First, you have admitted to being a socialist, so I do not know why you would object to the reference. (I never used the term "leftist") I have used the term liberal, which I do not think you should find inaccurate. And yes, some of the programs created and/or supported by the current democratic party are socialist in nature. They depend on a highly progressive tax system and distribution programs that lock the recipients in. It also makes them bound to inefficiency and eventual failure as historical attempt of socialism have always eventually failed.
You're correct, I am a proud capital "S" socialist, and I did not object to your use of the word, but it appears to come from your political ideological perspective, not a religious one .. which is what I said. And yes, liberals do believe in helping the poor and providing more than stop-gap assistance for our fellow Anmericans when they need it and qualify for it. I find it real strange that the non-religious person, me, is arguing with the religious one, you, over how much we should help the poor and address the issue of poverty in our country. Underneath that label of poverty, there are millions of American children. It demonstrates that one does not need religion for compassion or spirituality, and it demonstrates why I don't care much for religion. I'd venture to say it demonstrates why a lot of people don't care about religion and why it is a shrinking force in America.
I agree that the government reaches more people, but that is due to having pockets well over ten times as deep. Couple that with the fact you refuse to acknowledge the numbers of people helped on a daily basis by missions, homeless shelters, youth help centers, etc, the majority of which are run by churches. The result is the disparity between religious charitable work and government charitable work is not as wide as you pretend it is.
I've acknowledged the good work that many churches do, as well as acknowledged the evil work that many churches do. Something you don't seem to want to deal with. And, as I've said, much of the funding that churches are using to provide stop-gap assistance comes from US taxpayers .. thus, taxpayers, the government, and the law have every right, duty, and responsibility to monitor how that money is spent .. and if a church wants to have tax-exempt status it should be able to prove they operate within the law. I've also acknowledged that government assistance could be better, but it is the only entity between life and death for many families AND CHILDREN. I suggest that religion is not as charitable as you pretend.
You have made a number of statements which indicate to me a strong antipathy for organized religion. I say this because I have heard very similar statements from others who admit an antipathy toward religion. If I am in error, I apologize.
No need for an apology my brother because I do indeed have much antipathy for organized religion. I find the hypocrisy astounding and I believe in science, mathematics, and spirituality.
But then again, one of your primary excuses for removing tax exempt status from religious groups is because of those you call religious pimps. (Not a bad description either, I must admit.) But the end result is you are proposing an action against a whole due to the actions of a minority.
This is the source of our disconnect. I do not propose, nor do I offer, any sweeping condemnation of all religious groups, nor in fact, any religious groups. I believe tax-exempt status should be granted on an individual basis and religious groups who prove themselves to be operationg within the law and fulfilling their responsibility as a charitable organization, should not be punished for the evil some do. However, those who do not meet this criteria should not get the benefit of tax-exemption and when they operate outside of the law, they should be prosecuted .. ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS.
The research comes from items I have read, not online. I will give a reasonable (but admittedly not concentrated) effort to find the information in online sources. If I do, I'll post it. If not, oh, well. You have made a number of claims without backup also.
Fair enough.
I stated that MOST members of the NRA are honest professionals. Like any group, there are gonna be the wackos who take it beyond the extreme. Timothy McVeigh was one person, and there are probably a couple thousand others who, while not as bad as McVeigh, silently agree with his actions. There are several million members of the NRA. The wackos are a small minority.
I'd agree with this as well, however, guns do the American society no favor, and I've always found it strange that people who promote religion also argue the cult of gunlove.
Ditto the religious pimps. There are millions of churches in the U.S. with several million individuals who lead them. And you have a few thousand charismatic "pimps" as you call them. Again, a small minority. FLDS was at maximum around 10,000 members, and even at that it was mostly the leadership involved with the nasty stuff. So a couple tens of thousands of baddies out of a couple million? A small minority of the whole.
I agree, but society, particularly the society of children, has to be protected from the nasties and the pimps. This goes to removing the religious cloak of invisibility that led you and I into this discussion. As a society, is it not our duty and responsibility to protect children from evil no matter what disguise that evil wears? As a man, I'd extend that protection to women as well (hope I don't offend any sister here who feels they don't need protection). Is it not our responsibility to root out the wolves who victimize innocent people? Criminals are a minority of our society, but their small numbers still does not detract from our need to be vigilant and protect society from them. The very same is true of religion. There are relatively few catholic priests who victimize their flock, but there still needs to be measures to protect against those who do.
