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Religion In US 'Worth More Than Google and Apple Combined' (theguardian.com)
A new study says religion in the United States is worth $1.2 trillion per year. Not only is that equivalent to the 15th largest national economy in the world, but it's more than the combined revenues of the top 10 technology companies in the U.S., including Apple, Amazon and Google. The study, "The Socioeconomic Contributions of Religion To American Society: An Empirical Analysis," was conducted by Brian J. Grim from Georgetown University and Melissa E. Grim from Newseum Institute. The Guardian reports: The Socioeconomic Contributions of Religion to American Society: An Empirical Analysis calculated the $1.2 trillion figure by estimating the value of religious institutions, including healthcare facilities, schools, daycare and charities; media; businesses with faith backgrounds; the kosher and halal food markets; social and philanthropic programs; and staff and overheads for congregations. Co-author Brian Grim said it was a conservative estimate. More than 344,000 congregations across the U.S. collectively employ hundreds of thousands of staff and buy billions of dollars worth of goods and services. More than 150 million Americans, almost half the population, are members of faith congregations, according to the report. Although numbers are declining, the sums spent by religious organizations on social programs have tripled in the past 15 years, to $9 billion. The report points to analysis by the Pew Research Center which shows that two-thirds of highly religious adults had donated money, time or goods to the poor in the previous week, compared with 41% of adults who said they were not highly religious. The analysis didn't account for the value of financial or physical assets held by religious groups, or for "the negative impacts that occur in some religious communities, including [...] such things as the abuse of children by some clergy, cases of fraud, and the possibility of being recruitment sites for violent extremism."
Is the future of mankind.
But Apple and Google pay more tax than religion in US....
I sorta missed how this is related to technology?
Can someone point it out for me?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
A racket is a racket.
The only religion proved false by science.
Sounds about right.
There are a lot of sheep in the US. If we butchered half of them we could feed all of the starving people of the world.
Well that life isn't eternal. A corps lasts at most a few hundred thousand years, after which it is ether completely gone or the skeleton becomes a stone fossil. And if you're cremated, well it kind of ends right there.
Nonetheless, I don't think I care too much about an eternity of being even less than a vegetable, because at least vegetables still have photosynthesis.
At the time, medical opium was a "good" thing. It allowed the populace to deal with inequality, financial hardship due to lack of labor rights, and uncertainty due to lack of social security more easily. When the same shit crops up again, no wonder the same mechanisms get traction.
Why do the highest earners in our society pay no tax. Apple, Google, religion all require the infrastructure and benefits that taxation provides, why don't they contribute towards its improvement. Why do we as a society as a whole think this is an acceptable exception.
Everyone else cash only.
So the whole tech sector is about 5 religion. And the US GDP is 17 religion. It's as good of a totally arbitrary unit as any, I guess.
Move along, no sig to see here.
Well at least religion is more fragmented than the internet search market. I wonder which is actually more effective at information/thought control?
You can come up with different numbers depending on how you want to calculate each, but the two are roughly equal. Very roughly.
You said "private funded charities (including religions)". The summary says religious *organizations* $9 billion, and religious *people* are almost twice as likely to engage in charity, often at the behest of their religious leaders or texts. So we can guesstimate that "religion" is responsible for roughly $18 billion or so. A reasonable guess would be that non-religious private charity is about the same, another $18 billion. So around $36 billion total.
TANF, commonly called "welfare", is the main federal and state program. It's $17 billion per year. So private charity is about double what "welfare" spends. The government also has other programs other than "welfare", so taxpayer "charity" will be somewhere close to $36 billion, depending on what all you want to count.
That's all very rough and you could purposely swing the numbers either way by choosing what to include and what to exclude, but it gives us a general idea.
Given religion's tax exempt status, the real question is whether they pay more in taxes than Google and Apple combined too...
Muslims make up about 1% of the US population, which base don these numbers means a $12B contribution to the economy. How does Donald Trump's policy affect this?
Many of these things do not account for the money that would be spent anyway such as food.
Please calculate using the premium vs average cost. Not optimal but simple and more accurate.
A racket is a racket.
Short of breaking up Apple and Google, I'm not sure what you could do about that.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
So what's "spirituality but not religion" worth?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
When America's dominant religion claims that its founder and chief operating officer uses gold for pavement, well, you know there's a lot of wealth involved. :)
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Of course religions are a great way to make money. You're basically selling a promise you never have to fulfill. Show me one other industry where you can sell something, never deliver and the whole shit is considered legal and even morally ok.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
there are a number of non-religious people who hangout on Slashdot who do not understand a basic right called "freedom of association", and who have been propagandized into not knowing the difference between a tax exemption and a subsidy.
On the first point:
Churches are voluntary associations. The church is a collection of people who all pay their taxes on their income and property like anybody else, but who then gather together and chip-in some of their post-tax money for use by the group. Even the people who get tax breaks on their income for contributing to a Church, [which is the minority of church-goers since most people do not fully itemize their taxes] are still contributing post-tax dollars [they've just been taxed a little less on those dollars]. There are plenty of groups that gather together and chip-in money, like gaming groups, stamp collecting groups, cancer support groups, free speech groups, etc. It's unfair for government to tax such groups, and taxing them would inhibit the basic human right to freely associate with other like-minded people.
