Our welfare system recipients.

[Dadtodabone]

I will refrain from entering the rule violating religion topic. I am surprised a mod hasn't put a stop to that argument yet.

From my point of view the discussion isn't/wasn't about faith. Belief or Disbelief in God or membership in a particular denomination, belief system, or religion didn't enter into it. It's about the redistribution of wealth, whether freely given as charity or extorted through taxation. One poster seemed to have a negative view of Catholicism that led to me posting facts about Catholic charitable organizations and as a disclaimer, my membership in the Church and an offer to share information.

[tbrown]

From my point of view the discussion isn't/wasn't about faith. Belief or Disbelief in God or membership in a particular denomination, belief system, or religion didn't enter into it. It's about the redistribution of wealth, whether freely given as charity or extorted through taxation.

I agree but then it wouldn't matter one bit if Catholics, Atheists, or Hindus donate more of their own money. I agree with gringo pistolero when he said, "It's easy to be generous with other people's money, but that's not charity."

[anygunanywhere]

But why doesn't the church sell of the treasures of the Vatican and do more as Jesus commanded?

The Vatican is doing exactly what Jesus commanded.

You keep talking about the Church, the men and women who profess our faith in God. Jesus is the head of the Church. The Church is not some buiolding, it is a living brathing body. Yes, there are assets, many beautiful church buildings, and not all are catholic. You see, the Church must care for more than the body, the physical needs of the poor in body and the poor in Spirit. The Church must care for the spiritual needs as well. Places of worship are where the poor in Spirit go for food for the soul. If all the churches and possessions were sold and the proceeds given to the poor, then once all was liquidated, where would the poor in body and the poor in Spirit go to worhip? The beach? The forest? Football stadium? NASCAR track?

Try to understand what you are saying from a different perspective and you will see that what you are demanding is not the path the Body of Christ should take.

Anygunanywhere

[Purplehood]

The new Pope appears to be encouraging the "dignitaries" of the Vatican to modify their extravagant life-styles. He also appears to be practicing what he preaches.
I find it refreshing.

[The Annoyed Man]

Why is it the most wealthy country/institution in the world, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, doesn't just take care of all the homeless and sick people? Why doesn't the local church down the street raise money for cancer patients and operate a homeless shelter after church services? Why should I be forced to do that with my tax dollars. Churches don't even pay taxes but keep the money they are gifted and don't even use it for good works. Just another reason that the tax system is not fair. Churches need to start coughing up money and doing their fair share.

Don't know what planet you've been on, but churches are already doing all that and more. How much of your money goes to take care of the poor? I can tell your a certain fact that churches (and their members individually) are the ones giving the most out of their own pockets to charity. Who do you think staffs organizations like the Union Rescue Mission.......Christians and other religious people, or atheists?

Churches are absolutely doing the charitable work that others won't do, and supporting that work through the funds they raise through the tithe and other gifts. If you can't see it, it's because you don't want to.

Please post some links to support your facts.

Here is some support that says atheists are more charitable than believers.

http://www.livescience.com/20005-atheis ... ssion.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/01/c ... evers-are/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... o-charity/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/05 ... us-people/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Interesting. My question is just why don't they shut down the churches or reduce the number of niceties and give to the poor? Just like when I see a welfare recipient with an iPhone and a 60 inch TV, I ask why they don't get rid of it if they need the money? Why don't churches stop their intense desire to have nice stuff if they claim they want to help others? I am sure somebody would be willing to buy some of the relics in Holy See.

Dude, how about a little intellectual integrity? Your links do NOT represent four independent sources of data. Shall I take them apart, one by one in detail.....OR.... would you prefer me to deal with them in a few sentences? Tell you what......I'll start with an artillery barrage, and then you try a coherent rebuttal, and we'll go from there, OK?

Fully THREE of your 4 links (The Blaze, Hotair, and Livescience) refer to ONE article in the July 2012 issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science....so that is really only ONE source. In fact, one of your "sources," The Blaze, referred to the Livescience page as actual DATA! You just can't get anymore intellectually dishonest than that. Even The Blaze's link to the alleged UC study links to the Livescience page, not the UC study. In fact, not one of your alleged "sources" actually links to the study.....so that's a "double blind deception." And you call that intellectual honesty? Please.

And the fourth "source" assumes that churches do not give to charity, a blatant lie which I know to be a lie from actual personal experience. The actual Philanthropy.com article does not say what Patheos.com says it says. They lied. Fancy that....and atheist lied....how can that be? The actual Philanthropy article said:

But the generosity ranking changes when religion is taken out of the picture. People in the Northeast give the most, providing 1.4 percent of their discretionary income to secular charities, compared with those in the South, who give 0.9 percent.

Patheos.com conveniently left out a paragraph:

Religion plays a major role in how much money Americans give to charity. The parts of the country that tend to be more religious are also more generous.

