The Fatal Flaw of Communism - by Frank Zappa

[Seth]

Churches get a huge tax break by posing as supposed charities.

They're not "supposed charities," they are actual charities.

It's in their financial interest to maintain the fiction by getting involved in education.

It's not a fiction, they are accountable to the IRS just like any other non-profit. They get certain tax breaks as a matter of political policy in the US it's true, but that's because historically the taxing power has been the primary tool of government-sponsored religious oppression and in the US, which carefully protects religious freedom, we have as a society decided not to tax churches for that reason.

And the REAL incentive is that they can indoctrinate their young captives at the most impressionable age.

Better them than the Marxists.

The tax payer ends up footing nearly all of the bill.

Dunno about the UK, but that's not even a little true in the US.

Very little of the money for church-sponsored education comes from collections and donations.

In the US it's 100 percent between donations, collections and tuition paid by parents because it's illegal for our government to pay for religious schools.

In Britain, church schools get practically the same state funding as state schools. And the churches pay practically no tax.

That's a matter of UK social policy I suppose. If you don't like it, change it. Churches are merely taking advantage of what the government permits, and people, who make up the churches, want their children given a religious education, not a secular one. That is their right. So, the government, which serves the people (or is supposed to) is merely doing what the majority want. Welcome to democracy. If you don't want your kids educated in a religious school, then by all means send them somewhere else. But parents who do want a religious education for their children have a right to put them in a religious school.

There is nothing charitable about any of it. It's all self-interest.

You elide an entire universe of charitable church activities by focusing on religious education to the exclusion of all else in your argument, which makes it a completely false claim.

[Seth]

Okay, Seth.

Dude - a tax is a tax, and a donation i a donation. Why insist on calling it a tax?

Because not all taxes fit into the limited and formal definition you are trying to force me to use.

Yes, actually, they do. A tax is defined as "a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions."

Taxes are levied by governments because only governments have legal authority to impose a collection of money on persons or property for public purposes.

And "compulsory" in this context means to collect the money by force of law against the will of the individual.

Churches in the United States have no authority to collect any money by force of law against the will of the individual, therefore all money they collect from members of the church are entirely voluntary and at the free will of the member.

Neither, I believe, do the churches in the UK have taxing authority, although it appears that the government of the UK does collect taxes that are then redistributed to some churches. That's not the case in the US.

You're just constructing a red herring argument out of a false claim because it suits your ideological prejudices and biases.

[Hermit]

Okay, Seth.

Dude - a tax is a tax, and a donation i a donation. Why insist on calling it a tax?

Uhm...

[Seth]

"And churches don't tax people to support those educational institutions."

Not in a free society, actually. They do collect money from people. However, mere collection of money is not a "tax," because taxes are compulsory.

The meaning of the word 'tax' is not limited to 'imposts levied by governments'. There is the 'tithe', for example. In some countries these church taxes are collected by governments on the behalf of churches, and remitted to them. On a less formal level, the 'indulgences' Apophenia mentioned a short while ago are quasi-taxes that many theists feel compelled to pay in order to gain access to the pie in the sky when they die.

Sorry, even a government-collected tithe is not a tax because it's not imposed on anyone who is not a member of the church. Therefore, anyone who does not wish to pay a tithe merely has to not be a member of the church. It's just exactly that simple. I don't know of any country in Europe, and certainly not in the US, that requires non-church members to pay anything directly to a church.

If, however, you are a member of a club that charges dues for membership, then you may indeed have a legal obligation to pay those dues that is enforceable by law. And I can see that under certain circumstances, a government might choose to exercise authority to collect those dues and remit them to the club as a part of collecting taxes. But, unless people are required to be members of the club by law, or unless the government collects dues from everyone regardless of whether they are members of the club or not, it cannot thereby be said that collection of dues by the government on behalf of the club (read: church) is a "tax," because all one has to do to avoid the exaction is to not be a member of the church.

In the US, it is flatly unconstitutional for the government to collect tithes for churches, so that's a non-starter over here as an argument.

As for this "quasi-tax" nonsense, it's just that, nonsense, at least in the US. Donations to a church for whatever reason are donations, not taxes. No one is required to pay them by law, which is a necessary part of the definition of a tax.

If you, as an Atheist, are being required to pay taxes to support churches in your country, well, that's your problem and I suggest you repeal such laws or realize that the tyranny of the majority can be exercised against atheists just as easily as against anyone else and suck it up and accept the will of the people in that regard.

[Seth]

Seth, where do churches get their money from?

Voluntary donations and investments in the US. They have no power to tax, nor can they receive government funds for their sectarian work. That would be unconstitutional. I've heard rumor that the Church of England gets some tax money, but that's just the stupidity of the Brits at work.

