Household Debate

[willtruncheon]

Sandy and I have been having a religious argument in our house this morning, which I want to reproduce here in the hopes that others might want to comment on it. I asked her to reproduce her side here, but she's a little too busy right now, so I'll just try to objectively boil down our respective statements here

Comments

[willtruncheon]

I guess I see the problem as this: we run into difficulty as a race when we start accepting as "true" concepts that are unsupported by evidence, and enthusiastically defend this "right". I think it just makes it that much easier next time to accept a belief in something just because it's comforting.
I absolutely object to the tax-exempt status and excessive political influence of institutions that distinguish themselves from others by holding completely irrational beliefs, that are popularly considered outside the realm of honest scrutiny. If religious or spiritual beliefs were de facto limited to harmless, soothing Santa Claus stories, you're right, there wouldn't be much point in objecting. That's not how paranormal beliefs seem to work, though. Instead, I have to shell out taxes to pay for a Pentagon remote-viewing experiment that could have been demonstrated as completely ridiculous by a third-grade science teacher. Poor people send televangelists their rent checks. Millions around the world accept the Pope's word as infallible truth, regardless of the absurdity or destructiveness of those words. These are just a few examples. Once we start exercising that Faith muscle, it's easy to keep using it to the exclusion of everything else. And that's not so harmless. If Faith were truly a private matter that didn't affect anyone else, I wouldn't bother wasting my breath. It's not usually private, though. Often, it's trying to place the Ten Commandments in public courthouses, or strapping on an explosive vest.

[dcltdw]

Agreed on all points. I think tax-exempt status should be stripped from religious organizations. If they're doing charity work, great; they can spin that off and apply for tax-exempt status for that, and the rest of their organization pays taxes as normal.

But well, try to convince anyone of -that-. :)

[tirianmal]

Because of the separation of church and state idea, that will always be hard to do. However, in a strictly constructionist constitutional point of view, there's nothing that says that the government can't tax churches. After all, the churches aren't outside of the law.

Still, any church or organization that becomes a political entity should have it's tax-exempt status removed. And the problem is that many churches are moving more and more into the realm of motivating their parishiners politically. And that's a problem. Because while the Constitution provided that the govt shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, the framers didn't put any equal protection into the Constitution in the reverse case. If only.

[dcltdw]

Why would separation of church and state affect tax-exempt status negatively? I'd think it'd be a great argument for it: "the government ignores your religious aspects".

[tirianmal]

The problem is that as soon as the government starts to do anything that might be perceived as adverse to a church ... like taking some of its money ... then it might be challenged under any number of legal reasons. Persecution of religion. Equal protection under the law (ie does a flat tax rate of 10% affect larger or smaller churches equally or not), etc.

I'm not saying I buy any of the reasons. Just sayin'.