For God Sayeth ...... Luke 4:5, 6, and 7

[TWiley]

Luke 4:5, 6, and 7

5 And Satan led Jesus up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said unto him, To thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them: for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. 7 If thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all be thine.

Here we have Jesus being tempted by the devil. He is being offered control of all the kingdoms on earth. All he has to do is worship Satan. Now consider the dominionists, evangelicals, christian re-constructionists, and assorted fundamentalists. Have they sold their soul to Satan with their desire to rule the world?

Myself, I believe that they most certainly have. Their steadfast belief that the end always justifies the means had lead to the wholesale destruction of their souls. No lie is too great, no deception is out of bounds. Their very lust for power has sealed their fate in hell as a direct result of submitting to the temptation that Christ condemned.

The rationalization that God would be so insecure as to create pawns destined to mindlessly worship him is obscene. Even most humans achieve a higher state of morality. Furthermore, as God writes all the rules, why would a human sacrifice be a necessary gesture to convince God to forgive us all for being the sinners that he created in the first place?

The torture and killing of ones offspring is not the loving act of an all-knowing God. It is the demented action of a tortured soul. It is criminal, and the evidence of mental illness. Their influence is best described as recidivism, it is not change.

The time has come to either tax the churches, or compel them to stay out of politics. Their presence in the public arena has brought nothing but disaster, torture, and death. Sarah Palin and those she would bring to power are the best possibility for the worst imaginable outcome.

Please excuse my frustration, I have simply had just about as much of their nonsense that I can bear.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I agree. There is no reason that Churches, of any religion, should be tax exempt.

Perhaps only for property tax on the land on which their house of worship is located..but THAT IS ALL..

Why should a church be able to own commerical property, collect rent, and that rent be tax free???

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Most churches do NOT own commercial property

and should not be taxed unless all non-profits (including schools, hospitals, synagogues, and mosques) are.

However, if they're running a souvenir store and coffee bar on the premises, yes, that portion of their property that is used for profit-making should be taxed. Also, advocating for political candidates should cause loss of tax exemption.

Please keep in mind that most churches in this country are small, even though the megachurches take up all the media space.

By the way, in a mainstream church and even in the Catholic church, the clergy do not control the money. In a mainstream church, the clergy are paid fixed salaries (usually determined by the national church body and based on the size of the parish) and the money is controlled by an unpaid board (called "the vestry" in the Episcopal Church and "the council" in the Lutheran Church) elected at large from the congregation.

[thraxis]

21. Taxing churches would give them tremendous political powers

which they do not now have.

[rurallib]

2. I am so with you

you certainly won't get them out of politics.
But if you tax them, it will just be passed on. Tithing + 30%. Might cause some folks to find something else to do on Sunday Wednesday and Thursday. That is when an old friend of mine used to go to church.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Render unto Caesar....

I'm for churches and other religious institutions to be OUT of politics, like my Order is. Let churches be treated like other non-profits, subject to the same requirements.

[TWiley]

4. I like what Obama said.

I like what Obama once said. Even though he absolutely did not mean it in this context, I do feel it does apply. He said “It is time for the Adults to take control of the White House”.

On one hand, we have a group who superstitiously believes only for the sake of believing. On the other hand, we have a group that believes in open-minded and thoughtful analysis as the method for reaching the truth. It is truly the difference between Adults and Children.

As a predictive model, which do you believe is more accurate? The predictive models created by Science and Mathematics, or those created by Religious interpretation? In a very broad sense, Religion creates a horrible predictive model. Almost nothing predicted by religion ever comes to pass. On the other hand, virtually everything predicted by science and mathematics has come true, or can come true.

Call me old-fashioned, but I simply do not want to trust the future of my country to someone dressed up in a funny robe and hat attempting to read the entrails of a sacrificed hog.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. the "adult" believer

to use your terminology would say that it was Divine Providence that created mathematics and science as a way for us to learn more about That. :) There should be no antagonism between religion and science, imho--religion must acknowledge that their concepts are not set in stone,but rather subject to change as more is known and understood (which has happened historically, btw).

[TWiley]

8. I believe the fundamental difference lies here

It all hinges on what happened when time equaled zero.

Religious people tend to believe that God existed before time, and somehow pure consciousness (God) created matter. This is why miracles are so important to the faithful. It is proof that consciousness has the ability to affect or create matter.

The science and math crowd tends to believe that all matter was compressed into an unthinkably small area and an enormous explosion resulted. Somehow over millions of years, consciousness was created by the random combinations of matter.

This is the only science vs religion discussion I have ever heard which deserves any merit. The argument that science was created by God to allow us to further understand him is a bit circular, but I do agree that it does not have to be an all or nothing proposition depending on how loosely the definition of God or Divine Providence can be made.

