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Internet Deconstructing State Church in Finland
Agnostic writes "Freethinkers of the city of Tampere, who advocate separation of state and church in Finland, created a Web site
in 2003
to assist people in resigning from the church. The Web site soon became a big success in Finland. 39% of all resignations in 2004 went through the web site and 69% of all resignations in 2005. In the same process 22% more people resigned from the church in 2005 than in 2004. The most common reason cited for resigning from the church has been saving church income tax (1.3% on average)."
Apart from your silly assumption that it's somehow automatically bad to get people to abandon religion, your argument is severely flawed: You are assuming that the people who leave the church somehow believed before they left the state church and stopped believing after they left just because they choose not to have the government pick which church they wish their money to go to.
Scandinavia really needs to get rid of the state churches. Most people are members not because they want to, but because they can't be bothered to resign their membership, or don't even know that they are members. In Norway, for instance, a child that is born to a mother that is a member of the Norwegian state church is automatically enrolled as a member, while a child born to a mother belonging to any other religious or secular society must explicitly be added, and similarly a child enrolled in the state church stays a member until he/she decides to resign the membership, while other organizations typically need to get the child to actively "take over" the membership once they reach 15 years.
The result is that the membership of the state churches is in no way an indication of what level of support they enjoy, and is only used as an excuse to justify the differences in government funding. In Norway, for instance, the funding to the state church is decided. Then that amount is divided by the number of "members" of the state church, which is hugely inflated by their membership policy, and the resulting amount is what is granted per member to other registered religious and secular movements.
Getting people to leave the state churches is a way of removing the grossly undeserved preferential treatment they get. Let the people who actually want those churches pay for it.
Um ... so what?
They're not being "subversive," they're just allowing people to make a cost/benefit analysis for themselves.
The question that's being asked implicitly is: 'Is whatever you're getting from the Church worth 1.5% of your income?' And people -- apparently -- are saying 'no' in droves.
If people had a need for another religion, doubtless they'd find one. If they aren't, perhaps it's because that's not something that they require in their lives.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Meh.
If you went to a private school, then your parents had enough money to pony up so that people who couldn't afford private school could have you know, textbooks and stuff.
If you were home schooled, or went to religious school, think of it as a tax assessed against your right to brainwash your own kid (apologies to secular homeschoolers).
I know it's popular to think, "I don't use it so I don't care" here, but some of us, my own private schooled ass included, think that there is a little more to the world than screwing poor kids out of an education, and screwing poor old people out of a little pocket change a month. A lot of countries do a hell of a lot more, but if there is one constant about human nature it's that no matter how small the burden, you can find a ton of people to whine about how heavy it is.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.