Comment Re:Why stop at Scientology...? (Score 1) 700
Not at all. I'm perfectly happy for people to believe anything they like. However, I absolutely object to giving them tax breaks on the basis of their belief system or to support an organized supernatural belief system. For one thing, as has been pointed out it clearly violates the separation of church and state (as do many other silly things, such as the references to God on currency, and yeah, I oppose those too because they do not speak for me or for a Hindu who believes in Gods, not (the Judeo-Christian) God, or for a Buddhist, or for many others. The state has no business even obliquely endorsing belief in the supernatural, especially given the lack of evidence for anything supernatural to sensibly believe in.
You clearly seem to have Obama on the brain, BTW. Curious, since this discussion isn't really about Obama -- it is a conservative principle to not force religious belief down people's throats and there was never any constitutional reason to give religions of any sort tax breaks (as I said, the Bill of Rights directly and specifically prohibits mixing church and state).
As for judging organizations about being a cult or not being a cult -- that's what is done NOW, when the Federal Government has to decide whether or not any given group of people who adhere to some absurd belief constitute a religion or a cult. The only rule that is consistently applied is that "old" absurd belief systems are grandfathered in and try to stomp on "new" absurd belief systems with hobnail boots, so anything new is a cult, anything old is a religion. So Jehovah's Witnesses, who were never anything but a cult and remain so today, are part of a religion in spite of the fact that some of their religious practices with their children actively endanger those childrens' lives. Ditto Mormanism. Ditto some of the other offshoots of Christianity with their tinhorn messiahs (there are a bunch of them out west and across the south). But Islam or Methodism or Catholicism aren't cults, because a lot of people believe in them instead of only a few. There's no more evidence for any world religion than any other -- zero equals zero -- but numbers apparently matter.
I disagree. I don't want to distinguish a religion from a cult at all. I want none of them to have any sort of legal protection or legal persecution, provided that they obey the common secular law, which includes taking care of your children and giving them blood-based products (like plasma or a blood transfusion) if they need them medically and so on. Including tax protection.
Look, if you wanted to join a chess club, you wouldn't try to deduct your dues. Why should you get to deduct your dues if you join a God club?
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