So, if folks don't give to the church, they're going to hell. This is not a tax, of course, it's a voluntary donation. Or go to hell. Gotcha.

No church in the US I'm aware of says "pay up or go to hell," not even the Catholic church. If you have evidence (credible, critically robust evidence) to the contrary, rather than smelly ex-recto assertions, I'll be happy to give them due consideration.

According to you, Seth, it's not up to Gawdzilla to present such evidence:

It is if he wishes to convince me that he's not pulling his assertions out of his ass.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It is if he wishes to convince me that he's not pulling his assertions out of his ass.

Goose/gander.

[Seth]

I know if someone put a gun to my head and said, "You can give me your money or not, I don't care," I wouldn't consider my handing over my money "voluntary." The Church has represented itself as the gatekeeper to eternal bliss (or suffering), particularly Catholicism which held the keys to the kingdom in the eucharist, baptism and confession and other "spiritual technologies" — indulgences anybody? I would consider the active promulgation of that threat through childhood education and weekly re-education seminars as nothing short of active extortion of money from vulnerable populations. It's no different than the communist regimes in the PRC using the threat of "re-education" to enforce compliance with the regime's wishes. Or the perpetual threat under Stalin and Lenin, where all you could do was "guess" how to avoid suffering and death. Sure, you don't have to comply, you can voluntarily board the train to Siberia, or die in a re-education center, but really, is that a free choice?

Er, it's entirely different from communist reeducation and extermination, and the fact that you can even begin to make the comparison only shows the depth of your mindless, irrational and illogical hatred of religion along with your bigotry and prejudice. Comparing a church's REQUEST for a tithe or donation to the tortures and exterminations of Stalin and Mao is so bereft of intellectual reason as to defy common sense. It's surely a Godwin moment. No modern church in any civilized country that I'm aware of demands tithes or donations on pain of eternal damnation, most especially not the Catholic church, which I know for a fact does not do so. So, yours is just a bad-tempered and entirely false and spurious accusation that has no basis in fact.

Last but not least, I think there needs to be better clarity regarding terminology as the socialism of Marx, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, was merely a prelude to full communism — a scaffolding which once the true communist society was achieved, could be kicked aside and discarded. I think that's a different "socialism" than the socialism which is merely advocating moving the center point of a mixed economy toward — I don't know what word to use here — maybe pseudo-socialist elements in an economy.

There is only a distinction in degree, not basic ideology, between so-called "democratic socialism" and Marxism. It's all based on the principle that all persons are but cogs in the collective mechanism, and that no one has individual rights that can be asserted and defended against the tyranny of the proletariat (as Marx himself described it), and that the entire output of labor by every individual is the property of the State, and the individual is entitled to keep only such fruits of that labor as the State deems he "needs."

Once that principle is established, the entire population becomes slaves to the State and no one is free, and no right is secure from intrusion or denial by the State. The State becomes the master and can exercise plenary control over the proletariat in the interests of the collective, to the detriment of any individual even unto his death, and the individual has no defense.

You may wish to live under such a system, but I won't.

[Coito ergo sum]

Churches get a huge tax break by posing as supposed charities.

They're not "supposed charities," they are actual charities.

That depends, Seth. Being a supposed charity says nothing about whether they are actually charities. Some supposed charities are actual charities, and some aren't. It depends on whether they behave like charities. However, merely being churches doesn't make them actual charities, and many churches aren't charities.

They aren't tax free necessarily because of being charities - they are tax free because they are bona fide religious organizations. Religious organizations don't have to be charitable to be tax exempt in the U.S.

It's in their financial interest to maintain the fiction by getting involved in education.

It's not a fiction, they are accountable to the IRS just like any other non-profit. They get certain tax breaks as a matter of political policy in the US it's true, but that's because historically the taxing power has been the primary tool of government-sponsored religious oppression and in the US, which carefully protects religious freedom, we have as a society decided not to tax churches for that reason.

They are accountable to the IRS as religious 501(c)(3)s, but that's not "just like any other" non-profit.

Churches were not taxed as a way to foster the separation of church and state. The power to tax is the power to destroy, and and modify.

And the REAL incentive is that they can indoctrinate their young captives at the most impressionable age.

Better them than the Marxists.

That I'm not so sure of. If you want to raise a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child, keep them as far away from a church as possible. Wise words.

I don't want kids indoctrinated by Marxists either. But, I would not say it's "better" to have them indoctrinated by fucking priests and clerics and ministers and rabbis.

The tax payer ends up footing nearly all of the bill.

Dunno about the UK, but that's not even a little true in the US.

Well, to the extent that someone else has to pay what the churches don't, then the tax payer does end up fitting nearly all of the bill.

Very little of the money for church-sponsored education comes from collections and donations.

In the US it's 100 percent between donations, collections and tuition paid by parents because it's illegal for our government to pay for religious schools.

