ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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Kamchatka wrote:

It does Not matter to me personally. They can do whatever they want.

The original point the other guy made was that (1)republicans are religious and Freely give to charity and oppose forced charity.

I'm just stating (2)That not all tithing is voluntary and charitable. Some tithng by some religious groups is forced, not voluntary.

(3) And obviously I understand you can quit going to that church, I know it is not forced on pain of death. But it is forced, by some religious groups, with punishment or banishment.

To summarize: my point is (4)you cannot count all religious tithing as voluntary charity.

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Kamchatka wrote:

Even if you don't want to call it coerced, You certainly cannot call mormon tithing voluntary charity.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Kamchatka wrote:

Even if you don't want to call it coerced, You certainly cannot call mormon tithing voluntary charity.

Being a Mormon is voluntary.

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Below is the full list of winners of the 2017 Fake News Awards.

1) The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claiming markets would ‘never’ recover from Trump presidency

2) ABC News' Brian Ross’ bungled report on former national security adviser Michael Flynn

3) CNN report that the Trump campaign had early access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks

4) TIME report that Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office

5) The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel tweeting that Trump’s December rally in Pensacola, Florida, wasn’t packed with supporters

6) CNN’s video suggesting Trump overfed fish during visit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

7) CNN’s retracted report claiming Anthony Scaramucci-Russia ties

8) Newsweek report that Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake Trump’s hand

9) CNN report that former FBI Director James Comey would dispute President Trump’s claim he was told he was not under investigation

10) The New York Times report that the Trump administration had hidden a climate-change study

11) In Trump’s words, "‘RUSSIA COLLUSION!’ Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!”

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faerwin wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Kamchatka wrote:

Even if you don't want to call it coerced, You certainly cannot call mormon tithing voluntary charity.

Being a Mormon is voluntary.

I can assure you that many faiths aren't voluntary. You get brainwashed as a young kid that all that crap is true and if you happen to go against it, you are chastised from the community and treated as a pariah.

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CanHasPants wrote:

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Kamchatka wrote:

It does Not matter to me personally. They can do whatever they want.

The original point the other guy made was that (1)republicans are religious and Freely give to charity and oppose forced charity.

I'm just stating (2)That not all tithing is voluntary and charitable. Some tithng by some religious groups is forced, not voluntary.

(3) And obviously I understand you can quit going to that church, I know it is not forced on pain of death. But it is forced, by some religious groups, with punishment or banishment.

To summarize: my point is (4)you cannot count all religious tithing as voluntary charity.

Gotcha. This is actually very simple.

(1)The original statement is a generalization. I do not know how accurate the claim is about Republicans (as Democrats are equally capable of being Christian, or religious otherwise), but traditionally the right does tend to believe that welfare is a personal obligation, whereas the left tends to believe it is the state’s obligation. Also (opinion), religious organizations have been much more effective at distributing charity than government organizations have. By a lot. Pointing out specific outliers (if we assume your outlier is true) does not contradict the generalization, as it is a trend, not a rule.

(2)It is a condition for voluntary membership to the church, much like there are conditions for voluntary membership to a gym. You are confusing forced with enforced, and concluding that this is mutually exclusive to being voluntary.

(3)This does not appear to be the case at all. Nonpaying members are typically the beneficiaries of the church’s charity, and the church in this case has financial incentive to return those beneficiaries to a state of self sustainability. If that is the goal, then no church is going to kick somebody out because they fell on hard times, that’d be in direct contradiction to the church’s self interest—which again, is to develop and maintain a self sustaining community.

In the case of the Mormons specifically, nonpaying members lose access to the temple. For this to make sense, you would have to understand what the temple is. Salient to this conversation is what the temple is not, and it is not the church. This is more analogous to a free-to-play game with VIP subscription benefits than it is to excommunication as you seem to believe.

(4)And this is it. Tithing is not charity. It is a membership due that covers the operational expenses of the religious organization, which includes that organization’s charitable pursuits. When applicable, tithes are tax deductible not because they are charitable, but because the church is a 501c3, a type of non profit organization that also includes charity, not-for-profit education and science, as well as others. In other words, when applicable, tithes are tax deductible because the government does not want to be beholden to the church’s lobbying, something the church is prohibited from because they are not taxed and do not receive subsidies through taxation. Separation of church and state and all.

Just to reiterate, because this is the big one, you cannot call tithing charity at all, because that’s not what it is.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Kamchatka wrote:

Even if you don't want to call it coerced, You certainly cannot call mormon tithing voluntary charity.

Being a Mormon is voluntary.

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faerwin wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Kamchatka wrote:

Even if you don't want to call it coerced, You certainly cannot call mormon tithing voluntary charity.

Being a Mormon is voluntary.

I can assure you that many faiths aren't voluntary. You get brainwashed as a young kid that all that crap is true and if you happen to go against it, you are chastised from the community and treated as a pariah.

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Kamchatka wrote:

Yeah, if you are an atheist or agnostic. If you have faith in whatever it is mormons teach, it is not voluntary at that point.