Apple and Google [cited by another poster] are for-profit corporations who are under no obligation to do anything charitable at all and are in it for the money. There's nothing wrong with that, but it makes them fundamentally different from a church or a charity hospital, or a comic book collectors' club. The purpose of a business is to sell stuff and/or services and make the founders filthy rich.
On the second point:
Post like this are always meant to say "they should be TAXED to pay for stuff I WANT!" and are usually accompanied by some moron ranting that the churches are being subsidised. Nothing could be further from the truth:
A Subsidy is when government takes money from person or entity A and gives it to person or entity B, to serve a purpose of the government's choosing [perhaps to punish A, or to help B, or both, or for reasons unrelated to A or B but to achieve some other desired outcome].
A tax exemption or tax cut is when government takes less of your money. That's it. Government might have planned to take 40% of your income,leaving you with 60% but it decides to only take 30% and leave you with 70%. You are not getting anybody else's money. You are not being punished. You are not being forced to suppport a policy you disagree with, and nobody is being forced to support you.Government is just stealing a little less from you.
Marx also suggested hanging everyone who didn't go along with the revolution (e.g. the last capitalist hung will be the one who sold us the rope), so let's not just forget minor details like that, especially given how China and Russia put this particular teaching into practice.
out side of the us jobs don't control your health insurance
Churches also do the most Charity, real Charity too in the local areas, not only with money but with time you can't easily measure. If you want to meet a bunch of people that really care about the neighborhood, and SHOW it, go hook up with a local congregation. Just like everything there are some bad actors.
If only that were also true within the US. Clearly, we have much to learn about how to do modern civilization. But so do many other countries with strong religious leadership: in Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive because they're women. In Pakistan, women are killed because they have dishonored the family. In the UK, conflict between Catholics and Protestants has caused extensive problems.
Health insurance is only a small part of this problem
Hindus come out on top, as they have for some time now: evidence that the more gods you believe in, the more successful you are in life.
A majority of Hindus in US will the upper caste (start from Brahmins) upper class who had the advantages of traveling to US for study (or work) and settled down. They are generically called "caste Hindus", they would be materially wealthy whether in US or India.
The right wing Hindu movement (not all of them are bat-shit evil, though quite ignorant) has a lot of support from US, so when the Indian PM Modi shows up at Madison Square Garden, he gets a full house. http://time.com/3442490/india-narendra-modi-madison-square-garden/
In India, they assert their power forcing down vegetarianism (this is a complex issue, which can be argued on moral, ethical and functional terms, here is a primer http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/on-diet-in-india-and-western-arguments-against/article7440854.ece, the usual fear of minorities, which includes Christians, lower caste Hindu's themselves, and other standard issue conservative and regressive ideals.
In USA, they will be seen as archaic with the next generation and the current Millenials, who had the fortune to study in secular American schools which promote some version of tolerance and humanism, which is closer to the core tenets of Hinduism in its truest essence...Tat Tvam Asi.
Tat Tvam Asi
A lot of 'broken window fallacies' in this analysis. It's like calculating the impact of a scam and saying it makes the economy run. And also why do you give 'added' value to the halal and kosher food market ? If there was no religion, they would be normal butcher / supermarkets, with the same value, minus the extra tax taken by the religions, so nothing added here.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
God has more knowledge than the top 10 technology combined together and that is why it is doing more business. More people confess to their dirty secrets in church than on Facebook.
... is this "news for nerds"? Pun intended, but still. This pisses me off more than any other story I've seen posted here since the new regime took over.
Slashdot editors, I know you have to pay the bills. I know the temptation is there to post clickbait headlines. I know the Taboola ads are easy money for a lot of sites and if it helps keep the servers running, fine, I can ignore them. But this is enough already. This is pandering. This is such a blatant effort to prop up your ad impressions that it's laughable. What really pisses me off that a site that's supposed to be a forum for tech news — which is why I came here, and why (despite my better judgment) I've stuck around all these years — can't even make an effort to pander while staying on the technology theme of a gorram technology site. This is the worst yet.
Posting this story to /. is guaranteed to get the flamers and trolls in a tizzy — and I'm sure I'll get modded down to the very depths of frozen Dis for calling a spade a spade, along with the "Stuff that Matters" apologists who'll jump in to point out the second half of what was always this site's slogan. And I'm generally fine with non-tech news when it's actually breaking news, like the "10 dead at Oregon community college" headline that the algorithm seems to think is "relevant" to half the stories on the site. But this is not news on tech. This is not really even news. It's a big, juicy bone for the trolls to fight over, just in time for the weekend. And it's fucking sad. If I wanted to see people get in pissing contests about religion, I'd go hang out on Reddit or, I dunno, the Catholic Answers forums. But that's not why I come to Slashdot, and if this keeps up, I'm going to have less and less reason to come back.
1. They count Halal and Kosher foods as religious benefits. But if the followers of those religions were not followers, they would eat just as much meat - it would just come from non-religious suppliers.
2. They count 'business with faith backgrounds' - which is broad enough to include pretty much every business that has a religious owner. Well done, chick-fil-a and Hobby Lobby get to count as economic gains from religion.
3. Schools and daycare facilities? So if the religion were erased, all those children would just no longer go to school? Any economic activity by these as religious organisations is exactly balanced by activity lost to non-religious organisations, because demand is inelastic.
I've no doubt that religion in the US is worth a vast amount of money, but this does feel like someone is trying to inflate the numbers.
