O�Rourke: Churches Should Lose Tax-exempt Status

[seer]

ALL the free-world countries provide a welfare safety net to some degree. Even the USA, with its tendency towards unbridled capitalism has Medicaid. But, compared to most other countries, US welfare benefits are grossly insufficient to meet the needs of the poor.

Oh so we just don't do enough for you. The fact is I would rather give the poor a job rather than a handout. Black and Hispanic jobless rates are at 50 year lows, 50 years Tass. That is better than welfare. It is better to have people depend on themselves than on government handouts.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/04/blac...ecord-low.html

Nevertheless, the nations that head the Human Development Index today, as opposed to the actively Christian USA, are the highly secular ones with a large percentage of atheists.

So what? Again name one other group in history that has helped their fellow man more than Christians.

We could have done without the slavery, the denigration of women, the religious wars of Europe, The Inquisitions, the Crusades and the destruction of indigenous cultures brought about by Christianity.

The fact is that the cultures you so laud were informed and formed by Christianity. You think you can take those principles forward without faith in God, good luck. Let's see what it all looks like in 30 or 40 years....

[seer]

ALL the free-world countries provide a welfare safety net to some degree. Even the USA, with its tendency towards unbridled capitalism has Medicaid. But, compared to most other countries, US welfare benefits are grossly insufficient to meet the needs of the poor.

We send more on social welfare programs as a percentage of GDP than your country Tass:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocial_spending

We also beat your country in per capita spending

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ing#Per_capita

As far as TOTAL net social spending (including public and private) we are second in the WORLD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocial_spending

So get off your high horse.

[Tassman]

Oh so we just don't do enough for you. The fact is I would rather give the poor a job rather than a handout. Black and Hispanic jobless rates are at 50 year lows, 50 years Tass. That is better than welfare. It is better to have people depend on themselves than on government handouts.

And yet the ranking of the USA on the Happiness and Human Development Indices make clear that your piecemeal 'good-works' are insufficient.

So what? Again name one other group in history that has helped their fellow man more than Christians.

Did slavery, the denigration of women, witch-killing, the religious wars of Europe, The Inquisitions, the Crusades, the destruction of indigenous cultures and discrimination against blacks and homosexuals brought about by Christianity help their fellow man?

The fact is that the cultures you so laud were informed and formed by Christianity. You think you can take those principles forward without faith in God, good luck. Let's see what it all looks like in 30 or 40 years....

It is already flourishing in the secular Post-Christian world more effectively than it has ever been done in the overtly Christian world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postchristianity

[seer]

And yet the ranking of the USA on the Happiness and Human Development Indices make clear that your piecemeal 'good-works' are insufficient.

Except we send more on social welfare programs as a percentage of GDP than your country Tass. So it is not a money question. We are much more diverse than your lily white countries and that leads to inherent problems. Like Sweden or France are seeing as they import more and more third world immigrants.

You country is still mostly white, more white than the US:

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/...stralians.html

Did slavery, the denigration of women, witch-killing, the religious wars of Europe, The Inquisitions, the Crusades, the destruction of indigenous cultures and discrimination against blacks and homosexuals brought about by Christianity help their fellow man?

Sorry Tass, you can not argue against the fact that Christianity informed and formed the very Cultures you so admire, including human rights.

It is already flourishing in the secular Post-Christian world more effectively than it has ever been done in the overtly Christian world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postchristianity

Yes, you are living off Christian principles - see what you have 50 years from now, especially as these countries become more diverse.

[Leonhard]

But I assume you're arguing for that? If not then you're begging the question.

If there is no standard, we can't talk of evolution or progress, just equally meaningless actions.

[Leonhard]

Also, a timeless, unchanging god, for the same reason that you agree that such an entity doesn't think, for that same reason, it doesn't create either.

God being timeless simply means that what He is and His properties are expressed at all times, and the world relates to God through the same relation always, anywhere at all times. Nothing in that prevents God from being the cause of the universe being.

Consider a ball rolling across the surface of a table. The table is keeping up the ball, and the ball is kept up by the table. This gives you a hierarchical series of causes, each one present and necessary at each successive step of the ball's motion.

God is the cause of the universe, in an analogous sense to the floor being the cause of the ball being able to roll along the table.

There is also not anything that prevents God from causing the world to exist. That reduces simply to there being a limit for long back in time you could go in this universe. Though even if the universe was infinitely old, God would still be the cause of it.

[Leonhard]

The phenomenon of prevention and morning-after pills are a product of the modern scientific revolution. That there haven't been moral codes against their use in ancient times, is no argument at all to support your conclusion about what they would or wouldn't have concluded. It's an argument from silence.

In those days parents simple starved their children, or left them outside exposed to the elements. And that very much was condemned, strongly and repeatedly.

You support adultery by voting for a blatantly adulterous president

You're not making any sense. Do you support adultery, and toxic masculinity for being in favor of Bill Clinton. Or corruption and cronyism for supporting Hillary Clinton?

This is one of the passages once employed by Christians to justify slave ownership

Humans are capable of infinite amounts of motivated reasoning to support what they want to believe. Charles Darwin's works, along with Haeckels was often used to defend heinous racism and still is today. This doesn't teach me that the theory of evolution is socially toxic, but that humans are good at finding bad arguments to support their preconceived ideas.

[Leonhard]

The table is keeping up the ball, and the ball is kept up by the table. This gives you a hierarchical series of causes, each one present and necessary at each successive step of the ball's motion.

