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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."
But Apple and Google pay more tax than religion in US....
Funny how people are quick to point out "the negative impacts that occur in some religious communities" without saying much about the positive. Some religious communities (it can be hard to separate the religion from the community) are clearly doing something right.
I can't find good current stats on household income by religion, but this 2009 survey breaks it down pretty well.
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. Or maybe it's something to do with the number of pirates - the data is slim. In any case, religions are recipes for life, and some of them seem to still be pretty good recipes, much as /. would hate to consider such a thing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Given religion's tax exempt status, the real question is whether they pay more in taxes than Google and Apple combined too...
I'm not American, so take this for what you will, but I would say that the absolute worst people I have met in my life are religious, and the absolute best people I have met in my life are religious.
Best I can make out is that religion is the great amplifier. If you're a good person, it makes you the best of the best, and if you're a bad person, it makes you the worst of the worst.
Some people couldn't follow a recipe to boil water to save their life...
It isn't so much the moral codes (which tend to be similar among great religions and also humanism) that make slashdotters hate on religion, nor even the traditions. Getting together to sing songs, asking parents for permission to marry..etc...whatever.
What really gets erudites upset is this business of presenting myths as facts. Religious adherents don't think of their sacred teachings as myths, despite the fact that they are all of ancient origin, they all include unsubstantiated supernatural events, and they all make untestable statements about reality focusing on the existence of supernatural beings, their relationship to us, and what we can expect from them when we die. They are all myths by any meaningful definition of the term, and religious teachers adamantly insist that they are absolute facts.
The claim to have such special knowledge of the universe is plainly arrogant. Scientists must back up their claims with evidence, whereas religious teachers back up their claims with more claims in more ancient texts. This insistence that they are right, with not a shred of solid evidence to back it up, is an insult to humanity's progress in the enterprise of determining facts from falsehoods.
The debate over whether religion causes more good than harm is entirely separate, but commonly gets convoluted with this basic point. Religious teachers claim an unwarranted exemption from the need to demonstrate their claims, and the scientific/philosophically educated among us find that repugnant.
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.
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.
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 ?
Some of the best people I've known in life have been believers
Likewise - and from a similar range of backgrounds. However, to the extent that their beliefs contain things I find abhorrent, I see their 'native' generosity as being constrained by religion, not the result of it. Certainly many of those I know who started as believers and came to reject the beliefs they were raised on did so from the dissonance between principles and expression, internal inconsistencies or an internal growth that left the original belief system behind.
More, some of the most dangerous and damaging people I have met have been fervent believers. Some have used their belief system to justify behaviour that is essentially self-serving. Others, from genuine belief that what they were doing was 'right', have caused more harm than the first group.
If you should encounter a really horrible person online, say on a forum or Twitter or something, chances are very good that they're atheists
There are certainly a lot of nasty, self-important people who are atheists. Just as there are plenty who are Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu ... I suspect a degree of confirmation bias in your assertion.
but because being horrible almost requires non-belief
As T.S. Eliot observed “Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.” Belief can be, and often is, used to justify action that would otherwise be clearly horrible.
they tend to stick out because they tend to make a spectacle of themselves
As do your online atheists, above. How can you tell an atheist who doesn't loudly announce it at every opportunity?
but belief seems to have the properties of a good ingredient.
Unquestioning belief can be blind. Unchallenged belief is limiting. Unexamined belief can be stagnating. In as much as it's easier to co-operate with people with whom you share a common belief, belief builds communities - but it's a short-cut to really understanding and acceptance of an individual. As you say, all too often it becomes tribalism by another name. Just because some people can be amazing and also believe says little about the worth of belief.
It's almost as if the part that makes you better is the process, more than the specifics of any faith tradition.
With this I am in total agreement.
Some of the best people I've known in life have been believers, and by "best", I mean, really walked the best meaning of their faith.
Any sufficiently faithful Muslim is an enemy of humanity. Full fucking stop.
... 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
...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.
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
People like to attribute human behaviors, both good and bad, to religion when it is convenient. I'm not religious, but I don't understand the religiphobes (or would that be theophobes?). It is too simpleminded a thing to blame what people do on their religion alone when we see that same bad behaviors by non-religious. People do use religion as an excuse, but that's not the only excuse out there for bad behavior.
From a scientific perspective, I think the emergence or religion in societies is quite a fascinating topic. Virtually all societies have independently birthed religions. That doesn't happen by chance, or by virtue of a scheme. That happens because there is a real social benefit. Of course, that does not mean there are no negatives.
On a lighter note, religion has provide us with some really awesome music, and a great excuse for extra holidays.
"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
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.
If you're getting your ideas about religion from TV preachers, then I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. But TV preachers aren't actually religious, they are just using religion to make money. They are no different from politicians who claim to care about you, in order to get elected.
> 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.
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.
From a scientific perspective, I think the emergence or religion in societies is quite a fascinating topic. Virtually all societies have independently birthed religions. That doesn't happen by chance, or by virtue of a scheme. That happens because there is a real social benefit.
No, no it does not. It only means that it is a successful and viable strategy. It doesn't have to benefit humanity to be widespread. After all, advertising exists.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's bitztream, the autism (and religion) hating Slashdot troll!
I think that is a bit of a reach. While I catch your meaning, religions is used to provide instant, irrefutable answers to important questions. It is like the placebo of information. We, as humans, have a thirst to know basically all the information we can find, so we ask questions, like "Where did all this land come from?" Ask a priest, he will say God did it and it took 7 days. Whelp, that is that. Now I can FEEL like I know the answer, without any of the extremely hard work required to figure out the actual truth. Science, on the other hand, if done properly will more often lead to more questions. The engine of science is driven on the fuel of curiosity. The engine of religion is driven on authoritative answers to uncertainty. Very different things.