Just 2 people.
Just 2 people.
This is an silly post with silly implications, even though I appreciate its rhetorical goals
The really c/mildlyinfuriating fact is there are more empty homes in the US than homeless.
Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S. src
You don’t even need to involve churches. You need to hold individuals and businesses who hoard real estate for profit accountable.
I appreciate the background sentiment of this post, but check your predetermined biases before you use the text of this meme to inform your opinion on policy.
very few actually do any good.
Cite this and I will change my opinion.
Am I reading this right? Are you saying that churches are worse than house-hoarding landlords, just because they think they’re doing good but a lot of them don’t? Even the 18% of churches that rent their buildings from other churches^[1]^ (or the ones that rent non-church properties like theaters or schools,) and thus almost certainly don’t even have a property they could give? Or what about the 48% of churches that run or support a food pantry^[2]^, and are thus doing good?
[1] - christianitytoday.com/…/two-churches-one-roof.htm…
[2] - theconversation.com/nearly-half-of-all-churches-a…
If all churches were to be taxed, the estimated new income would be a paltry $2.4 billion yearly. src
If you have an “obvious solution” to homelessness that can be accomplished with $2.4 billion, please do enlighten us. Otherwise you might want to get comfortable with that “silly” label. 👍
Post is about homelessness. Post is categorically not about taxes. So you changed the subject without even indicating you were doing so. 🙄
Awesome cool thank you for your contribution. But yeah glad to see we agree on an entirely tangentially related topic.
Misinformation. Churches do not get handouts.
Corporations do.
Not getting taxed while taking in revenue is a handout. Not sure why you’re so insistent on arguing.
You’re adamant that your random subjective reading if the post is the only valid one and it’s not. It’s weird you want to insist it is
That’s a pretty silly definition of handouts but okay we’ll go with that.
Churches get handouts and corporations get handouts.
But corporations get more handouts and it’s not even close.
Corporations have a material interest in keeping the lower class struggling. Churches do not. There ends my argument.
I’m actually not adamant that there is only one reading? In fact I have commented elsewhere in this post that there are at least two, yours and the one I reaponded to in my first comment.
But you came to my comment trying to attack my argument by shoehorning in your entirely different reading. That’s not only weird behavior, but silly. Also a bit rude. :)
(There is also the matter of the logistics of getting homeless people into those homes, but I will not dive into that here.)
And caring for them, because a lot of them can’t function as normal members of society for whatever reason. The real estate is only one piece of this. But yeah, if people were willing to pay for all that, it wouldn’t be a problem. As it is, it’s always the next guy’s problem.
Correct. The “whatever reasons” you cite include chronic illness, mental illness, addiction, and abusive relationships. These are not unique to homelessness but are disproportionately prevalent in the population and therefore a key obstacle to overcome.
Addressing this takes labor and money to handle, a process that is often undertaken by nonprofits with funding from government, but also from charities and churches.
Not sufficient funding though, obviously. Sure there’s programs, but there’s usually a gigantic waiting list, or the service is so overcrowded some of the potential clients would rather try their luck on their own. And, if the government is involved, there tends to be a kind of red tape that can only be described as mean-spirited.
Maid on Netflix is a great depiction of what it’s like in the first-world underclass, if anyone is interested.
You don’t even need to involve churches.
There are plenty of valid complaints about (many) American religious institutions, but the constant shoe-horning in of complaints about religion in unrelated posts comes across as bitter and myopic.
A lot of us have been victims of the church(hi); its leaves a bloody trench in its wake.
or tried our hand at activism and been smacked down by religious groups for doing the shit they espouse on paper (not strongly me, in any way I care about) and are understandably bitter.
And it hits harder, because most people grew up hearing these are the paragons of moral virtue, and then then pull this shit.
Plus they won’t shut up and get a ton of special treatment, but almost never use it for good (notice nobody’s talking shit about Harriet Tubman, john brown, or the quakers. Diggers levellers anabaptists, too, not even the ULC or church of Satan). Makes a hell of a target.
I was commenting after thatthat had been done. Youre arguing with the wrong person, regardless of how I feel about your points. I’m going to be the bigger person and leave now
Then come back, after a cup of tea, and write this part.
