Tax churches
06 Jan 2013, 2:03 pm
Tequila wrote:
TheValk wrote:
Religion may cause political activists (not necessary religious people since ideas go around and affect people for different reasons and it's hard not to find the influence of Christianity on the most militant of atheists)
Not all atheists are former Christians. Not by a long chalk. Most atheists may live in Christian countries and be of Christian heritage (because these are the countries that are the most secular) but there are atheists from Muslim (there's one on this site!), Jewish and other backgrounds too.
I'm saying Christianity (a certain kind of it) is rooted deeply in modern Western culture, which may bring up civilians of various religious backgrounds (including ones distinct from Western Christianity) and feed Christian or Christianlike values to them with mother's milk. 1789 was not a breakthrough or a change in people's thinking, it was a natural progression of the Western man, a continuation of old trends and affinities dating to the Roman Empire, perhaps even earlier.
iBlockhead wrote:
There are Jesuit priests living a more lavish lifestyle than most Americans. I have no problem taxing these people.
The teachers and leaders at the Jesuit high school I went to were telling these jokes, this is completely true.
The teachers and leaders at the Jesuit high school I went to were telling these jokes, this is completely true.
I'm sure you're not the only one who'd like to tax his or her school teachers, and yeah, religious academies and even monks seem to have a brutal kind of humour that's terrifying from the outside. I believe many of the zany ideas like "Can God lift a stone he created?" that appear secular actually come from such students and educators (who were either too bored or feeling too creative).
06 Jan 2013, 2:40 pm
This thread is drifting from a discussion of the US Federal income tax laws on non-profit organizations and the deductability of donations to qualified donees, into a discussion of what appears to be state and local treatment of affilated businesses. In all fairness to those asking the questions, I'm not sure if we can realistically discuss 52 state-level governments' treatment of religious-affilated organizations. Just the differences between Cali and Illinois would be enough to confuse me.
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