Fully 100% American vs divided allegiance

If there`s any expression that gets up the nose of the 4+ billion that live outside the U.S., it`s the 100% American one. While G.B.Shaw was a tad harsh about 100% being 99% an idiot, I wish you would try to be a little more realistic of your position in the world. We will hang together, or if you keep it up, hang separately.

Interesting that you say that justice and equality are religious ideas...almost an implication that non-religious people can not be just or unbiased.So i'm sure you would agree that the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Apartheid were full of righteous justice and smacked of equality.Not to mention the genocides written about in the bible itself.This message has been edited by U can call me Cookie, 12-06-2005 06:04 AM

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So intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
- Pablo Neruda

and pay taxes?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

That's another part of the discussion I had hoped to open up. Of course there is no such thing or the classification is meaningless (like 100% airbreathing americans)

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Do you mean not willing to face facts that contradict your worldview and your opinion and what you have posted? Don't worry, that is evident.http://EvC Forum: Separation of Church and StateEnjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

If an atheist non-profit sets up, they don't pay taxes either, right?

No, just grow tired of beating a dead horse, and debating with you is like taking candy away from a baby. You cry and want to do it again, but it's no fun. I mean you still think the relgious and non-profit tax law exemptions are UnConstitutional.How?You claim taxes, but there is no preference for one group over another. Like I told you, the Constitution does not preclude the goverment from favoring religion in general. It merely bans preferring one over another.You think the Constitution is secular in the sense the government is forbidden to favor religion in general and so should tax churches. You are just wrong though becauase there is nothing in there that says the government cannot favor religion and charitable groups in general. The government is obligated to be non-sectarian, not secular in the sense you claim.

...or stop playing in Caesar's arena. Tax laws are a labyrinth, so I don't want to crawl too far out on this limb.I don't have a problem in general with religious tax exemptions, though I think they are narrowly construed to benefit Christians in the U.S. Some churches amass considerable wealth, far beyond the funds required to support the physical church and its clergy, and this seems problematic to me, since it creates an ecclesiastical economy of salaries, purchases, and property that subverts local tax revenue needs.But if atheists set up an organization simply to enjoy the congeniality of shared belief in each other's company, and do bake-sales, paid-admission dinners, and gambling/lotteries to support their socializing, I think they'd have to pay property, sales, and income taxes, and would find little local tolerance for "gray" legal areas like bingo.
Can atheists enjoy a religious tax exemption to promote atheism? Secular organizations, I believe, can enjoy tax exempt status only if their primary purpose is charitable. If atheists set up an organization and use it to promote their political goals, I'm quite sure they would be impacted by tax and campaign funding laws.Increasingly, churches in the U.S. are being used as political action committees. In those cases, I think, yes, they should be treated as any other organization that seeks political influence.

I don't want to get into the whole taxation issue, because that itself has many other issues involved, however... This stands in direct contradiction to the evidence. After writing the constitution, those same people while in office, when presented with opportunities to support religion most explicitly through charities using tax dollars didn't just decline the effort but wrote against it quite clearly.They thought that efforts of the govt should not be using religious entities of any kind, and neither should religious entities be using the govt.As a very clear example Madison (from an article rebutting claims of our nation's xian orientation)... This stands in stark contrast to ideas that they would support religious efforts of any kind even in the name of charity. That's particularly relevant regarding faith based programs pushed by fundies.Intriguingly, it also shows that congressional chaplains were not as acceptable as is made out to be by some people.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

That's interesting because the biggest examples of this is the civil rights movement where ministers used the pulpit, their congregations, church buses, etc,...to lobby for change. I don't think it was bad thing even though it was injection of religion into politics.

Actually, that's not true. Jefferson, for example, for all his heathen emphasis, nevertheless used federal tax dollars to pay missionaries out west. Also, the federal government wasn't in the welfare/charity business back then.Furthermore, Madison and Jefferson are just some of the founders. Look at George Washington and others. The simple fact is the first Congress paid for a Congressional chaplain and that alone makes your argument moot, as the majority, represented by Congress, felt it was OK to pay for Christian chaplains. The fact some prominent few disagreed with that does not change the fact that the majority that voted to ratify the Constitution disagreed.Keep in mind Madison even though he was charged with drafting the Bill of Rights, did not favor it initially as he was more of a Federalist. So you cannot overemphasize any one leader or man in the process.The Constitution guarantees a non-sectarian stance, and so supporting specific religions, as you posted, could be viewed as inappropiate, but what you fail to realize is that things like tax policy exemptions support all religions, and thus meet the non-sectarian requirements, and there is nothing to suggest that Madison or others like him felt we should tax churches to my knowledge.In other words, it is understandable, though I disagree, that a minority of founders like Madison oppossed chaplains because it would show a preference, but that does not mean Madison disagrees with my point here that favoring religion in general is acceptable as long as no sectarianism is involved. I don't think Madison for example would favor property taxes on churches.