You can be all manner of shitty without religion, but religion as a framework is generally (and they’re not all the same) a tool for getting people to accept and do awful shit-partially, I admit, a (violent) selection pressure, but when you believe blatantly magical bullshit, you’re more easily manipulated against your stated conscience and general interest, and the people willing to do that tend to be the biggest bastards. Its also a mostly static model of reality youre very emotionally attached to, with no or problematic adjustment mechanisms, and those are always dangerous, even when they’re as or more accurate than other options (which none of the big ones are).
Religion doesn’t determine good/bad, but it’s got its finger on the needle. That’s not to say it hasn’t produced things I respect; Spinoza, Hegel, guy whose name I can never remember how to spell who wrote ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’, but I’m not sure how much any of those are attributable to it, and a lot (most? One is too many) of those holy wars (including the worst ongoing genocide I’m aware of at time if writing) serve(d) little/no material interest, of anyone.
So I’m only saying this because you basically walked up and asked me. But also I’m queer and it makes me feel very unsafe. Its a kind of volatility, if someone is, say, any of the abrahamic faiths, that they can just… Turn, almost instantly, for reasons I can’t argue or persuade or accommodate, for no real reason, against my very existence. Ive lost a lot of people to that. And it fucking sucks. No nonreligious person did this to me until ~2016. It took fascism, which I would argue is a (particularly bad) religion.
So your assertions here are the following:
So, point by point:
If you want to hate religion because you’re bitter, that’s fine. You can feel about religion any way that you want. But don’t be offended when you bring it up out of nowhere and someone tells you that your comments are irrelevant to the current discussion.
The world doesn’t revolve around your personal bitterness.
You’re saying I’m saying ‘religion is x’
I’m generally saying ‘religion tends towards x’ so two twins, one raised religious, one not, you could end up with anything.
A hundred sets of twins, one in each set religious, the other not influenced by it at all; the religious ones, on average, are gonna suck more, but only on average.
I do think the concept that ‘the world doesn’t matter because its temporary and only heaven matters, therefore anything is permissible’ is terrifying, and should get you kept away from sharp objects heavy machinery and any position of authority over anything. There are a few specific points doctrine about beliefs like that, that only show up without religion in cases of extreme mental illness, and I think can skew the average of how shit people are, but they tend to differ even between people sitting on the sane pew.
You seem very intent on picking fights about this though, and the things youre arguing against are not the ones I have said. (Some I believe, some I don’t, some you could maybe stretch to being a straw man of something I believe). You don’t seem to really be arguing with me here, and me engaging with what you say seems to be mostly ignored. Are you okay?
Yeah. I regularly attend multiple churches. There are a few bad eggs, sure, but 99% of people I talk to there are either lovely people or normal people. Same goes for workplaces as well. I don’t see Churches as being worse than any other environment I’ve been in. But when assholes are Christians, they weaponise the Bible to justify being an asshole. If anything I think Christians in general should be more vocal about things happening in churches that are not okay, but there may be a concern of causing division in an otherwise wholesome atmosphere.
I have a close friend who converted to Christianity, and they said that a fault they observe in Christians can be that they’re too nice and too vulnerable, to the point that people can get away with not very nice things.
I think Atheism gets a bad rap these days also. I’m sure most atheists are lovely people, but the people who make it known that they’re atheists, or make it their whole personality, are not.
Mmm I think you’re missing one of the core points of this though: churches have historically and traditionally offered and been used as sanctuaries, often by the poor and downtrodden in a society. In the US these days, you don’t see nearly as much of that. It’s more about evangelism and dogmatism and prosperity gospel. Christians in the US demonstrably doesn’t care that much about poor people these days.
More broadly: as someone who was raised Christian but is now a staunch atheist, I and many others would have far fewer issues with Christians if they would actually fucking practice what their religion preaches instead of whatever some MAGApastor tells you that Supply Side Jesus says.
I don’t disagree with you per se? I simply haven’t seen empirical evidence to support this statement:
Christians in the US demonstrably [don’t] care about the poor that much these days.
Meanwhile the evidence that the ultra wealthy are actively screwing over the lower class piles up daily. If you have a citation for that thesis above I’d love to talk.