I must read The Bible for school!

[cratehorus]

I've been out of work for a year and a half, that sound like a money lover to you. I do like having money to pay bills and buy woodworking tools, a few Rotties and some fishing gear once in a great while.

??? you haven't worked for a year and a half but you have 2 rottweilers, you go fishing, you have a woodworking hobby, and you have enough money leftover to pay your rent and all your bills in full?....... are you living off some kind of pension, or are you just a trust fund baby????

[Godscreated]

You're showing your ignorance, most churches in the U.S. average less than a couple hundred people. My pastor was a nuclear engineer for TVA making an extremely good living. God called him to be a pastor and now makes far less than half of what he would be making, many pastors do not even get payed, what ever comes to them by way of donation is all they receive and work other jobs to support their families, and yes they do have to pay taxes on what the church pays them, so it seems the idiot is in the mirror, if you do not believe me go look.

If you had read what I wrote carefully, you'd have noticed that I extrapolated from the reality I know on this side of the pond.
And all extrapolations are prone to error. So yes, it was blatantly obvious that my argument came from an ignorant background, otherwise, there wouldn't be any need to extrapolate.

A couple hundred people per church is still more than you can find here in this traditional catholic country.

I tried to find some data on how much your pastors get paid.... and look what google gave my in the first hit (click for the full story):
According to the Western Recorder August 3, 2010 issue, the average salary for a full time Southern Baptist Pastor is $55,829; while the average pay package for a full time Southern Baptist pastor is $66,275. I don’t know about you, but these amounts sound insanely high to me.

Well, 50 to 60k is (discounting the conversion rate) about 10x Portugal's minimum wage, where 40% of the population is. So a preacher/pastor here making that kind of money would be obscene.... and IS.

And you said that they pay taxes on what the church pays them. But, if things are similar to here, I doubt they pay taxes on the donations.... and I bet there are quite a few of these.

No one that has a family will quit a well paid job to a far less paid one. It's not only themselves they have to think of.

There are those pastors who minister to mega churches (those having several thousand in attendance) that have salaries that probably exceed $100,000 thousand a year, then there are those who make less than $25,000 to $30,000 a year, not a lot in this country. I do not know of pastors that get donations, they may and because most are honest they pay taxes on donations if they receive any. Only the church is tax exempt, and why because there is a separation of church and state, makes sense doesn't it, no representation no taxes. Churches outside of the Catholic Church are nonprofit. My pastor did, his salary is less than half what it would be, our church would not be able to pay him what he could make as a nuclear engineer.
I'm sorry that the pay in Portugal does not equal that of the U.S., then most places in the world do not and most places in the world do not require one to spend as much as we have to pay for goods here.
Here is a fact for you there are many pastor who live below the poverty line here, and they are some of the happiest people I know, pastors of mega churches live their job 24/7, unless you are involved in their lives you can not imagine the work that the church places on them.

[cratehorus]

you can give whatever excuse you want your a catholic their protestant, or whatever the fact is christians believe the rich are blessed by god and are better people than all poor people

Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel) is a Christian religious doctrine which claims the Bible teaches that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians. The doctrine teaches that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology



and those megachurches make a fuckload more than $100,000 are you fucking kidding?

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who runs Kenneth Copeland Ministries, was one of several televangelists whose finances were investigated from 2007 to 2011 by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa.

According to an article by the Associated Press that ran in 2008, "His ministry's 1,500-acre campus, behind an iron gate a half-hour drive from Fort Worth...includes a church, a private airstrip, a hangar for the ministry's $17.5 million jet and other aircraft, and a $6 million church owned lakefront mansion."

The article later added that while Copeland has not released up-to-date salary statements, "the church disclosed in a property-tax exemption application that his wages were $364,577 in 1995; Copeland's wife, Gloria, earned $292,593. It's not clear whether those figures include other earnings, such as special offerings for guest preaching or book royalties."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19...14043.html

[Ace Otana]

I can look in the mirror everyday knowing that the truth resides in me and I can walk in that truth with confidence.

One word can describe that - Delusional.

So, take your opinion and place it in the trash where it belongs.

My opinion remains the same and it stays where I put it. You're crazy religious beliefs should go in the bin. That's where it belongs.

[Ace Otana]

[Double post.]

[KichigaiNeko]

Thing is Ace G-C is "looking in the mirror and ONLY seeing himself"

Funny how his dislikes are identical to his gods'

---

Egotistical manic is more the title than delusional...but delusional is up there.

[Angrboda]

Thing is Ace G-C is "looking in the mirror and ONLY seeing himself"

Funny how his dislikes are identical to his gods'

In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 1–4). Manipulating people's beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God's beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one's own beliefs and God's beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person's beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God's beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person's beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God's beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one's own existing beliefs.

— (thanks go to Boccaccio for the citation)

---

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
— Susan B. Anthony

“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
— Anne Lamott