And that is an interesting obfuscation: preaching for an end to the unConstitutional denial of civil rights and sociopolitical equality for an entire race is equivalent to political advocacy for one party's candidates? I don't think so.The "biggest example" of the injection of religion into politics is the unholy alliance of the evangelical right and the corporate interests of the Republican Party, an alliance for which many U.S. Christians have sold their souls to Mammon and the decades-old Republican strategy of race-baiting.Another recent example is the veto power of the religious right over SCOTUS nominations: according to their conservative political critics, Democrats were not supposed to discuss religion in that context, but the WH et al. were perfectly willing to wink-and-nod, and sometimes outright declaim, the evangelical-right qualifications of Ms. Meirs.This is not the first time I have encountered the argument that the religious right's attempt to impose their values is equivalent to the Civil Rights movement, a comparison that brings to mind oil&energy co. funded PACs with "green" names, and one I consider obscene.

What are you referring to then? You think conservative churches advocating pro-life views is any different? My goodness! I wouldn't think the concept of holiness or lack thereof would be an issue with you. It's a free country. People and religious groups are free to advocate for certain policies. At least they are not using my tax dollars like the dems do when they use teacher union dues for their political campaigns. [qs] Another recent example is the veto power of the religious right over SCOTUS nominations:

I thought I was quite clear that I was not speaking about taxation and did not want to speak about taxation. That involves a lot of different issues.For example I myself would not be for taxing churches among many other types of organizations. However many modern orgs have used this loophole to create new types of entities (church yet not church, not for profit yet totally for generating huge cash bases) to try and avoid taxation, and I would be for lifting protection for them.So please lets not discuss this topic as it will get way to complex and I am not arguing that churches should be taxed. It is just that if your sole argument for non taxation is that it is okay for govt to support religion, then you are wrong on that. I have. I have even posted info from people like Washington, only to watch you fade away. You keep pointing spot lights at words and phrases and single acts, and wholly avoid the massive body of works (word and deed) which put it in perspective.Indeed your answer to anything coming from the most unquetionably influential members, is to then simply say they weren't the only ones. Yeah, but they were still the most influential. They were the ones most trusted to the most important tasks by all those others you are referring to, and they agreed on the results.There is no mention of supporting religion as long as it is nonsectarian. They sometimes used the term sects within their writings, but those are broad terms meaning more than just denominations and indeed these people even reference atheists as those within protection.I gave you Madison's reasoning and it was not about preferential sectarian treatment, it was about merging state and religious tasks. It was in his own words. Uh... I have already stated to you that I don't care about chaplains for congress. It seems okay as it is a service for members who live well away for home. Why not?The point is that even that, which I as an atheist and for firm secular govt am okay with, was not supported by everyone including major contributors to our govt.And what I think is really hypcritical is that you point to the majority which allowed chaplains, yet ignore the other two issues which were successfully turned down. Yeah, they accepted chaplains as personal service for themselves, and accepted not aiding religious institutions using public money for charitable causes. You choose one small item, and ignore the two more glaring counterexamples which put that one in context. That was not the stated reason for the denial. The reason for the denial was made clear. You have said this more than once. I will need some documentation on this. Which western states did he missionize?Or did you mean his desire to send people out to the wilderness areas, which is patently NOT within the US, to help build a bridge between westerners and the native americans... both through helping them learn our language and the most common values among US citizens?Granted I would NOT have agreed with this, but regardless this had nothing to do with propagating religion within the US at all. Indeed as far as I am aware that was part of a package deal including vast scientific resources for exploration as well.While he did write at times on the utility of using missionaries to help civilize nonwestern societies by exposing them to common US cultural beliefs (religious ones), after taking such actions he also criticized the idea of how much utility they can have (indeed championing math and language and agriculture more) and ultimately dismissing it as perhaps wrongminded.From 1823 in a letter to M Megear... Jefferson owned slaves, and did not press for the rejection of slavery, despite being an opponent of slavery and wrote that it was a goal to remove it from the US.It would seem that according to you, slavery should be allowed and our nation was founded to be a slave nation as most supported it and Jefferson acted the way he did.By picking out little tiny pieces, you truly miss the big picture and ultimately the context.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yes, they are manifestly different.The Civil Rights movement sought the enforcement of Constitutional provisions forbidding existing, rampant discrimination; the religious right seeks to change existing Constitutional protections in order to impose their interpretation of reproductive morality on others. The former sought to stop an illegal practice; the latter seek to criminalize a legal right based on religious grounds. Every individual and every political organization has a right to political advocacy, but when a church does the same, it violates the statutes lending it tax exempt status. So, yes, they should choose: either register as a PAC or get out of the business of politics. Just trying to speak your language, Rand, so that you might comprehend the damage being done not only to the body politic, but to the integrity of religious independence. Once you let Caesar into the tent, he tends to make demands you didn't expect. No, it is bought and paid for... Yes, they are: it's fine with me if the preacher and the priest want to talk all day about being opposed to reproductive freedom, but the practice of the religious right is to campaign for a specific party and specific candidates; to boot, Dobson, Catholic bishops, et al., have threatened officeholders with political retaliation, using the churches to mobilize both: this violates the provisions of their tax exempt status. I pay higher taxes because church property is exempt; if they want to behave like every other secular group, they should shoulder their share of the tax burden. I'm not sure what you mean here, Rand. Are you a teacher? If not, it isn't your money; if you are a teacher, then you have a right to agitate within your union to change any use of union funds. In any case, it isn't tax money once it is paid out as payroll.I do know that conservatives would like to fragment union organizational and financial clout, pitiful remnant that it is, though they seem to have no problem with corporations spending their shareholder money to support Republicans. I can see no motivation in this disparity aside from the bare-knuckle politics of class warfare.