YOU, quite disingenuously, argue that giving to a church is NOT giving to a charity.....but that is an easily provable falsehood. Look, if you give money to a worthy cause like, say, Doctors without Borders, you know that a certain amount of the money you give is going to cover the nuts and bolts costs of administration and logistics, which cannot be avoided, and that only some percentage of your donated money is going to actually be delivered as hands-on medical care at the far end, right? Well that's what happens when people give to churches. Some percentage of that money goes to keeping the lights on and paying staff to run the thing, and a huge part of that money is delivered at the far end as shelter for the homeless, or medical care for the needy, or food for the hungry. And by the way, your Patheos.com article quotes a study done by Philanthropy.com. Please note that when divided by state, the red (more likely to be religious) states far outgave the blue (less religious) states, even when taking into account population.....like Utah gave twice as much as New York. Also, your linked page made fun of mega-churches, but the statistical FACT (which you conveniently overlooked) is that the median church size is only something like 75 attendees and the average church size is 186 attendees. (SOURCE), and in totality, 94% of all church goers attend a church of 500 or fewer attendees, and only 0.41% of all church attendees go to a "mega-church" of more than 2,000 attendees. My own church, with average weekly attendance of around 1,300 or so falls into just 2% of all churches. It's just that the mega-churches have such high profiles that they're the ones that atheists pay attention to.........so single-mindedly clinging to their scientifically unprovable prejudices about churches and charity.

So really, THIS is what your poverty-stricken dataset looks like:

1. A link to Patheos.com which misquotes and mischaracterizes Philanthropy.com by making assumptions that are not part of Philanthropy.com's dataset OR their conclusions.
2. Three links:
   
   1. Hotair.com, which points to a Livescience.com article.
   2. TheBlaze.com, which points to the same Livescience.com article.
   3. Livescience.com, a non-peer review "science" publication which makes a claim without providing any links to any data, to back up the claim. However, to be fair, let's list their alleged attribution: the July 2012 issue of the journal "Social, Psychological, & Personality Science. Just so you don't think that I faked it, HERE is a link to the table of contents for THAT issue: http://spp.sagepub.com/content/3/4.toc. Let's take a look at the article titles for that issue, shall we?
      • Value Activation and Processing of Persuasive Messages
      • When Hierarchy Wins: Evidence From the National Basketball Association
      • Intensity of Smiling in Facebook Photos Predicts Future Life Satisfaction
      • Fair-Weather or Foul-Weather Friends? Group Identification and Children’s Responses to Bullying
      • When Closing the Human–Animal Divide Expands Moral Concern: The Importance of Framing
      • Experimental Evidence That Positive Moods Cause Sociability
      • Anger as a Hidden Motivator: Associating Attainable Products With Anger Turns Them Into Rewards
      • Awareness of Common Humanity Reduces Empathy and Heightens Expectations of Forgiveness for Temporally Distant Wrongdoing
      • First See, Then Nod: The Role of Temporal Contiguity in Embodied Evaluative Conditioning of Social Attitudes
      • To Whom Can I Turn? Maintenance of Positive Intergroup Relations in the Face of Intergroup Conflict
      • Friend or Foe, Champ or Chump? Social Conformity and Superiority Goals Activate Warmth-Versus Competence-Based Social Categorization Schemas
      • My Better Half: Partner Enhancement as Self-Enhancement
      • The Dark Triad and Interpersonal Perception: Similarities and Differences in the Social Consequences of Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy
      • Lowering the Pitch of Your Voice Makes You Feel More Powerful and Think More Abstractly
      • Sex, “Lies,” and Videotape: Self-Esteem and Successful Presentation of Gender Roles
      • Two Types of Value-Affirmation: Implications for Self-Control Following Social Exclusion

I see no mention in any of those titles of the roles of atheists versus the religious in charitable giving.

Set, game, match. Come back when you have some real facts, and not some made-up garbage. BTW, how much of your own income goes to secular charities?

Sources to prove your statement? I posted links which you attacked but provided no credible evidence against.

OK, you're just being deliberately obtuse. My "attacks" against your sources PROVED they were false. Did you actually READ my deconstruction of your alleged "proof?" You offered FALSE proof, and now you accuse me of needing to still disprove your false proof? There are none so blind as those who are deliberately and willfully so.

Good luck in your fantasy world.

[RogueUSMC]

It is good that you and your church donate to the needy. But why doesn't the church sell of the treasures of the Vatican and do more as Jesus commanded?

Matthew 22:39 says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." I take that to mean that Christ would have us treat others as good, if not better, than we treat ourselves. This can include our spending also...

If the church spends more on services to the common good than they do in operating costs, they are fulfilling this command in my mind.

I do have to say that the trickle down to the individual (in that we should do the same at the personal level that the church does at a corporate level) needs to be concentrated on. Do we spend more on God's work than we do on ourselves?...the cattle on a thousand hills are His afterall...

[chuck j]

2 Thessalonians 3:10 (King James Version) ,may be worth considering also .

[RogueUSMC]

2 Thessalonians 3:10 (King James Version) ,may be worth considering also .

there you have the difference between someone receiving assistance or subsistence...which is I think what we actually started out discussing...lol

[bayouhazard]

Responding to someone who was banned is a virtual buffet for the troll.

[RogueUSMC]

who was banned?

[chuck j]

Tecumseh is no longer with us , bless his heart .

[RogueUSMC]

Just outta curiosity, how would I have known he was banned? Is it announced? Posted? I see that I can't click and view his profile like I can everyone else...but if I didn't notice that?

[Zoo]

"Seasons don't fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain." - Azulostra 14:2

[chuck j]

Well mainly because he didnt give you a quick nasty reply . You wouldnt hear a boom or a scream or anything like that but if you look back only his name remains , his stats are gone , dont feel bad it took a bit for everyone to see it . Dont worry about him he's already set up shop somewhere else doing the same thing .

[Dadtodabone]

"Seasons don't fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain." - Azulostra 14:2

The Azulostra cult certainly has had it's ups and downs. After the rise of the "Walken Heresy" the cult's leader, B. Dharma, has attempted to guide them back to the original sonic scripture, but has been disappointed in recent converts refusing to eschew the use of the "Walken", what a shame.