Are you planning to round out the year with some charitable donations? Are you looking for suitable targets for your gifts that won’t waste the money on religion? Here’s a handy list of atheist charities.
Soon, it will be the end of the year. Soon, all those various forms will come trickling into your mailbox, telling you how much money you earned. Soon, you will have to fill out a whole bunch of other forms and pay out your share to the state and federal government. For most of us, it’s a big bite, but if only we were ministers of the lord, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
Read this summary from a tax preparer who did a local priests taxes, and feel your wallet cringe.
The minister gets paid from his church, from which he received cash of $105,000 in 2009. He received a W-2 with wages of $40,000 and a “housing allowance” of $65,000. First, ministers, along with other state workers, are allowed to elect out of social security and Medicare. By electing out, they don’t have to pay into the programs and they don’t ever get to draw from the programs either.
Next, of his housing allowance of $65,000, he only has to recognize as income the portion that he did not spend on ANYTHING related to his house. So, he can essentially deduct mortgage interest, mortgage principal, taxes, utilities, HOA fees, insurance, furniture, appliances, silverware, napkins, gardeners, soap, towels, etc, etc, etc from his income. Normal people can only deduct their interest and property taxes. So, after all of his expenses, he only had to recognize about $9,000 of his housing allowance as income, for a total income of $49,000 ($40,000 in wages and $9,000 of excess housing allowance).
Next, even though he already deducted all of his housing expenses, including interest and property taxes, he still gets to use Schedule A like everyone else. So he is able to deduct his mortgage interest and property taxes again. (Technically, the first time was just an exclusion from income, so he’s not getting double deductions. But essentially he is. The end result is a double deduction).
Final tax bill for Mr Holy-Come-to-Jesus: $740, on an income of $105,000. Final bill for a secular citizen of equal financial status: $18,826.
So the US subsidizes the rich and the pious. Does anyone else see something wrong here?
Also, here’s the kicker:
To top it off, he wrote a letter to our firm asking for a discounted preparation fee because he is a minister of humble means. It made me sick to my stomach.
The pope has the answer, and it’s not the priests. Can you guess whose fault it all is?
If you guessed godless secular society, you’d be right. It doesn’t count for much, though, because you know it was an easy question.
I’m not sure how it works, though. He claims that secular society was making excuses for pedophiles, promoting moral relativism, which I don’t think was at all true…but let’s pretend it was, just to give him the full benefit of the doubt. Then what? A priest sees George Carlin, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace all busily promoting a lifestyle of hedonism and disregard for others, so he is unable to resist buggering the choir boys? Hey, I saw KC and the Sunshine Band live once, so now I have a penchant for cannibalism? Westboro Baptist Church pickets against gays, so suddenly I want to have sex with chickens?
Catholic logic doesn’t seem to have much to do with real logic.
The Council of Conservative Citizens is very angry, and is calling for a boycott of an upcoming movie that offends their values. The CofCC is a paleoconservative organization which has as its first principle the myth that the United States is a Christian country, so you might think that the reason it objects to the Marvel superhero movie Thor is that it promotes a pagan religion. You’d be wrong. They’re upset because Marvel Studios has declared war on Norse mythology, which you’d think they’d consider a good thing, except that it violates another of their principles, that America is supposed to be a white country.
You see, Marvel cast Idris Elba, a black man, to play the god Heimdall.
We may yet witness angrily protesting against the giving of offense to non-existent followers of a non-existent god whose religion is based on a practically non-existent connection between an ancient pagan faith and a comic book. I kind of expect the story to dribble away as everyone realizes how ridiculous they look, but then, I’ve been deeply wrong about how rational people are before. Oh, and I know about Asatru: it’s a wanna-be religion that mainly appeals to the stupidly macho; the Marvel comic book has nothing to do with any real religion, except that it stole its cast of characters from mythology.
And if you think the C of CC is cranky, you should see Stormfront! (Warning! That is a link to a rabidly racist site that I despise so much that references to it are on the comment filter list: you’ll have to refer to it by euphemisms — be creative — in the comments). They’re very indignant. Heimdall is supposed to be white, dammit. And you know what else is wrong with the casting?
Not only that, Natalie Portman (Jane Foster) is a Jew.
Man, those people must be completely incapable of watching a single movie ever made. They just sit in their living room fuming at all the blacks and Jews and Asians and Italians and Inuit and Lakota wandering about in their yards.
This priest says there’s something wrong with you if you have an imaginary friend. We all agree, don’t we, Threadketeers?
(Current totals: 11,548 entries with 1,220,945 comments.)
I want a prize. I just submitted the grades for two of my three classes this term, including the big intro biology class with two lecture sections. No one gave me a beer when I mentioned my classes were done…I need one now.
OK, so I have to finish the one last class — but that one had the take-home essay final. I want a reward now, not tomorrow when I finish that pile.
Fine, be that way. I’ll get back to work on the papers, right after I get the driveway and sidewalk cleared (we’re in the middle of a big snowstorm predicted to drop 5″-7″ of snow on us by the morning). But I better get that beer when they’re done, this time.
This is getting ridiculous. Now people are getting irate at the use of a common word.
The teacher…was explaining to the class how the cold climate in Trevélez, Granada province, aided in the curing of the village’s most famous local product, jamón serrano. The boy told his teacher that hearing the word ‘ham’ in class was offensive to him because of his religion and asked his geography teacher to stop referring to the product which caused him offence.
El Mundo newspaper reports that the boy’s parents then reported the teacher to both the National Police and to the courts. It’s understood that an internal investigation is also underway by the education authority in Cádiz province.
Personally, I only have temper tantrums over “ham” when it’s preceded by “ken”.
So instead, he’s written a Christmas essay about why he’s an atheist. It’s not bad. He pegs why people get so sniffy at innocuous words from an atheist, and what we all have to live for, so there’s that.
So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, f– you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine. “Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. Buts that’s exactly what it is -Ââ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”
You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.
You know, that would be a nice cheery message to slap on the side of a bus or a billboard: “You won’t burn in hell.” Somebody ought to do that just so we can see a few angry Christians bluster about how you will too and you must really hate God to say something so sacrilegious.