Oh, and the authors? Brian Grim and Melissa Grim? Brian actually gives his email as 'Brian@religiousfreedomandbusiness.org' where Melissa is a research fellow. An organisation which describes their purpose this: "The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation educates the global business community about how religious freedom is good for business, and engages the business community in joining forces with government and non-government organizations in promoting respect for freedom of religion or belief."
Melissa also lists her education as the "Newseum Institute." Which is a political pressure group, not an academic organisation.
And Brian Grim is president of the "Religious Freedom and Business Foundation" -
Yeah, sounds totally unbiased and trustworthy.
So, what I see here are two researchers employed by organisations with the stated goal of making religion look good for business who then write a report in which they very broadly define religion in order to make it look good for business.
This study should be taken with a giant heap of salt.
Tax-deductions for donations to ~10% of the GDP? That just means the rest of us have to pay more taxes. Absurd.
if they paid tax
Not that I would personally be offended by this post -nor am I a big fan of PC talk or safe spaces - but don't you think it's a bit funny to compare the monetary value of such a cross-cutting, personal and protected area of life to that of companies? How is this different from doing a similar statistic on races and comparing the value of "blackness" to the value of companies?
Wow. Apart from a few relatives who live a long way away, I don't know anyone religious. Is it still a thing? It's really quite surreal to literally not see or hear anything religious for months on end and when it pops up, it's actually quite a surprise. Doubly so on here.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Whether or not you believe in him, God loves you. Even if you hate him, God loves you.
Then why, if he loves everybody equally, are all these saps bending over to him?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
...that there's a sucker born every minute.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Happens here too, domestic violence, and illegal in both countries just a LOT harder to convict over there.
Be good and loving always because Jesus died for our sins. He died for us, the least we could do is live for him.
You speak the truth, but now I will point out the ultimate cost of religion, which was conveniently not pointed out in this survey that monetizes a belief system, in a vain attempt to showcase it as the most valuable business on the planet.
Throughout known history, how many human lives have been lost fighting for or against religion?
I wish we could "live" as you say. I wish we could be more loving within the human race. Unfortunately, that is not what the tool of religion is used for, and tends to diminish a trillion-dollar valuation quite rapidly.
The US is founded bij religious extremists (the "founding fathers") who couldn't stand the relative freedom other religions had in Europe at the time. They are still a backwater country in that respect. I hope the US will have their own enlightment within the next few centuries.
If something did not go well then it was gods will. A concession will fix anything anyway :)
> Happens here too, domestic violence, and illegal in both countries just a LOT harder to convict over there.
Well, lots of things are harder to convict other there. That's a general characteristic of the 3rd world. But to this specific point, even in the US we have courts ruling that "honor" is a defense, or at least a mitigating factor in an honor killing.
Georgia law allows for a killing to be ruled a voluntary manslaughter when a person "acts solely as the result of a sudden, violent and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person."
Don't ignore bride burning.
Although not limited to, its particularly popular among hindus.
...is only about making money, especially those TV preachers. US religion is also what ru(i)ns the country, "in god we trust" on every bill, "nation under god" when pledging allegiance to a piece of polyester (made in China), "faith based initiatives", "christian values", and the often used excuse for screwing up "god told me so". If churches of the various kinds are operating like profit organizations then tax them accordingly. And get all that pseudo-religious garbage out of politics!
It isn't even that people pretend have special knowledge , but that they use it to impose their will and opinion on other. "I don't like abortion, none shall have one" , "I don't like gay marriage , no gay shall get a marriage license" etc...etc... Frankly everybody can have a wrong view on the universe for all I care, and think the moon is made of cheese and the milk jug answer their prayer , but once they try to change laws or impose their religious opinion on others, that is when they step too far.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Why would I care about what some mentally corrupted person like you thinks what your fantasy father-figure does or does not do? To "hate" "God" would be to acknowledge the existence of "God", and that is something that makes zero sense to anybody that has managed to grow up.
You do understand that "God" does not exist, no matter how hard you wish that to be untrue, right?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Probably just masochism. Some people yearn to be dominated.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Religion is the most vicious killer pathogen family ever. (Yes, it is a pathogen family of the type "malicious meme".) Hence its followers have been long at work to create a "big lie" to gloss over that or to make it seem justified. Of course, any sane, rational person finds out sooner or later that those afflicted with religion are full of it, but sane and rational people are in short supply. Otherwise the human race would have overcome this dangerous and infantile nonsense a long time ago.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I get that there's some value to see the scale of the economics, but isn't bundling all religion into one category and comparing it to individual tech businesses like comparing all companies remotely involved with food to GM? Religion is a pretty massive category containing a crapload of competition.
As far as good works and all the "is it good or bad" talk, it's ultimately pointless. Like porn, religion ain't going anywhere. The world would be a far, far better place without it, but given human nature it would be replaced with someone equally idiotic, deceitful and hypocritical.
Do I hate religious practitioners? Naw, not as a group, some are really decent people that feel the need to join a club in order to frame their life. I don't care about that unless they can't keep it out of interactions with others.
Obvious troll is obvious.
But consider this: All religious people are involved in spreading a big lie about something important, while atheists only do that in other contexts, if at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell, mouths mercy, and invented hell, mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused soul to worship him!" --Mark Twain
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
That was my thought too.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Oh, and fuck you for ignoring ACs. Don't you have any respect for privacy?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Fuck religion. All religions.
