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Taxed to Support Churches

A new article in PoliticusUSA:

Hidden Tax: US Families Pay an Extra $1,000 per Year to Support Religion

The economic impact on taxpayers is substantial when considering that when churches avoid paying tax, the cost of maintaining roads, police and fire protection, and schools must be made up by everyone else. When the community picks up the tab for a church’s drain on the community, it is a subsidy and in violation of the separation of church and state. It has been estimated that when church and clergy tax-exemptions are taken into account, the average family may pay up to $1,000 in extra taxes every year to make up for the lost revenue because of the church’s tax exemption and it includes sales taxes, inheritance taxes, income taxes, and personal taxes.

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Atheist Culture

I’m going to wade into a subject I’m totally unqualified to discuss: Culture. But hey, it’s me — Well Meaning Doofus. It’s what I do.

I was talking to some Hopi friends in Arizona a while back about Hopi culture. The subject of Native American culture was of great interest to me back when I lived in Flagstaff, possibly because at the time I had so little sense of my own culture. Continue reading “Atheist Culture”

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Ha. Good One.

Cure Faith lists “7 reasons why becoming an atheist sucks.”

Best part is here:

7. You dumb.

You have to admit you were horribly deluded. You might just have to dissect your lost faith inside and out, and maybe start a blog to lure others into the bleak reality you have discovered. What’s worse is that all the faithful are exposed as the infected they have always been. Like waking from your stupor amongst the flesh eating zombie hoard, you are not in a better place!


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Ten Thousand Years of Speed Bumps

I’ve said many times that the cost of religion is something none of us can estimate. Even those of us willing to come out and say we don’t believe it, and perhaps even actively dislike it, usually don’t see it as very damaging.

But ask yourself, anytime a person gets in the news as opposing some aspect of medical science, who is it likely to be? And what source are they using for their opposition?

Right. Religious people, and the Bible. Continue reading “Ten Thousand Years of Speed Bumps”

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God-Goggles. Kinda Like Beer-Goggles, Only Whinier. (video)

New York Mayor Bloomberg successfully resisted pressure from religious groups, and held a secular remembrance for the families of 9/11 victims.

Predictably, the godder reaction was outrage. Failing to invite them is the same as attacking them. According to Richard Land, who leads the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention:

Nobody was turning religious leaders away from the scene 10 years ago. Why are they being banned from the 10th anniversary? The only answer, pure and simple, is anti-religious prejudice. Continue reading “God-Goggles. Kinda Like Beer-Goggles, Only Whinier. (video)”

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Taxing Churches

 

Written by a former minister, and worth a read:

In nearly every city in America, there are giant churches sitting on prime real-estate or agricultural land and they pay absolutely nothing in property tax even though they benefit from taxpayer-funded services like roads, law enforcement, schools, and fire protection. In most cities, when churches sponsor evangelical activities, they demand and receive police officer-assisted traffic control and often block off public streets for their events. Who pays for the police officer’s overtime pay for such events? Taxpayers foot the bill with property and sales tax dollars that they are not exempt from paying because they are not special and are not doing god’s work.

 

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Invasion of the Buddy Snatchers

There’s a parasite that eats crabs from the inside. (I read about it in Carl Zimmer’s excellent Parasite Rex, reissued this year in a 10-year anniversary edition.)

It enters the crab by penetrating a weak spot, then spreads long rootlike tendrils through the crab’s interior. The crab’s immune system fails completely to recognize it, and it soon takes over the hapless crustacean, body and brain. The crab continues to eat, to feed the thing, but it can no longer molt and grow, regrow severed claws, or mate and produce offspring. In time, the parasite produces eggs, and the crab nurtures and spreads them as if they were its own.

It looks like a crab. It moves like a crab. For all I know, it tastes like a crab. But it isn’t a crab. Continue reading “Invasion of the Buddy Snatchers”

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Hey Kids! Free Drugs!

Suppose there was a way to make other people think like you?

Imagine a drug you could hand out that, with regular doses over a period of time, would cause other people to be like you, to agree with you, in most every way. A drug that would cause them to be UNABLE, mostly, to disagree with you.

1) Would you give it to your kids?

2) Would you give it to your friends? Continue reading “Hey Kids! Free Drugs!”

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Catholic Childhood Abuse

Regarding childhood abuse, I think the prevailing attitude toward it is that at some point you should just get over it.

And I agree, mostly. Full-grown adults who talk about their childhood traumas, and never seem to get over them and just move on, well, you get tired of listening, don’t you?

But then again, I can’t help but think of bonsai trees.

Miranda Celeste opens a window into a type of childhood abuse which, because it is so socially acceptable, is often overlooked. Continue reading “Catholic Childhood Abuse”

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American Blood: Why the Atheist Fight is Everybody’s Fight

The story is a month old, so I’m sure you’ve caught the controversy over the mangled-beam cross at the 9/11 memorial site, and the fact that atheists oppose the thing.

You’ve probably also caught the blowback, which includes online death threats to atheists by nice Christians.

Responding to the subject on Facebook, a commenter named Janice D. blamed atheists for the whole thing:

“Yes, the Christians are feeling very threatened in today’s political climate […] Their God IS being kicked out of everywhere in the name of political correctness.”

To which I say … Continue reading “American Blood: Why the Atheist Fight is Everybody’s Fight”