You may agree that most contemporary religious thought bloviated from the fundamentalist camp tends to be wildly incoherent and very spurious. "During the Rapture, will new bodies be issued, or will the old rotted ones fly out of the ground to meet Jesus in the air?" or, "Can a born-again Christian be possessed by Satan?". Almost everything they discuss lacks any demonstrable basis for discussing it in the first place.

[notadmblnd]

5. it's always been my argument , either god doesn't exist or he's one f-ed up "being" in the head

[juno jones]

6. Tax 'em all, Let the IRS sort 'em out n/t

[spoony]

9. Worship is certainly not mindless.

And perhaps you could direct future rants against Christianity to the three or so forums here dedicated to that and not clog up GD.

[Goblinmonger]

11. This isn't a rant against Christianity

but against specific sects. How do I know that? Because the OP said so. It is about "dominionists, evangelicals, christian re-constructionists, and assorted fundamentalists." If you disagree that those sects do what the OP says, then feel free to chime in with specific evidence and we'll discuss. To go off on a counter-rant that this is just Christianity bashing makes your position look petty and foolish.

As to this not belonging in GD, I think you need to either make sure your moderator icon is showing or alert on it like you are supposed to. The moderators will move it (as they have in this instance and many others). You whining about it makes it look like you are in middle school.

[trotsky]

12. "To go off on a counter-rant that this is just Christianity bashing..."

You seem to have forgotten, dear Goblinmonger, that's what spoony lives for. :)

[Goblinmonger]

13. Silly, silly me. n/t

[Zebedeo]

18. The OP is a rant against the basic core beliefs of Christianity

and is not limited to the sects you listed in your post.

While it is true that the poster singled out "the dominionists, evangelicals, christian re-constructionists, and assorted fundamentalists" as people who have "sold their soul to Satan with their desire to rule the world," thereby earning their "fate in hell," the poster did not stop there. He/she followed that up with a mocking attack on the central tenets of Christian faith, to wit:

"The rationalization that God would be so insecure as to create pawns destined to mindlessly worship him is obscene. Even most humans achieve a higher state of morality. Furthermore, as God writes all the rules, why would a human sacrifice be a necessary gesture to convince God to forgive us all for being the sinners that he created in the first place?

The torture and killing of ones offspring is not the loving act of an all-knowing God. It is the demented action of a tortured soul. It is criminal, and the evidence of mental illness. Their influence is best described as recidivism, it is not change."

The poster obviously has a lot of rage against Christianity. Which is sad, because if s/he truly understood Christianity, s/he would understand that God loves him/her and wants him/her to come into a right relationship with Him, by simply accepting the free gift that God is offering.

[Goblinmonger]

19. That kind of sounds like a rant

against religion as a whole (or at least many/most of them) rather than just Christianity (certainly the specific example the OP speaks of is the same god of the Jews and the Muslims).

I don't have any rage against Christianity, but I find your last sentence ridiculous. That is probably offensive to you, but it's where I'm at. I don't know why a statement of where I'm at (or where the OP is at) is somehow bad because it doesn't sound like and is in conflict with where you are at. Either the OP makes a good point about the sacrifice of children or he doesn't; doesn't seem like any skin off your back either way. Rather than just saying it's offensive, why not explain how the concept of child sacrifice as presented in the Bible isn't part of Christianity (I think you might have a hard time, but that's just me). But to just rail at the gaul of pointing out something that is in the bible as being a little frickin' bizarre is, well, a little frickin' bizarre.

[DeSwiss]

10. Yeah well, no matter what the label....

...its all nonsense.

How can Satan, who claims to have been "given the all the authority and glory of the kingdoms of the world" give something to the same god who was purportedly the one who created it, and everything in the entire universe in the first place?

Who gave this authority and glory to Satan?

God?

If this is so, how can he give to Jesus what is already his?

- Congnitive Dissonance, the mental disease that keeps religions alive.....
==============================================================================
DeSwiss


http://www.atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox




"Prayer is just a way of telling god that his divine plan for
you is flawed -- and shockingly stingy" ~ Betty Bowers

[TWiley]

15. Now that is a great point

It is amazing how everything can be rationalized to prove a pre-conceived point. This is one problem with religious studies. The reader already knows who is holy, and who is not. Therefore everything is rationalized so it fits the original slant.

Which believer, having read a story about someone taking their son into the wilderness, building an alter to "God" for the purpose of sacrificing him in order to earn a few brownie points with the Almighty in today's newspaper, would automatically assume that the alleged "father" was holy? I would be willing to bet that virtually every believer would call for his arrest and consider him to be insane.

Why is critical thinking skill cast aside simply because the same story was written in the Bible? Oh, they were TOLD how to understand the story before reading it ..... ahhhh

I love your argument concerning Satan offering the world to Jesus BTW. It is so true.