> Churches also do the most Charity.
Any data for this claim?
Compared to what?
I assume other local charities like soup kitchens have a greater local impact.
And how would church charitable activities compare to welfare provided by the government
A very small percentage of money given to a church actually goes to charity. Most goes to the institution of the church.
The church itself is not a charity. It is a non-profit, like GoodWill.
From the actual source.
https://www.philanthropy.com/a...
Religion has a big influence on giving patterns.
Regions of the country that are deeply religious are more generous than those that are not.
Two of the top nine states - Utah and Idaho - have high numbers of Mormon residents, who have a tradition of tithing at least 10 percent of their income to the church.
The remaining states in the top nine are all in the Bible Belt.
When religious giving isn't counted, the geography of giving is very different.
Some states in the Northeast jump into the top 10 when secular gifts alone are counted.
New York would vault from No. 18 to No. 2, and Pennsylvania would climb from No. 40 to No. 4.
Their presentation is biased, cause they know not that "data and finger-wagging [don't] inspire people".
I.e. It would do them no good to NOT praise religious donors by presenting them as NOT better than those donating to secular donors.
Particularly by adjusting for tax exemptions.
Tax incentives matter.
State policies that promote giving can make a significant difference and in some cases are influencing the rankings.
In Arizona, charities are reaping more than $100-million annually from a series of tax credits adopted in recent years.
Where would that "red state" end up on the "giving scale" should those $100 million per year be controlled for?
Cause is it really giving if you're making money out of it?
Which sounds a lot like making a profit.
And it gets particularly interesting when it comes to what kind of donations are promoted by the legislature - i.e. Republicans.
A second problem is that the dollar-for-dollar tax credits are available only to those charities approved by the Arizona Legislature, including religious schools.
Other charities qualify only for a state income tax deduction, worth no more than 4.1 cents on the donated dollar.
...
So the working poor and public schools can get $400 each from married taxpayers, while private schools can get more than five times as much, with a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit.
It takes about $100,000 of income to qualify for all five credits.
A married couple meeting that threshold can give $1,200 to public schools, the working poor, and military relief, plus $2,062 to private schools at no cost if their state tax liability is that high.
If they're in the top tax bracket, the couple can turn a profit of $1,292 if they itemize on their federal income tax return.
...
The most suspect part of the Arizona scheme is that it heavily favors private schools, most of which are religious, by giving not just the largest credit, but two separate credits.
Catholic schools are by far the largest single beneficiary of the private school tax credits.
When the government is favoring one group over the other it may or may not be discrimination.
Like how promoting growth of small businesses is not discriminatory towards big businesses.
But when the government sets the rules in such a way that it NOT ONLY favors the rich, but it actually awards the rich who only give to the rich with the money from the state coffers, while penalizing everyone for giving to the poor - that's quite literally taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
By Republicans.
The anti-Robin Hoods.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The 'beneficial' effects of religion is similar to Frederic Bastiat's 'Broken window falacy'.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You dont get any soup until you listen to their sermon about how you're going to be tortured for eternity.
Thats not charity. Thats carrot & stick.
Try to pull that bullshit (organized religion) here in Sweden and you'll fail miserably
I find that what American consider 'religious' is often different than what other people find 'religious'. Marriage, for example - I had a ceremony (it wasn't in a church), and rings and vows and whatnot, but it was nowhere near religious. From what I understand, many Americans would disagree with that. Also, a halal-shop sells also to non-religious customers, and a large part of its turnover is not profit (certainly not, in retail). I'd have trouble evaluating the criteria for inclusion in this dataset. Just sayin'.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Fucking wackjobs with money.
I'm religious or anything, but this is not only combining all religions, but all religiously affiliated things in the US. So that means all those hospitals that start with "St." That means a number of universities that seem pretty secular, but actually are actually owned by the Catholic Church. This doesn't just mean the money people put in the basket at Church.
So understand what this number is before you panic about it.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
As God created everything and everything belongs to and is controlled by God (God is omnipotent) it is only right we give back to the Church to support faithful preaching of the Bible.
It's bitztream, the autism (and religion) hating Slashdot troll!
They're bringing this up, because they want to tax it.
^^^^^^^
And today most of us get our opium in packages about 5-6 inches tall and a fraction of an inch thick. With a battery in it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
One quarter of that $1.2 trillion is Walmart. The total is a mixture of for-profit and non-profit: business ($440m), healthcare ($160m), education ($140m), charities ($93m) and congregations ($330m). More than half of that last one comes from "positive individual impact", a sum supposedly generated by a congregationâ(TM)s leaders' support to individuals, couples and
families. Churches' income was $85m but only $10m was spent on social programs; no mention of where the rest goes.
A lot of this revenue is nebulous or would happen anyway (spending locally) or has little to do with religion. Is shopping in Walmart a spiritual experience?
Hindus .......more gods you believe in, the more successful you are in life"
This assertion is completely false. Hindus believe there is One God with many Names.
Is it really that hard to understand that each human mind can have it's own conception of what we call a $DIETY or $GOD. The oldest Hindu scripture and the foundation of this religion/philosophy (and later, it's offshoot Buddhism (Buddha was born a Hindu but then decided to start a fresh Philosophy, without some of the superstitious aspects that had crept into Indian society by then), the RigVeda (indeed the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language) starts of saying essentially that there is One God, which People call by Many Names.
