The way that religious people get tax breaks in the US is a disgrace. But Barbara B. Crabb, US District Court judge in Wisconsin, ruled yesterday that the tax exemption given to clergy for their housing allowance is unconstitutional. This allowance is taken advantage of by about “44,000 ministers, priests, rabbis, imams and others” and “some clergy members could experience an estimated 5 to 10 percent cut in take-home pay.” [Read more…]
In February of this year, I wrote about how a group of secular organizations had filed a suit arguing that it was unfair that they had to file Form 990 as part of their tax returns but religious organizations did not. I described then the onerous reporting requirements that all non-profits other than churches have to annually provide to the IRS. [Read more…]
Illinois legalizes same-sex marriage, with governor Pat Quinn signing the legislation into law on Wednesday. The law will go into effect on June 1, 2014. Hawaii’s legislature has also passed a similar measure and its governor signed it into law on Wednesday too. So the two of them become the 15th and 16th states to legalize such marriages. Since both laws were signed on the same day but Hawaii’s law takes effect on December 2, 2013, it may be listed as the 15th state and Illinois as the 16th. [Read more…]
A Costco store in California got into hot water when it placed on a shelf labeled as ‘Fiction’.
Caleb Kaltenbach, pastor of Discovery Church, came across the Bibles while shopping for a gift and tweeted the picture on Friday with the comment: “Costco has Bibles for sale under the genre of FICTION Hmmmm…” [Read more…]
According to the Catholic bishop of Phoenix, Catholics should not help people sign on to health insurance via the Affordable Care Act “because of the implications of these actions for cooperation with evil.” [Read more…]
Frank Schaeffer is a Methodist minister. In 2007, his gay son asked him to officiate at his wedding and he did so, even though the Methodist Church does not approve of same sex marriage. It turns out that three of the pastor’s four children are gay and that the son who got married had earlier contemplated suicide because of the difficulties of being gay in a small rural conservative town in Pennsylvania. [Read more…]
It looks like 2014 is going to be big year from religious mush in films. In addition to the Noah film I wrote about yesterday, Heaven Is For Real will be released around Easter, supposedly based on a true story about a little boy who had a near death experience and then gave a remarkably detailed and accurate account of all the people and things that he had seen in heaven, including things that he could not have known about. [Read more…]
The story of Noah in the Bible poses a serious challenge to religious believers. Taken literally and looked at without using a religious lens, this is a monstrous story of the worst genocide in the history of humankind, and committed by a supposedly loving god no less. Religions have for a long time managed to gloss over this story to obscure the most ghastly aspects of it. They spend time on quite a detailed description of all the preparation work on building and stocking the Ark, quickly go over the actual slaughter, and then spend time on what came afterwards, with rainbows and sunshine and birds and flowers heralding the dawn of a wonderful new world. [Read more…]
I took part in a panel discussion on religion on Wednesday. It was organized by the students living in the dorm of the Cleveland Institute of Music, so about twenty students of classical music attended. The panel consisted of professors of Christianity and Islam from another university, a professor of Judaic studies from my university, and me. I will refer to the others as C, M, and J respectively. [Read more…]
Religious martyrdom is an odd thing. If someone is killed because of that person’s race or ethnicity or sexuality, that death is deplored but people who share the victim’s targeted identity do not see the death as a vindication or a badge of honor of that identity. On the other hand, religions seem to revel in their martyrs, as if having someone die or be killed for their belief somehow makes that belief more worthy. [Read more…]