Wouldn't most Christians read that literally and give up political ambition / world conquering?

[DeSwiss]

22. Critical thinking is anathema to religion.

Therefore it is not only cast aside, it is bludgeoned and smeared as "ungodly" because its answers and solutuions to the mysteries of life come from reason and observation - both of which are in absence in religion. The cognitive dissonance becomes the critical feature that makes all this possible. Without it, every word in their bible becomes suspect. Without it no one would believe anything the church says. Without it, religion is DEAD.

The logic behind the idea of Satan is itself ridiculous. It presupposes that Yahweh made not one but all of his creatures including the angels with free will (a soul). An idea which runs counter to most theological thought. And yet it was Lucifer's supposed jealousy of Adam's having been granted free will that caused him to rebel. Obviously this is a god who makes mistakes. And yet we are told he does not and cannot make mistakes. And that when bad things happened to good people, it is the MWC in action (MWC = Mysterious Ways Clause).

If Christians were to truly adhere to their religious beliefs, they would indeed not only give up on the ways of Caesar and render them unto him, but they'd live lives in a communal state, much as the Essenes did (a sect of whom Jesus was a member), before and after the advent of the so-called personage of Jesus' arriving on the scene. He told them: "if you are to follow me, give up all that you own."

But you can't build an institution without money and you can't command and dominate a people if you have no power. So this idea was scraped immediately and I dare say you won't hear those words spoken in many churches come Sunday...

[DeSwiss]

23. dupe

[Az]

16. The only objection I have to taxing a religion

is that it is in effect the taxing of an idea. A shared idea. An idea shared by individuals who wish to promote that idea.

Now while there are certainly abuses by some of the major Christian denoms this does not mean that all such expressions of ideas should be taxed or punished for their excesses. Perhaps instead of just a blanket taxing of all religions we instead implement a crossing line. Engage in too many political or commercial endeavors and your religion becomes taxable. Act too much like a business and get taxed as a business.

But the idea of taxing ideas being shared amongst people gives me a bit of trepidation. Its taxing thought. And that to me is what the first part of the first amendment speaks to. Freedom of thought. And to tax an idea is to deny freedom of thought.

[cosmik debris]

17. I see it as taxing a practice, not an idea.

Whatever they believe is irrelevant, it is how they behave that makes them subject to taxation.

[Az]

20. Agreed, but there is a practical difference

A small start up organization trying to share their deeply held beliefs should not be impeded by the government. A large organization using their religion as a tax loophole should not be allowed to do so. To impede the smaller structure is to impede freedom of thought.

[DeSwiss]

24. I believe that that's making the argument for taxing the church too simplistic.

Let's say that I have an idea about how to make a pollution-free solar vehicle. I assemble a collection of individuals who agree with me and we go about the process of creating the designs and plans. As a result, we make money from our "ideas." Do we owe taxes on the fruits of our ideas?

Or let's say that there's this guy who has an idea of how to help people overcome their listless behavior. People seem to have lost the ability to think for themselves and I know why. So I set up a center of operations and advertise and send out proselytizers door-to-door to encourage people to come and hear my answers. Before they can come in, I require a fee (donation) so that I might help others with this same message. When they come I begin my spiel about why they're having so many troubles and begin to give them the "answers" for resolving them. So I've taken my ideas and insight out into the public and "sold" it to others, who have in turn paid my fee me so that I can continue. Do I owe taxes as a result of my ideas and efforts?

An institution that is 2,000 years old has been bequeathed tomes and rituals that have been patched and slapped together into a piece-meal and inconsistent narrative about a storm god who made the big time and is now the Chief-Honcho-In-Charge. I assemble people once a week and tell them the same stories that have been told countless times over two millennia, changing the meanings and subtext of the message as history and the circumstances demand. I explain to people that my ideas are the only relevant ideas that matter and that if they fail to adhere to my message, they will all burn forever in a lake of fire. And then I pass the hat asking that people donate to me so that I can continue to pass-off this "truth" to others so that they might avoid hellfire. Do I owe taxes?

No one's thoughts are impeded by a tax. A tax does not stop thoughts, but it acknowledges that thoughts, as with actions that are carried out in the public venue, have consequences and costs. And to be allowed to promote them within our society, everyone must pay part of that cost. GM's ideas over the years have made them rich, but they pay a tax for dirtying our air and water, and for the roads that were needed to get the workers to their plants. And the schools that educate their future workers. Tony Robbins became a millionaire promoting his ideas of self-sufficiency. The people who came to his programs were most likely taught in public schools so that they could understand his words. And those same people paid the taxes which made it possible for the hotels and conference centers where he works his spiel to be built. And so Tony has to pay taxes for this privilege.

The church gets to take advantage of all these things. And they've had no new ideas in 2000 years. And yet they still pay no tax. This is BULLSHIT