They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged Garutman.
To what is One, sages give many a title they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.
—Rigveda 1.164.46, Translated by Ralph Griffith[78][79]
This makes this philosophy (that existed incidentally before any of the religions, even Hinduism as it was named later by the Britishers and other colonizers) intrinsically and naturally pluralistic (Pluralism, open minded and tolerant.
pluralism definition. A conviction that various religious, ethnic, racial, and political groups should be allowed to thrive in a single society. In metaphysics, pluralism can also mean an alternative to dualism and monism.
Indeed, not just tolerant, but accepting of other faiths, since it believes (not just believes, but practically tells the practitioner to experience the truth for him/herself by Direct experience/intuition through Yoga/meditation and other techniques and find out for oneself with the help of a spiritual Teacher) that practically each thinking mind can have it's own name, form and concept of the Truth (as they preferred to call it (that which is not False)), but the Absolute Truth (call it the Divine Mother (Hindus also worship the Divine in its Feminine form - Shakti or simply Divine Power lies beyond the conception of the normal planes of consciousness (those who have reached it describe it as Sat-Chid-Ananda, (translated it simply means the direct experience of that which is Existence-Knowedge-Bliss - Pure Consciousness, once again call it God, Shiva, Jesus, or by any other name, just don't kill each other over $IT) and can be experienced in higher planes of expanded consciousness.
This experience is pretty much each street level druggie is unconsciously craving and trying to kill/OD him/herself over instead of reaching it through safer, tried and tested means like (e.g. Yoga, because they take more persistence and effort. Also, Yoga is just a Path, as there are others, as Buddhism, Christianity, and other $RELIGIONS and what not theoretically, each person as on his own Spiritual Journey over lifetimes of Incarnations) that have helped millions of others reach it safely and surely in this very lifetime, if not the next, and the next, and the next, .... ad infinitum.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The rest of the world is moving forward. You do not see megachurches in places like France or Sweden? You do not see crazy fundamentalists who think anyone who wants bathrooms for both genders is not an evil communist out to destroy freedom.
It is driving me crazy and fundamentalists churches are GROWING! Liberal churches I see are declining but it is 2016 and not 1816. I would think with more educated people you would see a declining faith.
THe Mormon and fundamentalist churches are the ones who demand 15% which is why it is so high in the US.
http://saveie6.com/
Something to give people pause when they complain about the power of evil multinational corporations...
Define love. Be detailed and specific.
Then please recognize that sound-bite philosophy or religion are just as ridiculous as any other sound-bite.
out side of the us jobs don't control your health insurance
That's not true. In Canada as an example, your job can include insurance for dental work, glasses, and so on. Basically stuff that isn't covered by the universal healthcare or where the healthcare only covers the minimum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
We truly are.
If we promise to give some of it back, can we stash most of it away or use it to pursue our own peccadillos?
Would we give The Mob tax-free status if they promised to give some percentage of their earnings back to the community?
it is worth nothing at all.
tone
tone
Oh, and I would add that religion could be considered the mother of science, as a common element of religions is an attempt to explain the world around us. It served as a means to bring people together to try and understand and interpret the world.
No. Consider The Dark Ages, the Inquisition, and Galileo, for a start.
This article is completely pointless. Comparing the dollar value of the entire "religious industry" by summing up anything even vaguely related to religion, and comparing it to two companies, is flat out nonsensical, and demonstrates nothing at all.
Stupid article is stupid, and not even worth the time to read, let alone argue about it.
Superstition In US 'Worth More Than Google and Apple Combined'
FTFY
The two oldest industries there are.
Just wondering.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
As a tithing payer I completely agree. We should get rid of all deduction and everyone should just pay the taxes they owe. Deductions are how the rich and corporations get out of paying what they owe.
Um. No. By introducing "what they owe" into the conversation you are making a circular argument that presupposes they owe an amount. Should their income be taxes at 35%? At 25%? at 39%? What if it's a corporation with little or no income? What if it's a nonprofit corporation? What if it's a church or a public service entity? What if it's a scam, designed like a public service entity but meant to take the money out in salary?
The real world is complex and "what they owe" is no answer. But Congress uses the tax code to lie to the American people about subsidizing businesses. A happy middle ground is the way to go--a limited number of simple deductions to make it hard to work around, plus default taxation rules that don't favor people for paying clever lawyers.
Come on, atheists. You can't be that dumb. You are supposed to be the smart ones, right? You can't just add up the wealth of every remotely "religious" thing in America as if it's some sort of corporation. You might as well release a headline that says "Entire Construction Industry, including all manufacturers, distributes, designers, and contractors are larger than Apple!"
No kidding.
I'm 60 years old. I have lived, long-term, in rural Pennsylvania; Manhattan, NY; Ft Lauderdale and Boca Raton, Florida; and rural Montana. I'm reasonably outgoing in general, and I taught martial arts and public service self-defense classes for decades, so I ran into a lot of people in, and peripheral to, that. I've worked for both large and small employers. I've owned and operated six small businesses, five of which have been successful, all of which had employees. I'm a musician (rock, blues), and have been in many bands, and worked in several studios, including one of my own. I've been to a lot of different churches for a lot of different reasons, though never as an adherent or believer in any form of theist proposal. I am of a Jewish bloodline. I am what I would describe as a progressive thinker (although modern "progressives" typically consider me heretical. For that matter, so do modern conservatives :) I have what I would consider a reasonable circle of current friends and acquaintances locally; and keep in regular touch with a very large number of not-local friends via the net. EMail, not social media - I prefer conversations to popping out text bites.
