a plot of land to build your church, the government doesn't buy you one; you're simply out-of-luck until you can scam enough sheep out of their cash.
I mean, if your church is struggling to make ends meet, then maybe that's god's way of telling you that it's time to shut the door. We wouldn't want government fucking up god's plans, would we?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