I meant to write "The table is keeping up the ball, and the table is kept up by the floor."

[Tassman]

Except we send more on social welfare programs as a percentage of GDP than your country Tass. So it is not a money question. We are much more diverse than your lily white countries and that leads to inherent problems. Like Sweden or France are seeing as they import more and more third world immigrants.

You country is still mostly white, more white than the US.

Ah, I see. So, blacks and Latinos are the problem, NOT the grossly inequitable distribution of wealth. The USA has by far the largest wealth inequality gap of 55 countries studied.

https://fortune.com/2015/09/30/ameri...th-inequality/

Sorry Tass, you can not argue against the fact that Christianity informed and formed the very Cultures you so admire, including human rights.

Yes, you are living off Christian principles - see what you have 50 years from now, especially as these countries become more diverse.

[Tassman]

But I assume you're arguing for that? If not then you're begging the question.

If there is no standard, we can't talk of evolution or progress,

We can talk about evolution. And changing standards over time.

just equally meaningless actions.

"meaningless" to whom?

[Tassman]

The phenomenon of prevention and morning-after pills are a product of the modern scientific revolution. That there haven't been moral codes against their use in ancient times, is no argument at all to support your conclusion about what they would or wouldn't have concluded. It's an argument from silence.

In those days parents simple starved their children, or left them outside exposed to the elements. And that very much was condemned, strongly and repeatedly.

Indeed, quite rightly so. But that's got nothing to do with abortion, especially first-term abortion, which is when the vast majority occur.

You're not making any sense. Do you support adultery, and toxic masculinity for being in favor of Bill Clinton. Or corruption and cronyism for supporting Hillary Clinton?

No more than a Christian cake-maker is supporting gay marriage by providing the wedding cake. You would know this was my argument if you had bothered reading the thread.

Humans are capable of infinite amounts of motivated reasoning to support what they want to believe.

My point exactly. The bible can be made to mean just what Christians want it to mean. It was used to justify slavery and the subjugation of women etc. for centuries.

Charles Darwin's works, along with Haeckels was often used to defend heinous racism and still is today. This doesn't teach me that the theory of evolution is socially toxic, but that humans are good at finding bad arguments to support their preconceived ideas.

was blatantly misappropriated by proponents of Social Darwinism such as Herbert Spencer and Walter Bagehot to justify racism. Even so, Darwin never claimed that Evolution was divine revelation, which is the claim made about scripture.

[seer]

Ah, I see. So, blacks and Latinos are the problem, NOT the grossly inequitable distribution of wealth. The USA has by far the largest wealth inequality gap of 55 countries studied.

No, diversity has its problems. And Asians do better than whites in the US. Is that an inequitable distribution of wealth too? And your country is not doing that well either...

Wealth inequality in Australia is getting worse:

http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/77...e-201809210554



Humans rights and inherent human worth are not products of the evolution.

[Leonhard]

Yes. That's what's why I'm asking you. I assume you'd be arguing that such a standard doesn't exist? If not you're simply begging the question.

We can talk about evolution. And changing standards over time.

If you've reduced ethics to mere anthropology, the field is a complete loss.

If an action is truly meaningless, ultimately, you cannot do it for any rational reason. There is no ultimate end to such action except nothingness. They would be meaningless in the objective sense of the word.

[Leonhard]

False, the murder of a fetus has been condemned as early as the 1st and 2nd Century. Even if they didn't view it as having achieved full personhood, it was still covered by the noahide laws. Killing it, meant spilling the blood of a person.

Take this from rabbi Yishmael from 1st and 2nd century.


You keep bringing this point up, and people have consistently argued against it. Infanticide was not acceptable under jewish law. Abortion was not sanctioned either. If you're going to keep restating this argument, at least bring new material to the table, because right now you're arguing precisely like a young earth creationist does, trotting out arguments that have been defeated a thousand times.

Seriously, its just copy paste to argue against you.

A bad argument stated ten thousand times doesn't suddenly become good.

[Leonhard]

In those days parents simple starved their children, or left them outside exposed to the elements. And that very much was condemned, strongly and repeatedly.

Indeed, quite rightly so. But that's got nothing to do with abortion, especially first-term abortion, which is when the vast majority occur.

Distinction without a difference. In either case you're killing a human being.

You support adultery by voting for a blatantly adulterous president

You're not making any sense. Do you support adultery, and toxic masculinity for being in favor of Bill Clinton. Or corruption and cronyism for supporting Hillary Clinton?

No more than a Christian cake-maker is supporting gay marriage by providing the wedding cake. You would know this was my argument if you had bothered reading the thread.

I've included the quotes here. You've effectively argued against your own position. So I guess I'm the one to ask you whether you've read the thread. Or even your own posts.

Seer voting for President Trump in no way implies that he supports Trump's inanities. Your attempt to stretch it by analogy to cover the case of being able to freely opt out of serving certain political causes is a different matter. A baker isn't a politician being voted for, he is a business providing a service, and is in this case asked to carry a political statement.

This is a just ruling, as gay bakers have already declined to decorate cakes with political messages they disagree with.

was blatantly misappropriated by proponents of Social Darwinism such as Herbert Spencer and Walter Bagehot to justify racism. Even so, Darwin never claimed that Evolution was divine revelation, which is the claim made about scripture.

But that doesn't matter, you're Special Pleading again (which seems to be your favorite logical fallacy).

It doesn't matter that the Bible is claimed to be divine revelation, or the Theory of Evolution is considered scientific in nature. Both have been misappropriated and misconstrued.