Not totally true. There have been some inroads made here in terms of school vouchers going to religious schools.

In Britain, church schools get practically the same state funding as state schools. And the churches pay practically no tax.

That's a matter of UK social policy I suppose. If you don't like it, change it. Churches are merely taking advantage of what the government permits, and people, who make up the churches, want their children given a religious education, not a secular one. That is their right. So, the government, which serves the people (or is supposed to) is merely doing what the majority want. Welcome to democracy. If you don't want your kids educated in a religious school, then by all means send them somewhere else. But parents who do want a religious education for their children have a right to put them in a religious school.

And, they have the right to pay for it. In my view, the citizen has a right to expect the government not to fund religious institutions, including schools. This is not a matter of democracy, but of constitutional limitations on government action.

There is nothing charitable about any of it. It's all self-interest.

You elide an entire universe of charitable church activities by focusing on religious education to the exclusion of all else in your argument, which makes it a completely false claim.

Some church activities are charitable, and others not. However, churches qua churches are not necessarily charitable. It would be your burden to show that a particular church is not just a religious 501(c)(3), but is also a "charitable" organization. Merely being a non-profit doesn't mean the organization is charitable.

Do you have critically robust evidence for your assertion?

[Seth]

It is if he wishes to convince me that he's not pulling his assertions out of his ass.

Goose/gander.

I'm not trying to convince you. I wouldn't bother trying because you're impenetrable to logic or reason. You're merely a useful tool and foil for presenting my arguments to others, in particular the lurkers here.

You're my chew toy, and a tasty one at that.

[Coito ergo sum]

Voluntary donations and investments in the US. They have no power to tax, nor can they receive government funds for their sectarian work. That would be unconstitutional. I've heard rumor that the Church of England gets some tax money, but that's just the stupidity of the Brits at work.

So, if folks don't give to the church, they're going to hell. This is not a tax, of course, it's a voluntary donation. Or go to hell. Gotcha.

No church in the US I'm aware of says "pay up or go to hell," not even the Catholic church. If you have evidence (credible, critically robust evidence) to the contrary, rather than smelly ex-recto assertions, I'll be happy to give them due consideration.

According to you, Seth, it's not up to Gawdzilla to present such evidence:

It is if he wishes to convince me that he's not pulling his assertions out of his ass.

That's what I was saying on the other thread, Seth. That if a religion or god advocate, including the writers of the Bible, want to convince me that they're not pulling their assertions out of their asses, then they have to present evidence.

YOU however, claimed otherwise. YOU said that the person who says "you're pulling that out of your ass," has the burden of proving that.

You have just illustrated the vapid and vacuous, and self-serving, "logic" that you employ. You can't have it both ways. The preponderance of the evidence is either with Zilla (and with the Bible), or it isn't. Which is it?

[Hermit]

...the fact that you can even begin to make the comparison only shows the depth of your mindless, irrational and illogical hatred of religion along with your bigotry and prejudice.

Did you forget that Apophenia is not an atheist, or are you just acting your usual fact-free zone once again?

[Seth]

Churches get a huge tax break by posing as supposed charities.

They're not "supposed charities," they are actual charities.

That depends, Seth. Being a supposed charity says nothing about whether they are actually charities. Some supposed charities are actual charities, and some aren't. It depends on whether they behave like charities. However, merely being churches doesn't make them actual charities, and many churches aren't charities.

They aren't tax free necessarily because of being charities - they are tax free because they are bona fide religious organizations. Religious organizations don't have to be charitable to be tax exempt in the U.S.

Good point.

It's in their financial interest to maintain the fiction by getting involved in education.

It's not a fiction, they are accountable to the IRS just like any other non-profit. They get certain tax breaks as a matter of political policy in the US it's true, but that's because historically the taxing power has been the primary tool of government-sponsored religious oppression and in the US, which carefully protects religious freedom, we have as a society decided not to tax churches for that reason.

They are accountable to the IRS as religious 501(c)(3)s, but that's not "just like any other" non-profit.

Churches were not taxed as a way to foster the separation of church and state. The power to tax is the power to destroy, and and modify.

A fine technicality but a fair point. Thanks for making that clear.

And the REAL incentive is that they can indoctrinate their young captives at the most impressionable age.

Better them than the Marxists.

That I'm not so sure of.

I am.

If you want to raise a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child, keep them as far away from a church as possible. Wise words.

Strange, because I know a good many happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who are very religious.

I don't want kids indoctrinated by Marxists either. But, I would not say it's "better" to have them indoctrinated by fucking priests and clerics and ministers and rabbis.

Some 80 percent of the population of the planet seem to disagree with you. I think their judgment is superior to yours.

The tax payer ends up footing nearly all of the bill.

Dunno about the UK, but that's not even a little true in the US.