In my six decades, I have met exactly three people who I can say made me recognize that they met the criteria of "really walked the best meaning of their faith."
Two were in Florida; they're a married couple, and I think they are not only models for the best of what their faith (Christianity) claims to be about, but also exemplary human beings. I miss them, haven't been back to Florida in years, but we stay in contact.
The other one was here in Montana, and was a Methodist pastor. He was killed in a a motor vehicle accident, leaving behind a wife and two children (and the wife... not a great example of anything other than being really annoying.)
I have found, with the exceptions only as noted above, that once you get past the surface posturing of the religious, the odds overwhelmingly favor discovering some toxic combination of ridiculous hubris, enlightened self-interest, vicious classing / ostracizing habits, and a wholly illusory mindset that drives them to think they possess some inherent right to coerce others not of their faith to act in various specific ways -- and, in the specific case of those who rigidly follow certain surahs in the Qur'an, to kill them.
By way of contrast, I have met so many non-religious people that I would describe as exemplary human beings that I couldn't possibly even provide an estimate of a count.
The good that religion has done, and to some extent continues to do, in my view, is most evident in architecture and art (but I repeat myself); as custodians of history and historically significant artifacts, particularly with regard to the Catholics; and in various degrees, providing isolation and room for advanced thought within which many scientific and philosophical advances / insights have come to light, no pun intended. Representative examples include Gregor Mendel in science, and Thomas Aquinas in philosophy. Mendel's best known contribution was to genetics; Aquinas's was to the understanding of the morality and reason of the laws of a society (to which we here in the US really ought to be paying a lot more attention to.) There are many others.
As we are now graced (again, no pun intended) with a solid understanding of scientific method, and a rather overwhelming swarm of philosophers (and wanna-be philosophers), and some truly great architects, and great formal schools for architects, I would be very comfortable seeing all modern religion go the way of belief in Akhenaten's cult. Which is to say, away, dead and gone.
But religion clearly forms a mental safety net for people of certain states of mind that remain common. I think we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future. But I do
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Getting back on topic
As George Carlin said (paraphrasing from memory here):
God is all powerful, ...but he always needs money.
It seems he always needs money
He can do a lot of things, but he's no good with money.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If you examine the history of this admittedly abhorrent but very rare practice (now seen among the very remote and most illiterate of the population), it started because Hindu (Rajput) widows who lost their husbands defending their kingdoms against Islamic invaders from the middle east preferred to jump into the spouse's funeral pyre's rather than be raped and pillaged by the barbarous invaders, without the protection of the men-folk.
If you look up the Koran, it explicitly allows the Muslim pillagers to loot the invaded territories, and rape their womenfolk, as winnings for the victorious soldiers -- this is something that the Hindu women did not want to subject themselves to, and they preferred to commit suicide instead.
Later, unfortunately, the practice devolved into the superstitious and despicable form which you are referring to.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
St. God's Hospital seems pretty secular.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Shall we play a game?" -W.O.P.R.
If you count all food that's certified kosher in this number, you'd get something huge. A significant percentage of packaged food is certified kosher. Just look at you packaged food with a "K" or a letter U in a circle.
However, the incremental cost for General Mills to get a certification for Cheerios is a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall costs of prudish ruin, marketing, and distribution. To count that all as part of the "religion market" is way misleading.
Compared to charitable support for domestic poverty relief, Federal programs are large and strongly counter-cyclical â" growing as the economy weakens. Unemployment assistance climbed from $33 billion in 2007 to $158 billion in 2010, before declining back to $68 billion in 2013. Food and nutrition assistance rose from $54 billion in 2007 to $110 billion in 2013, the Earned Income Tax Credit from $38 billion to $58 billion in 2013. These three programs alone total $236 billion, compared to $40 billion of private charitable giving to human services. While charitable support was at best stagnant during the recession, government safety net spending on these three programs increased 89% between 2007 and 2013.
Luke, help me take this mask off
If you would have actually READ any of the works of the nation's founders (they wrote LOTS of material) instead of listening to your favorite teacher and getting some highschool textbook writer's biased "interpretation", you would know that nearly everything you wrote is false.
Religion has been in US politics since the beginning and began a rapid decline in the mid 20th century. The nation is less Christian now than at any time in iits entire history, and I used the term Christian here because there were very few of other religions in early America. There were a few Jews, a few atheist, but most were Christian albeit on a scale from "culturally" to "personally".
Our founders explicitly wrote that the nation they were creating would only function properly with a religious population. One example:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
Part of your delusion is that you have not read ENOUGH. Several of our founders wrote some rather negative things about "religion", "the church" and even about "Christianity", but you lack the CONTEXT. If you read the rest of what those very same guys wrote, you realize that most of this was about the organized churches of their day, and particularly the Church of England and the Catholic church (both of which many of America's founders ran away from). This is like many modern Christians who are very critical of the current Pope, or of televangelists. In the rest of their writings,most of the founders who made such negative comments also wrote of their faith in God. They were distinguishing between man's creation of organized religion and, and the actual creator which most believed in. Our founders held Sunday morning Christian services IN THE CAPITOL, and their first federal spending bill provided Bibles to the troops.
