Our welfare system recipients.

[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?

[cb1000rider]

I don't care who is more charitable. It's not a contest... I'm just happy to see that someone else digs deep for facts and doesn't believe everything on face value. Thank you!

[The Annoyed Man]

I don't care who is more charitable. It's not a contest... I'm just happy to see that someone else digs deep for facts and doesn't believe everything on face value. Thank you!

And I don't care either about who gives more.....until I see a false assertion made like Tecumseh's, which is just bone-headed. And I added to my facts, BTW. I had previously hit "submit" when I meant to hit "preview" and wasn't yet finished. His argument is destroyed.

[Dadtodabone]

Catholic Charities gets more than half of its revenue from the US taxpayer.

I don't have a problem with CC channeling money to good causes (perhaps at greater efficiency than a govt bureaucracy), however the recipients could very well believe that they are getting help from the church exclusively. This means the taxpayer is funding church allegiance.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Charities_USA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Finances[edit]

Catholic Charities uses about 89% of its revenue for program costs.[4][10]
In 2010, Catholic Charities had revenues of $4.7 billion, $2.9 billion of which came from the US government. Only about $140 million came from donations from diocesan churches, the remainder coming from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees, and community donations.[11]

Catholic Charities USA is just one part of, and not even the largest, of the totality of Catholic charitable organizations in the U.S. and world wide. The dollar value of sustained aid at local/parish level for example, that never leaves the communities served is estimated at $12 billion annually.
Faith Based Organizations that are part of Catholic Charities USA are relatively new. They began during the Bush administration, for exactly the purpose you mentioned, greater efficiency. Compare admin costs of 11%, as stated in your Wiki citation, to the cost of Federal, State, and Muni bureaucracies to deliver the same aid. Over 50% of those admin costs are directly related to compliance with Federal mandates for record keeping and oversight.
You seem dismissive of the fact that Catholic Charities was only able to raise $1.8 billion in 2010 through it's own efforts. Please find another NGO delivering aid to the poor with a similar ability and record of accomplishment.

As to your concern about the "taxpayer" funding church allegiance, . The hoops the faith based NGOs have to jump through are as mind boggling in some respects as Sarbanes-Oxley is for publicly traded companies, and just as costly.

Faith Based Organizations are eligible to participate in federally administered social service programs to the same degree as any other group, like say ACORN, although certain restrictions and tremendously more oversight on FBOs that accept government funding have been created by the White House to protect separation of church and state.
They may not use direct government funds to support inherently religious activities such as prayer, worship, religious instruction, or proselytization.
Any inherently religious activities that the organizations may offer must be offered separately in time and/or location from services that receive federal assistance.
FBOs cannot discriminate on the basis of religion when providing services, nor can they associate aid with the church in anyway.
These restrictions are monitored by the GAO and audits both annual and surprise/unannounced are performed.

[Tecumseh]

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. As far as how much of my income goes, well I pay taxes. I already give in the form of govenrment as Churches and charities are not capable of doing enough at all. THe example being that Catholic Charities steals our tax dollars to fund their "charity" while also being tax exempt. How big of a salary does their CEO need? How big are the salaries that these people are taking home? How much did my parents and friends not living in the state of Texas give to the welfare of that state because it took more than it gave? Is it fair that they support Texans while their own state struggles? Is that not welfare? Giving lazy bums disability and social security is also a form of charity. Isn't it? They take more than they put in, so they are also welfare system recipients along will all Texans and should be described as such. What about corporations and "charities" that don't pay taxes? Aren't they also getting welfare by being given a discount?

[Tecumseh]

I attend a small country church that has about 150 in attendance on Sunday mornings on a good day...our pastor is what most would consider "part-time". He owns his self- employed and does not receive a paycheck from the church.

The tithes that go into the coffers each week go partially to keep the lights on and pay the two quasi-fill-time employees we have, and supply the closet with materials for teaching and general use. Roughly 30% goes to missions that we support around the country and the world.