Well, to the extent that someone else has to pay what the churches don't, then the tax payer does end up fitting nearly all of the bill.

Huh? Sorry, this doesn't make any sense. In the US, taxpayers don't support religious schools AT ALL.

Very little of the money for church-sponsored education comes from collections and donations.

In the US it's 100 percent between donations, collections and tuition paid by parents because it's illegal for our government to pay for religious schools.

Not totally true. There have been some inroads made here in terms of school vouchers going to religious schools.

Indeed. And justifiably so. Vouchers are nothing more than the money the state allocates for educating a particular child following the child to the school of the parent's choice, which is exactly how it should be, whether that is a religious school, a charter school or a public school. The state can require that children be schooled, but it ought not have the authority to dictate where that child attends school. So, it makes no difference to the taxpayers if the money allocated to educating a particular child goes to this school or that school so long as both schools provide the state-mandated minimum curriculum. Whatever else the school teaches is up to the school and the parents, and the taxpayers are still only paying for the state-required secular educational requirements, not for religious teachings, which are in addition to the state-required curriculum.

Parents who wish to get better educations for their children by sending them to private religious schools should get the same amount of money towards the state-mandated curriculum as parents who subject their children unwillingly to the Marxist public school educational system.

The reason vouchers are opposed is quite simply because public school teacher's unions know full well that they are providing inferior propagandistic Marxist indoctrination in the schools and they want to keep their jobs and keep indoctrinating and propagandizing our children at taxpayer expense. They know that if voucher are allowed, the public schools will very, very quickly cease to exist because they provide such a grossly inferior educational product, and the teachers will be out on their asses looking for real jobs.

In Britain, church schools get practically the same state funding as state schools. And the churches pay practically no tax.

That's a matter of UK social policy I suppose. If you don't like it, change it. Churches are merely taking advantage of what the government permits, and people, who make up the churches, want their children given a religious education, not a secular one. That is their right. So, the government, which serves the people (or is supposed to) is merely doing what the majority want. Welcome to democracy. If you don't want your kids educated in a religious school, then by all means send them somewhere else. But parents who do want a religious education for their children have a right to put them in a religious school.

And, they have the right to pay for it. In my view, the citizen has a right to expect the government not to fund religious institutions, including schools. This is not a matter of democracy, but of constitutional limitations on government action.

School voucher money following a student to a religious school is not funding a religious institution, it's paying for the state-mandated school curriculum that the child is entitled by law to receive. That those secular elements of the entire school curriculum happen to be being taught in a religious institution that may offer ADDITIONAL religious education is hardly relevant. The child is entitled to state money towards that child's basic secular education to the same extent that every other child is. To deny that child that tax money allocated for his or her basic education is to violate that child's right to a state-sponsored education. To deny it to that child merely because the secular curriculum is being taught at a religious school, thereby forcing the child to attend a public school, is to infringe on the religious rights of the child to be educated in a religious school far from the corrupting influences of the Frankfurt School Marxists in the public schools.

In the same way that government may grant taxpayer money to religious institutions to fund the secular charitable activities they perform, like soup kitchens, shelters, medical clinics and hospitals, the government may constitutionally grant taxpayer money TO THE CHILD towards his secular education, which may be provided by anyone qualified to teach that secular curriculum. The amount is exactly the same as would be given to the public school, so it cannot be said that the money is going towards sectarian education so long as the state-mandated curriculum is being taught, which it must be by law, even in religious schools.

So no, vouchers are not funding religious education or institutions, they are funding secular state-mandated curriculum and nothing more.

[Seth]

...the fact that you can even begin to make the comparison only shows the depth of your mindless, irrational and illogical hatred of religion along with your bigotry and prejudice.

Did you forget that Apophenia is not an atheist, or are you just acting your usual fact-free zone once again?

One can have a mindless, irrational and illogical hatred of religion and be a prejudiced bigot and still not be an atheist.

To compare a church request for a tithe to the horrific genocidal crimes of Stalin and Mao is simply asinine.

[Seth]

It is if he wishes to convince me that he's not pulling his assertions out of his ass.

That's what I was saying on the other thread, Seth. That if a religion or god advocate, including the writers of the Bible, want to convince me that they're not pulling their assertions out of their asses, then they have to present evidence.

Only if they wish to convince you. If they don't, they can simply make their claims and ignore you. You, on the other hand, presumably being a person of intelligence and reason, ought perhaps not violate your own principles of logic and reason by using their tactics of evasion of logic and reason. I sort of thought you held yourself to a higher rational standard than they do, which to me would mean not engaging in exactly the same sort of unreason and illogic in formulating your arguments as they do. Or shall I take this as an admission that you too are a religious zealot who makes bald assertions not founded in evidence?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Can we start up the wank fnoglet, please?

bald assertion => I got nothing.