Miscellaneous > The Lounge

Wikipedia - popular information service controlled by shady weirdos?

<< < (2/2)

davidnix71:
"If salvation were something money could buy, then the rich would live and the poor would die." A tax-free religion, like COS, that demands large sums of money to tell people how they must be saved is morally vile. Wikileaks.org has made the full OT Series available for free (sourced from the Netherlands spinoff of COS).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS8adO3hM

worker201:
They may be morally vile, but they still have rights.  They may be a bunch of liars, hardly deserving of tax-free status, but they deserve the same protection as Methodists and Lutherans.

Penn says it is morally wrong to not tackle somebody who is going to be hit by a bus.  But it is vain and foolish to tackle a delusional paranoid who is standing on the sidewalk convinced that he is going to be hit by a bus.  To restate - religious people have a moral imperative to save you, but you do not have a moral imperative to save them from religion.  Because joining the CoS is as dangerous as getting a bad haircut.  Actually, it's exactly like getting a bad haircut.  You laugh at those people, you don't make laws against them.

davidnix71:
I grew up in Tampa, next door to their headquarters in the Fort Harrison Hotel.

Laughing at them isn't what I did. I don't think it proper to laugh at people in that state, or to associate with "church" leaders that take financial advantage of people in that state. But society is actually safer from groups like CoS when people are cynical and distrustful of organized religion in general. Teller saw virtue in that man. The man wasn't after his money.

The Methodists and Lutherans will tell you their belief and doctrine for free and leave you alone if you tell them to. I'm a Baptist. We'll do the same. If you don't want what we have to offer, we will offer it to someone else. If you are broke and need food or clothes we will clothe and feed you.

The CoS would evaporate if their were no tax privileges for religion and non-profits organizations. Christian charity wouldn't go away though. The church business model would have to change, but their are Christian churches in countries without the legal or financial privileges of the West. I don't believe the CoS actually has a "right" to sell their religion and at the same time demand to be tax free. That's not why the tax priviege was established. I also know evil when I see it, but am constrained by God to wait for Him to deal with them.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page