There is a group of us who go out weekly and feed homeless and marginalized folks in our area every Saturday night. We feed around 200 folks out of our pockets to the tune of about $375 per week. The church provides us with wheels with which to deliver and gas to run the wheels (out of the general fund and not from the afore mentioned missions fund.) We feed folks and provide stuff we take for granted (deoderant, soap, shampoo, toilet paper...etc.) All of this is over and above our tithe each week.

As the offering plates are passed on Sunday morning, the kids walk around and gather pocket change that goes into a seperate fund used exclusively to help folks put food on their tables, keep the heat on and keep meds in the medicine cabinet. Our spare change adds up to around $1500 every two or three months. I am not alone in that I never spend my change, I keep it to give to the kids on Sunday.

When West blew up, we bought and loaded four PALLETS of bottled water and trucked it down there for the relief efforts.

This just scratches the surface of what our 150 person congregation does on a continual basis. But we also, continually hear how we should do more or that the church isn't doing what it should. It gets old...thank you...we appreciate your input...

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?

[Tecumseh]

I don't care who is more charitable. It's not a contest... I'm just happy to see that someone else digs deep for facts and doesn't believe everything on face value. Thank you!

He didn't post any sources to support his argument or statement. What invalidated the study discussed?

[chuck j]

Give it up guy , your goin from bad to worse . Not even worth debating . Same old atheist crap , been there too many times .

[03Lightningrocks]

Why is there no "cut off date" for welfare or food stamps? Is it appropriate that there are millions on welfare claiming fake disabilities?

Yes... It is a huge portion of them. The crap that is going to bring it down is the fools that think the fraud is not prevalent. At some point we can no longer hand out freebies to every second American alive. The libtards only support the welfare because they are using our tax money to buy votes from people who are not educated enough to know what is really happening.

It didn't work for Greece and it isn't going to work for America.

[chuck j]

Cant beilive you posted under me Lightinrocks after you tryed to make me out as a 'goober' last time we met . Strange .

[03Lightningrocks]

Cant beilive you posted under me Lightinrocks after you tryed to make me out as a 'goober' last time we met . Strange .

I still think you are a goober. I will try and pay more attention to the posting order next time. I have not been living on this thread the past few weeks. Sorry if I didn't read all your posts before I gave my opinion. Maybe I need a program to keep up.

Just curious, are you hanging out on this thread hoping for someone to post something you can comment on? It's a big world out there... Lots of threads. You should get out more.


For the record... I don't really think you are a goober. I was kidding above. It is OK if we don't see eye to eye on everything. I am not much a fan of welfare. I see it as income redistribution. I see it as politicians purchasing votes.

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

[chuck j]

Have a nice day .

[cb1000rider]

Why is there no "cut off date" for welfare or food stamps? Is it appropriate that there are millions on welfare claiming fake disabilities?
.

You sure about that? I believe there are significant barriers and check-ins for welfare and food stamp qualification. Disability is a different beast. Once you gain permanently disabled status with the government, there is no re-check... You're on it for life. And there are lots of attorneys and insurance companies that will help you achieve that status.

[03Lightningrocks]

Why is there no "cut off date" for welfare or food stamps? Is it appropriate that there are millions on welfare claiming fake disabilities?
.

You sure about that? I believe there are significant barriers and check-ins for welfare and food stamp qualification. Disability is a different beast. Once you gain permanently disabled status with the government, there is no re-check... You're on it for life. And there are lots of attorneys and insurance companies that will help you achieve that status.

You think only things that can be proved are true? Guess again. The barriers came down with odumbell. Right now in Ohio they advertise government freebies all over the TV as if they are selling gadgets. We are insulated from the reality of what is happening in the Midwest/northern states. You have no idea what it is like living in a State where collecting government assistance has become an art form. I have family in Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan.. I know what I am talking about.

It is easier to get government assistance in those states than it is to find a roll of toilet paper. Sad, but very true.

[tbrown]

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