Comments on: How Large is the Religion Industry in America?

By: Saint Gasoline

Saint Gasoline — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:20:35 +0000

Most atheists are liberals who support various social service programs, ranging from welfare to universal health care. I willing support such things and gladly let the government take money from my paycheck in order to fund such things.

We do give to others, we just prefer to have a government in charge rather than a church. Although with all this faith-based funding going on, I’m starting to even distrust the government.

By: How Big is the Religion Industry? | Dangerous Intersection

How Big is the Religion Industry? | Dangerous Intersection — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:14:45 +0000

[...] found this post How Large is the Religion Industry in America?. In brief, the unreported, unaccounted billions of dollars paid to churches and faith-based [...]

By: Dear Hillary Clinton… « “Gone Fishin’: Postcards From God”

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:02:45 +0000

[...] toward My airfare and hotel costs. So, in that respect, I’d like to see fewer atheists. I can barely squeak by as it is. On the other hand, if all I ever had to talk to were the brand loyalists, I’d go [...]

By: Jim Lippard

Jim Lippard — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:35:07 +0000

BTW, the only statistics I’ve seen suggest that the religious are more generous than the secular, even if you disregard donations to churches.

http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/06/atheists-weak-on-charitable-giving.html

By: Julie Marie

Julie Marie — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:31:39 +0000

the church I went to was based on the Saddleback model, and their financial advice for their parishoners was the 10-10-80 plan – tithe 10%, save 10%, and live on 80%. And that is the model they followed for allocating church donations. 10% to the community, 10% to missions, and 80% to the church. At the time it sounded reasonable, and they are always in the news for the large $ amount of their community donations. But really, its a fraction of their total take — 80% of the tithes from upper middle class congregants adds up to a big pile of moolah. When I left the church membership was around 10,000.

Counting couples as a unit rather than individually, if 50% tithed, @ $9000 per year, (probably a low estimate, actually, for this area)that is twenty two million five hundred thousand dollars tax free income per year.

Using the 10-10-80 plan, that means the church needs eighteen million dollars per year to tend to its flock?

Wow. And that was several years ago, they’ve grown since then. I can only imagine what the balance sheet would look like now.

By: Jim Lippard

Jim Lippard — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:28:31 +0000

Russ: Actually, when you count private donations per capita by country, Sweden comes in at #16 to the U.S.’s #7, at least as of 2003:

http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/04/most-generous-countries.html

By: Russ

Russ — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:07:23 +0000

From my own experience, atheists are, on the whole, quite a caring, compassionate and generous group. Beyond my personal acquaintances, I’m aware of tens of billions of dollars given for philanthropic purposes by atheists Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Also, the people of Sweden have one of the lowest rates of religious belief, and yet the Swedes are one of the world’s most generous nations on a per person basis. In fact, per person, they are far more generous than the citizens of the US who ooze religiousness from their pores.

By: Blue Nine

Blue Nine — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:05:29 +0000

A few more comments: I once knew someone who was getting a PhD in church history from Northwestern, and took me to Willow Creek a few times. I didn’t learn much about religion, but they did mention that they were a really big church. (Granted, I could tell just by looking they were a big church, but they still mentioned it more than once.)

Also: The editorial seems to commit the common fallacy that if you are religious, you are therefore a good person. Religion == Morality. This is just not true. Some people will take those tax-sheltered donations and build a homeless shelter, or a hospital, while others will buy themselves a big house.

Religion doesn’t “give people morality”. It gives people excuses to do whatever they want.

By: muffin

muffin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:23:52 +0000

About the whole “atheists should fund hospitals…”

Maybe if atheism was a religion (like so many theists like to claim), and we had a lot of churches etc, we could do that. We wouldn’t ask for 10% tithes or pass around collection plates, but we probably would try to solicit donations for such causes. But we don’t have that, so its not possible.

They act like none of us do anything charitable. That’s a bunch of BS, from what I can tell. Personally, I’ve volunteered for charities. I’ve also donated to a few charities so far this year. I’m only one person, and can’t afford to fund an entire hospital, university etc. But I do my best to help out. The thing is, when I donate or volunteer, they don’t ask if I’m an atheist (it’d be quite strange if they did) so I guess its hard to be aware that atheists do what we can.

The point is we don’t have an organization capable of providing that kind of funding. Even if we had the amount of people the religions have, we don’t all belong to a group.

By: Siamang

Siamang — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:00:07 +0000

“In fact, one could argue that not knowing the number kind of proves the point, doesn’t it?”

Indeed.