A further point you completely miss is that the founders write the Consitiution to only apply to the relationship between the people and the FEDERAL government - each state has its own Constitution that defines the relationship between the citizen and the state. At the time of the founders, the Constitution's 1st Amendment prohibited the Federal government from establishing an official religion (they did not want an official church like the UK's CofE) but the founders did not intend to limit the states..... and indeed each state HAD an official church. 12 of the original 13 were OFFICIALLY Protestant Chrsitian states, and the 13th was OFFICIALLY a Catholic state. This did not change until the civil war when the Constitution was presumed to apply to state governments as well.
it's an INCOME tax. It was created as an income tax, is collected as an income tax, etc.
Come back and post again after you and many other support one of those Republicans or Libertarians who gets elected on the platform of eliminating the income tax and moving to a consumption tax. I'm all for it. At that point, anythiing a Church, or a comic book club, or an AIDS care group, or in immigrants rights group etc BOUGHT would be equally taxed, and the government would have no need to care if Apple or a Church was religious or a business... but I doubt the left would ever tolerate that. The left always wants to use the tax code to re-distribute wealth.
Switching to Orwellian "Newspeak" in order to try to evade or subvert the truth is just propaganda and intellectual perversion.
"1) modern "income" is all "monetized debt""
Nope. The US Legal code and the IRS, and many decades of court rulings say you are totally bannanas on this one.
"2) modern "churches" are incorporated."
So what. They are incorporated as churches/charities NOT for-profit businesses. Nearly every group of people in the US who organize together incorporate for all the LEGAL reasons - we have too many lawyers. Corporations can sign contracts (like leases for places to meet, vehicle leases, contracts to get phone service and water and electric service, etc. In the modern world it's not legally safe or practical for such groups to operate without incorporating.
"3) exemption is a subsidy"
Nope. Again, you expose yourself as a propagandized person who cannot tell the difference between income and expenditure, or the difference between a subsidy and a cut. You are clearly not suited to be an accountant.
"4) modern "churches" are not only incorporated, but pushing for "world socialism" And even declared "interdependence""...
Nope. Most are not. You are only looking at a handful of churches (including several old dying denominations who have become quite political and secular and involved with the political left). The largest growth in Churches in the US is as it was early in the nation's history: in young non-denominational churches.
"5) not just with monetized debt, but the fact modern "money" is fiat and fractional reserves..."
WOW! Here you almost were right, before you veered into the ditch. By law, US currency IS used for transactions (and thus arguably "redeemable") but I would point out that this argument has nothing to do with the earlier post and is actually an argument often made by right-wingers. Fiat currency is dangerous to the religious and non-religious alike.
"6) see Walter Burien re: CAFRs. for other reasons why "Taxes" at all levels don't go where you think they do..."
Um, money is fungible and politicians are corrupt. This is news? This has nothing to do with the earlier post and I lack the time to write the novel to explain it.
"7) "free assocation" also means noone has to incorporate..."
See earler note. This is no longer legally safe or commercially (for getting necessary services) viable.
"8) with federal reserve notes, but even before (see "the coming battle -- walbert") the "Government" and "Treasury" is being looted... and 9) "fractional reserve banking" besides being eternal usury slavery, is also "Taxation without representation"...
Again with the currency, fungibility and corruption - see earlier answer.
"10) besides "churches" being "incorporated" and declaring "interdependence" for "world socialism"..."
So what? Government pretending to be religion, or trying to replace religion has no bearing on the earleri post
11) roman civil law is all babylonian, rome, and also vatican and canon law. so every incorporated county/city/state/federal agency...."
So what? Who cares what the pope rules. In the United States, all laws are passed by legislatures and signed and enforced by executives. The Government of the US is not in the business of enforcing Papal edicts.
What a waste.
It is my dream to see humanity cured of the insanity that is religion.
I'm fairly certain that I won't see that dream fulfilled. But it is still my dream.
Can I get a 'Hallelujah'? :)
First: he advanced the ideology that underpinned all the massacres of >1million people in the 20th century: National SOCIALIST Hitler, Soviet SOCIALIST Stalin, Communist Chairman Mao, Communist Pol Pot... he was worse than the worst Catholic pedo-priest
Second: There's not much that is funnier than secular leftists quoting Marx on religion being the "opiate of the masses", while those same secular leftists are actively campaigning to legalize recreational drug use. You guys seem to completely miss the point that when Marx said that, he was saying religion was bad because it's like [the obviously bad] drug use? It's the left that desperately wants the population anesthetized and zombified with ACTUAL drugs and wants them as far away as possible from the religious basis of the moral standards that underpinned the nation's foundation.
Do you lefties understand the word "irony"???
Hint: if you are actively championing the actual mind-numbing of the population with actual drugs, you have no right to denounce anybody or anything else as being as a drug.
The US is certainly not capitalist [capitalism being a derogatory term coined by Marx] and is sadly no longer the "freemarket economy" it used to be. We have more government regulations and interference in some sectors of our economy than the Communist Chinese have!
