The Workermonkey

# posted by Brancibeer @ 6/01/2005 09:06:00 AM

Got this off of the American Aetheists website. I never even thought about some of these things:

Religion does interfere in many areas of our lives on a daily basis. Let's take a look at some of the areas of interference. Only one person of every four in the United States attends church regularly; most who do are children. There are over 97 million persons in our population who have never entered a church. In the total population, of the persons who allegedly do go to church, attendance is about three to five times a year. Church attendance is most often motivated by family, social, business, or peer pressure -- not by a belief in the church doctrines and dogma. Yet the average family in the United States pays a minimum of $925 a year in hidden taxes to keep churches from all taxes -- on real estate, on non-related businesses, on income, and on their enormous wealth in stocks and bonds. Churches pay no sales tax, inheritance tax, income tax, personal tax, or ad valorem tax. They may own and operate businesses exempt from corporation tax.

The Wall Street Journal, CBS television, and United Press have found that the holdings of the Roman Catholic church alone exceed the total assets of the five largest American corporations (General Motors, Exxon, Ford, Mobil, and Texaco). The Protestants own nearly as much. Internal Revenue Service reports that the cash donations to churches annually are at least $49 billion (1991). This does not include profits from businesses, property, wills, stock holdings, bond holdings, retirement centers, or lease-back arrangements. The "lease back" gimmick is a particularly pernicious method that churches use to take advantage of their tax-exempt status. A church purchases a business on paper for an agreed sum like $1.00. Ownership passes with the sale; the business is exempt from property tax and corporate income tax. The church then leases the business back to the original owner for a set monthly fee. The lease payments to the new owner, the church, are tax-deductible by the business as a donation to the church. Thus government is swindled out of the tax it would have collected on the land on which the business is located, the business's income generally, and the amount deducted by the business as a contribution to a church. The church wins, the business wins -- but the government and ordinary taxpayers lose!

Every tax dollar that the church or any business avoids paying, you as an individual taxpayer must make up. If taxes are necessary to run the United States, and the church takes a percentage out of those taxes, someone must take up the slack.

The churches in the United States, on the average, own 20 percent of all the privately owned land in every state in the Union. When 20 percent of the land is removed from the tax base, the individual land or home-owner must make up the difference. If the churches paid their fair share of the property tax in your community, your tax bill would be much smaller and would not need to be raised each year to make up for the deficit. We hold that anyone has the legal right to be religious, but that the cost of religion should be borne by those who practice it.

We have the right to be free of an enormous tax burden in order to support the few people who do go to church regularly. The federal government, under various programs of assistance, is spending $50 billion a year in both direct cash grants and tax relief for religious purposes. There are about 250 million persons in the U.S., including babies, which means that we all pay, each one, at least $211 in federal taxes to assist the churches a year. How many are in your family? This does not include the money the churches receive from direct donations by individuals and corporations, which averages an additional $196 per person.

We think that the individual taxpayer who does not care to participate in organized religion and who stays away from churches should not be forced to endure an additional tax burden through any programming, planning, or legislation by members of any of the governing bodies, whether city, county, state, or national. We think that giving churches subsidy by permitting them to remain tax-exempt is an unconstitutional violation of the basic principle of separation of state and church.

__________

Any logical individual reaching the stage of physical adulthood should realize the consequences of the sex act. Yet, in this nation, we have been prohibited from gaining free access to information regarding human sexuality, especially with respect to birth control. Organized religion has been a major opponent of the distribution of birth control information, the lack of which has led to the increased incidence of child neglect, child abuse, and above all, the use of abortion *as a birth control measure.* We are animals. We are part of the primate group, and as such, our sexuality is an important part of our social structure. Denial or limitation of the availability of information regarding human sexuality and the birth process fosters degeneracy. Information regarding these physical processes has nothing to do with religion, morality, or ethics. They are simple facts that should be available to all.

Laws governing human relationships are patterned after biblical admonitions. Marriage and divorce laws should be based on the individual desires of the participants in the relationship. Neither the state nor the church has any right to say with whom you can cohabit. That is your exclusive freedom as an individual. Religion is antifeminist. The principal opposition to the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment was from religious groups. The cornerstone of Christianity is the domination of the female by the male. If you are a woman, you must abandon religion first before you can talk equality. The position of women in any religious system is below that of men.

Religion is anti-science. Religious dogmas can never be verified through the scientific method. Therefore, science is the enemy of religion. Through the scientific method it has been proven that Earth is not 6,000 years old as Christianity claims. Human virgin birth is not possible. Transubstantiation is not possible. The church must retard science, for its spread means increased explanation of human questions and the lessening of the need for a faith solution. One can easily prove scientifically that prayer is not efficacious. Yet your children are often denied access to the scientific facts of evolution or science instruction by the religious community.

The church continually seeks to politicize its theological morality. Sunday closing laws are a good example. Why should you be told that one day is any less or more "holy" than the rest and have your freedom restricted on account of that "holiness?" Your freedom to purchase items on a particular day does not interfere with someone's right not to purchase things that day. Why should you be forced to carry an advertisement for god on your currency and display it each time you use it as a medium of exchange. Why should you be forced to pledge your allegiance to a god each time you care to pledge allegiance to a government concept? Why should you be told that the only consciously acceptable reason for refusing to serve in the military is the insistence of a power greater than yourself, a deity of some kind?

Most important of all, the worst intrusion of religion into your life is religion's anti life teachings. Life is not important, says the church. It is only valuable as a preparation for death and life after death -- the real importance is placed on the "afterlife." The world and our lives on it are considered disposable; they mean little. Our efforts here only bear on the kind of existence we will have eternally.

Life, the only thing we know, all that we have, is thrown aside by faith in something beyond our termination. If you are one of those who knows that life here and now is wonderful and should be lived to the fullest, you are one of us. If you have any feelings of something beyond, a judgment, something for which you need to prepare, you are still somewhere between theism and Atheism. According to sociological studies, there are about 22.5 million persons in the United States who are Atheists, persons who have rejected the concept of spending their lives preparing to die; persons who have found the ultimate freedom, FREEDOM OF THE MIND.

This organization was founded for those of you who have found or want to find that freedom. We have fought consistently for the goals outlined herein. Dr. Madalyn O'Hair, the founder of American Atheists, was the litigant in the famous case which removed Bible reading and prayer recitation from the public schools.

You have read about our organization in Time, Life, Playboy, Fact, Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and your local newspaper. You have probably seen Dr. O'Hair or Jon Murray, the president of American Atheists, on many television shows, both local and national, or heard them on radio.

Now judge for yourself by reading more of the information here about American Atheists to see if you want to join with the few, the proud, and the brave who are willing to stand up against ignorance and superstition. We need you, your support, and numbers. You need us to foster, deepen, and direct your courage to face religion head-on in the battle for the human mind.

The Workermonkey

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

A little long...

# posted by Brancibeer @ 6/01/2005 09:06:00 AM

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