RE: Are Nonreligious Organizations Able to Provide the Same Services as Churches?
March 5, 2015 at 11:50 am
(This post was last modified: March 5, 2015 at 11:52 am by Nope.)
(March 5, 2015 at 11:36 am)Rhythm Wrote: You think the government only provides or caters to the poor? I don;t know, I think that you might be looking at a narrow range of services provided as juxtaposed against services you feel that churches provide. Name a service provided by a church, I'll show you the myriad ways our government provides that same service in a variety of ways and with a crippling amount of effort and resources compared to whatever coin a church might throw at the same.
As to social benefits...who builds and maintains community centers, libraries, public parks (or the roads to get to them all....or to get to the churches...).........? This "services rendered" business as a boon for religious organizations is the close cousin of the "religious charities" line of thinking. The truth, plainly, is that secular organizations provide more -of everything- offered by a church (be it service or resource) than churches would even be capable of...and have for some time, often enough, the funds used by religious organizations to offer this or that resource actually came from our secular government or is administered by our secular government in the first place. We (as in we the people) subsidize their services while providing greater and wider services simultaneously through many other channels.
That is an interesting point that I never thought about before.
My friends' churches provide day care so they can get a respite from their children. Do government services provide youth services for teenagers? Do they provide a place for the elderly to come and meet with people of various ages? Is it as easy to get such services through the government as it is through a church? I honestly don't know the answers to these questions as I have never tried to look for such services but I have also never heard of anyone taking advantage of them either.
I think that people would move away from religion if such services were easily available and didn't take a lot of hoops to jump through to use.
(March 5, 2015 at 11:43 am)Rhythm Wrote: They do, though I doubt that overt grift is all that common, though it probably happens here and there.
(80 some odd billion a year, btw, is the tune we're whistling, RE: federal subsidy paid out to religious organizations)
Well, for 80 billion a year, the government itself could provide all the services that churches provide. Wow.