Historically, the worst polluted nations have been those with Communist governments [where those governments polluted as needed to meet every "five year plan"] or no governments [where individuals and businesses polluted and pillages without limits because there were no laws]. The US with its free market economy, was historically one of the cleanest nations. Even now, if you account for things like clean air and scale it to productivity, the US is cleanest. Why scale to productivity? Because that's a measure of how much you pollute per unit of benefit derived from the resources. A country that produces half the CO2 of the US but does it while producing a tenth of what the US produces is actually doing more damage to the earth per unit of prooductivity, and thus if they scaled-up production to replace a down-scaled US [presuming that the evil US must be downsized to achieve social justice or geopolitical revenge] they would produce far more pollution.
"sex worth more than entire s&p 500"
"breathing has higher market cap than ibm in 1973 adjusted for inflation"
From the actual source.
https://www.philanthropy.com/a...
Religion has a big influence on giving patterns.
Regions of the country that are deeply religious are more generous than those that are not.
Two of the top nine states - Utah and Idaho - have high numbers of Mormon residents, who have a tradition of tithing at least 10 percent of their income to the church.
The remaining states in the top nine are all in the Bible Belt.
When religious giving isn't counted, the geography of giving is very different.
Some states in the Northeast jump into the top 10 when secular gifts alone are counted.
New York would vault from No. 18 to No. 2, and Pennsylvania would climb from No. 40 to No. 4.
Their presentation is biased, cause they know not that "data and finger-wagging [don't] inspire people".
I.e. It would do them no good to NOT praise religious donors by presenting them as NOT better than those donating to secular donors.
Particularly by adjusting for tax exemptions.
Tax incentives matter.
State policies that promote giving can make a significant difference and in some cases are influencing the rankings.
In Arizona, charities are reaping more than $100-million annually from a series of tax credits adopted in recent years.
Where would that "red state" end up on the "giving scale" should those $100 million per year be controlled for?
Cause is it really giving if you're making money out of it?
Which sounds a lot like making a profit.
And it gets particularly interesting when it comes to what kind of donations are promoted by the legislature - i.e. Republicans.
A second problem is that the dollar-for-dollar tax credits are available only to those charities approved by the Arizona Legislature, including religious schools.
Other charities qualify only for a state income tax deduction, worth no more than 4.1 cents on the donated dollar.
...
So the working poor and public schools can get $400 each from married taxpayers, while private schools can get more than five times as much, with a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit.
It takes about $100,000 of income to qualify for all five credits.
A married couple meeting that threshold can give $1,200 to public schools, the working poor, and military relief, plus $2,062 to private schools at no cost if their state tax liability is that high.
If they're in the top tax bracket, the couple can turn a profit of $1,292 if they itemize on their federal income tax return.
...
The most suspect part of the Arizona scheme is that it heavily favors private schools, most of which are religious, by giving not just the largest credit, but two separate credits.
Catholic schools are by far the largest single beneficiary of the private school tax credits.
When the government is favoring one group over the other it may or may not be discrimination.
Like how promoting growth of small businesses is not discriminatory towards big businesses.
But when the government sets the rules in such a way that it NOT ONLY favors the rich, but it actually awards the rich who only give to the rich with the money from the state coffers, while penalizing everyone for giving to the poor - that's quite literally taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
By Republicans.
The anti-Robin Hoods.
And a special shout-out to my downmoderators who think that "I don't like reading the truth" is the same as "YOU are flamebaiting".
There's still an unlimited amount of copy/paste out there. Unlike mod-points.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's one of the most profitable scam since it was first thought up. Plus they don't even need to pay any taxes on that.
You may want to look up "pseudonymity"....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Hehehehe, "Flamebait"! Immediately points put that this is an invalid "I do not agree" moderation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Sadly most churches don't teach what the Bible says. Reading it for yourself is the only way to know what it really says.
"the sums spent by religious organizations on social programs have tripled in the past 15 years, to $9 billion" ... which coincides with W's faith-based initiatives government fund give away to religion - W believed that religious organizations could more efficiently provide social services. As a result, when it comes to charity or social programs, religion may put their name on what service is being offered, but taxpayer money is paying the bill .... Obama renamed the giveaway to "community and faith-based initiative", but a skunk by any other name is still a skunk.
There is an industry around filing grant requests, and little to no auditing of the funds. If a grant is under $300,000.00 then self audit is all that is required (religious organizations would not lie in an audit any more than they would not contrive to cover up one of their leaders engaging in child rape).... And it is difficult to get any clear information on how much taxpayer money is distributed yearly under the initiative - or to find out who is getting it and for what purpose.
cEnTiBeE
Yes, religion is far more of value to me than cell phones... or all tech for that matter... and I'm a technologist. So this was very good news!
Truly this is the biggest load of bovine excrement I've ever heard! Would you back that up please.
Original premise was "more religious people give" than do "non-religious people give".
Which is not true. In fact, they don't give - they are taxed by the church. But it is counted as "giving".
Similarly, secondary premise that "Republicans give more than Democrats" is not true.
In fact, they don't even give. They invest.
Into rich institutions, which include religious ones - but explicitly excludes working poor and public schools.
Such donate-for-profit scheme was established by - Republicans.
I.e. Republicans are deliberately and systematically taking from the poor and giving to the "many religious charities" - cause that makes them a profit.
Thus, those "many religious charities that do much good in the world" are taking the money from the poor, creating profit for the rich - while servicing said rich.
I.e. Not even that "do much good in the world" is true.
Unless we count making rich more rich and making poor suffer more. You know... like what "Mother" Teresa did.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens