[ExI] greatest date in history

[William Flynn Wallace]

 but religious organizations don't have to, nobody knows what they do with
their money.

 John K Clark

I do.  The occasional missionary, but mainly a bigger church.  They spend
it on themselves - excluding the Salvation Army, which does a lot of good.
I suppose Catholic charities and others do some good work too, but I'd sure
like to know how much goes to Rome to buy more million dollar sculptures,
etc.

Do you imagine what voters would do if you tried to make religions file the
tax thing?  Senators and Congressmen do.

They don't pay local taxes either, such as for the upkeep of their roads.

Not how you would design a society if you were starting out, but difficult
to change once in place.  Too hot a potato.

bill w

On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 12:28 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 2:29 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ​>> ​
>>> Freedom of speech and assembly covers a lot of ground, you can never
>>> list all the things you can do with those freedoms and I don't think
>>> religious speech is more important than other types of speech and if you
>>> have freedom of speech you can use it to petition the Government for a
>>> redress of grievances, so they shouldn't have been specifically
>>> mentioned.  ​
>>>
>>
>> ​> ​
>> Keep in mind the times when it was written.  One could, back then,
>> conceive of a government that took such petitions as the equivalent of
>> shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater:
>>
>
> ​I don't think one should be allowed to ​shout anything in a crowded
> theater except for fire if there really was a fire; you have a right to
> speak but you don't have a right to make me listen. Incidentally that
> metaphor came from a decision from Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes involving
> those who spoke out against the USA being in the first world war, Holmes
> later regretted it calling it the worst decision in his legal career. But
> the saying lives on.
>
> ​​
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> speech intended to be dangerous, and thus not falling under free speech
>> protections.  Likewise, just because a state-sponsored religion hasn't been
>> established does not itself prevent laws against practicing certain forms
>> of religion
>>
>
> ​As long as you could meet with like minded religious believers ​and speak
> and write about your religion what would a law against that religion even
> mean?  Yes somebody could claim (and unfortunately some have) that although
> freedom of speech specifies that you can say anything it doesn't mean you
> can say "*that*", but there are an infinite number of things you can say
> and you can't list them all, so I see no reason religious speech and
> activities should be singled out for special protection over and above all
> other forms of speech and activities. And singling out religion is the
> reason religious charities have rights that non-religious charities do not;
> churches don't even have to file an application for recognition of
> tax-exempt status as non-religious charities do, they get it automatically.
> Also the IRS requires non-religious charities to file form 990 every year
> detailing what they are doing with their money, but religious organizations
> don't have to, nobody knows what they do with their money.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160705/893e12e2/attachment.html>