Yet you have repeatedly come out with statements that most readers would interpret as blanket condemnation of the group. (Especially when you refer to the NRA.) Are you really going to defend the practice of condemning a group, just because you disagree with their belief, for the actions of a small percentage of that group? Your statement relating to the NRA are also very telling.
Blanket condemnation is not what I offer .. realism is. I challenged the notion that the NRA was made up exclusively of honest professionals, as I challenge the notion that religion is made up of honest preachers exclusively. Neither of those notions are true and I've demonstrated that truth. Any serious view of the NRA, religion, politicians, or anyother group must deal with the reality, not preconcieved misconceptions.
Are you unaware that it is still illegal for Native Americans to hold the Sun dance ceremony: a religious ceremony which celebrates the spring equinox? Blackfeet were arrested as late as the 1960s for practicing some of their ceremonies. The laws forbidding their practice may still be on the books, but does not matter because no living blackfoot remembers the ceremonies. That is religious persecution.
I am part Ogala and I have attended Pow-Wows most of my adult life. Many tribes have resurrected the Sun Dance rituals, but without the self-inflicted pain and abuse which caused them to be outlawed in the first place. Something I agree with by the way. Again, religion does not operate outside the law and does not supercede it, nor should it. This is also true of the practice of Santeria and other forms of religion. America is a seciular society and all religion must be practiced under the law. Citzens cannot be allowed to do any damn thing they please and call it religion. In America, you can believe in Satan if you want as long as you practice that belief under the law.
Do you also believe that those who practice Satanism and ritual rape should be exempt from the law?
The LDS church, (the orginal, not the FLDS) also practiced polygamy, but not with young children. Marriages in the 1840s did include 15 and 16 year olds (both male and female) but that was common practice throughout society, not limited to the LDS church. The LDS church was ordered EXTERMINATED by the governor of Missouri just prior to their exodus to Utah. I'd call that persecution.
Once in Utah they were forced to give up their practice of polygamy as a compromise to allow Utah to become a state. There are many polygamous religions throughout the world, but practitioners of those religions cannot observe that tenent of their religion as U.S. citizens. Care to name the practical, secular reason (ie: protects individuals from harm) that a religion which believes in the practice of polygamy should not be allowed to do so? If not, then the ban is religious persecution when dealing with polygamous religions. It is also SUPPOSED to be unconstitutional. But it's funny how we ignore that document when it suits our purpose.
Pologamy is against the law in the US and if exemptions were allowed for religion to practice whatever they chose to practice even though its against the law, the law would be unenforceable. There should not be ANY, not one single exemption from the law for religion than there is for anybody else. Not one. If it's OK for religion to do it .. why not for everybody else. polygamy leads to a myriad of societal problems, especially for the children of such arrangements who often become wards of the state. Can you imagine the problems this nation would be facing if polygamy was allowed to be widespread? American children face enough problems already without having to deal with multiple sister-mothers.
My opinion is that there is nothing "religious" about polygamy. It's simply a way for men, who devised the religion in the first place, to take greater advantage of women, and in many cases children .. as evidenced by what we see before us this very day.
That's not persecution .. that's the sign of a mature society.
As for the Constitution .. we are talking about the same document that declares I am 3/5ths of a human are we not? Point being, the Constitution is a living document and was designed to be a living document. There are a plethora of modern day issues for a modern-day society that have no mention in the Constitution .. as well as things that are mentioned in the Constitution, no longer have the same status and/or makeup .. like me .. and women .. and the church.
Additonally, the Constitution is interpretive and meaning can be derived that is based on ideology. The Supreme Court exists to interpret the Constitution, and ideological interpretation is why the make-up of the court is so important.
Thomas Jefferson insisted on freedom of, AND FROM, religion .. and he also believed that freedom from corporations is a basic human right .. something your side of the political fence ignores. Corporations are not people .. nor is the church.
Mitt Romeny was attacked repeatedly in the main stream media, much of it coming from the so-called "party of tolerance" for the unforgivable transgression of being LDS. That is religious persecution of an individual.
Again, your ideological perspective makes you blind my brother. Romney ran as a republican, not a democrat .. and he was rejected by republicans, not democrats. In fact, it was the religious leaders on your side of the fence who rejected him and called Mormanism "evil." YOUR SIDE of the fence attacked him for his religious transgressions. The left didn't have to do or say anything.
Let me ask you this ..Mormons didn't believe that blacks were human until 1969.
Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African Race? If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.
--- Brigham Young
"Those who were less valiant in the pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed upon them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God and his murder of Abel being a black skin.... Noah's son Ham married Egyptus, a descendant of Cain, thus preserving the negro lineage through the flood....The negroes are not equal with other races when the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, particularly the priesthood and the temple blessings that flow therefrom, but this inequality is not of man's origin. It is the Lord's doing, based on His eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate.
--- Mormon leader Bruce R. McConkie writes in Mormon Doctrine, 1958
You're talking to the wrong person about the wonders of Mormonism.
In the first place, according to the very specific wording of the first amendment, religion DOES supercede secular law if that law is in conflict with an established religious practice, as long as that religious practice does no harm to the practitioners, nor others. The FLDS were harming their children in their practice of polygamy, thus putting them in the wrong and justly subject to prosecution under secular law. But if a religious practice does no demonstrable harm, then banning that practice is religious persecution. The example of banning polygamy even when dealing with polygamous religions is an example of modern religious persecution.
Again, you're interpreting the Constitution to suit your political ideology, but nowhere has the Supreme Court allowed religion to be above the law and that was NOT the intention of the framers. The LGS women are screaming "persecution" and comparing themselves to the Jews of the Holocaust. They aren't being persecuted, they want exemption from the law, which seems to be what you believe. I gotta be honest with you my brother ..that's bullshit and religion, which is completely man-made, does not, will not, nor should it EVER be above the law. On what basis should such holiness be granted?
Non-religious are population is on the increase, but not at nearly the rate you would indicate with that article. (Protestant groups mentioned leaves out Catholics, LDS, Jesuits, Adventist, and non-Christian religions) Did you look at the chart? Between all Christian and non-Christian religions, 83.1% of the adult population practices some type of religion.
But what does that have to do with anything? Will it be OK to persecute religion if/when practioners become a minority?
And persecution of organized religion IS growing also. One example is the current call to remove the tax exempt status of religious organizations (unless they do what you want them to do with charity). The call to remove tax exempt status based on perceived lack of charitable work is misleading because charity is not the primary purpose of organized religion. THAT, too, is religious persecution because it means they refuse to accept the large numbers of people - even if they do eventually become a minority compared to secularism - who benefit from practicing their religion, thus making churches by definition, a public benefit organization. Since religion is of no benefit to the non-religious, then they discard its importance as well as its benefit - to others.
Some even argue that religion is harmful rather than beneficial, and act on those beliefs to hinder religion as much as they possibly can. That, too, is religious persecution, and is happening today.
There are a number of non-charitable, tax exempt organizations whose purpose is to benefit the poor. (renter advocacy groups, labor advocacy groups, etc.) Renter advocacy group don't do ME, nor a large minority of people, a damned bit of good. Does that give us cause to call for removal of their tax exempt, public benefit status?
The above are not meant to be disparaging, but rather are rhetorical questions to show that the definition of public benefit is not based on charitable works, nor is it dependent on being of benefit to a majority. Churches ARE public benefit organizations, and as such qualify for tax exempt status regardless of their charitable function.
Religion is on the decrease, and I believe that is a good thing because it means that religion will have less authority in future generations. I believe the religious cloak of invisibity has to be removed from our society. I find it more than just coincidence that as we continue to become a better society, we are also becoming less religious. As we continue to throw off the yokes of sexism, racism, and homophobia, we are also becoming less religious .. which makes sense given that these same ills are rooted in religious doctrine and practices. It appears that Americans are becoming less religious but more spiritual. That's a good thing.
I have no problem with you believing whatever you choose to believe as long as it is not forced on society and you expect no special exemption simply because you believe you should have it. I commend those religious institutions that are doing great work, and there are many. But religion is not above the law nor should it be.
I hope I've been clear without disparaging anything you've said. I appreciate your insight, sincerity, and civil disposition.
