The outrageous subsidies to religion in America

August 10, 2012 • 5:53 am

If you want to get angry about the preferential treatment of religion in the U.S., read this new report by The Council for Secular Humanism: “How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the United States.” This piece, published in the June/July issue of Free Inquiry, is written by three academics who did extensive research: Ryan Cragun, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Tampa, Stephanie Yeager, a senior business management major and a liability insurance broker, and Desmond Vega, a psychology major at the University of Tampa.  Their goal was to estimate how much the American government (and state governments) subsidize religion by giving them tax breaks and other benefits. That is, what is the revenue lost to the nation through such subsidies?

The summary of revenue income to churches is on the left side of the following figure, and government subsidies on the right.  Most of us already know that although churches garner considerable income from donations, fund-raisers, and even gambling activities like bingo games, they’re not subject to the taxes that corporations would pay—or many other taxes. To wit:

  • Churches pay no taxes on the donations they receive.
  • Religious institutions pay no property taxes, though those taxes (paid by property-owning citizens) go for public services like police protection and firefighting, which also benefit the churches.
  • Religions, though many of them have investments such as stocks, pay no investment taxes (e.g., capital gains tax).
  • When buying goods and services, religions don’t have to pay state sales tax.
  • Ministers, unlike everyone else, can deduct the cost of their housing (mortgages, rent, furnishings, upkeep, etc.) from their taxable income. This can be considerable in the case of rich megachurch pastors like Rick Warren.

Here’s the flowchart (this and the following table from Free Inquiry):

So what does this add up to? The chart below gives the estimates of government subsidies to religion, which the authors consider conservative—especially because they couldn’t estimate several subsidies.  The bottom line is that the U.S. government, i.e., the U.S. taxpayer, subsidizes religion to the tune of at least $71 billion per year!

As the authors note:

To put this into perspective, the combined total of government subsidies to agriculture in the United States in 2009 was estimated to be $180.8 billion. Religions receive at least 40 percent of the subsidy that agriculture does in the United States. Another way to illustrate the size of the subsidy may be to illustrate how much tax revenue would increase at the state level if religious institutions had to pay property taxes. In Florida, where the state government’s budget was $69.1 billion in 2011, the amount of tax revenue lost from subsidizing religious property was $2.2 billion or 3 percent of the state budget. The additional revenue would have mostly prevented the $1.1 billion cut to firefighter and police retirement plans and the $1.3 billion cut to public schools.

They conclude as well that while these subsidies may not encourage the growth of religion, they may still keep some small denominations or churches alive that would otherwise fold.

What about the counterargument that religions should be subsidized because they engage in charitable work? The authors show early on in the article that direct charity is actually quite small for many churches (the Mormon Church, for example gives only 0.7% of its annual income to charitable causes, while Methodists give 23%, but these are still considerably less than charitable organizations like the Red Cross. which gives 92.1% of its revenue as direct help to the afflicted). But for those who want religion given a break for its charity, the authors offer a solution:

For those individuals who argue that religions should receive subsidies because of their charitable work, there is an easy solution for that problem. If religions want to engage in charitable work, they should separate religious activities and finances from their charitable activities and finances. The charities run by religions could be tax-exempt, but the religious organizations would be treated like civic leagues or sports clubs or any other volunteer organization that exists for entertainment or the benefit of its members. Those groups are not tax-exempt and are not subsidized by the government.

And they reach a reasonable (and somewhat humorous) conclusion:

Finally, as the perceived “benefit” to society of religions becomes increasingly irrelevant as more and more Americans cease to utilize their “services” by disaffiliating, it will also be increasingly unfair for a large percentage of nonreligious Americans (almost 40 percent in some states) to subsidize the recreational activities of others. These subsidies should be phased out. But since that is unlikely to happen, we’d accept the following alternative: the ability to write off our annual entertainment expenses as “donations”; the subsidizing of all of our housing expenses, including utilities and maintenance costs; being exempt from paying taxes on businesses we start related to our primary purpose in life (say, a micro-brewery); direct cash transfers to us from the government for trying to convert people to our worldviews while claiming to provide social services; and, most important, the right to host games of bingo without reporting our income as gambling revenue!

I love the characterization of religion as a “recreational activity,” but of course that’s precisely what it seems like to an an atheist.

The more I thought about this piece, the more I realized how manifestly unfair it is for the state and national governments of a secular country to subsidize religion.  Yes, in Europe there are state-supported churches (also unconscionable, in my view), but in the U.S. we have constitutionally mandated freedom of religion—and that includes the freedom to not be religious.  To me, that means that nonbelieving taxpayers should not be supporting, however indirectly, religious organizations. In fact, nobody should be supporting the activities of religious organizations except through their direct donations. The United States government should not be in the business of propping up religions, many of which are wealthy and should pay their fair share for the government services they receive.

And it’s curious to me that nobody but atheists seem to question these subsidies. Perhaps some religious folks who favor secularism have done so, but I’m not aware of it.

We need to stop subsidizing Americans who purvey fairy tales.

Rover’s camera and a lovely panorama from Mars

August 10, 2012 • 5:01 am

Over at ExtremeTetch.com, there’s a nice article on “Why does the $2.5 billion dollar Curiosity use a 2-megapixel camera?” The sensor in a high-ish end digital camera, in contrast, has a sensor ranging 10 to 40 megapixels.  Why the skimping? The short article gives four reasons, one of which is simple: that’s the sensor that was available when they first started designing the Curiosity in 2004 (the rover has four cameras).  But there are other, technical reasons that you can read about in the article.

Here’s one of the cameras, from dpreview.com, where you can read pretty much the same info about the sensor but also seem some photos from the rover.

More interesting, to me at least, is an interactive moving panoramic view of Mars at the bottom of the article that you must not miss.  It gives a 360-degree view around the last Rover, described like this (you can see the panorama on full screen here or simply click on the full-screen icon in the small photo):

For reference, you can check out this panorama of 817 stitched images taken by the Opportunity rover from December 2011 to May 2012. The shots were taken on Greeley Haven, on the western edge of Mars’ Endeavor Crater.

You can zoom in and out, speed up or slow down the images (use the “hand” icon), and get a feeling of what it’s really like to stand on Mars during the day. Here’s a screenshot, but remember to click the link above, and go to the bottom, to see the real panorama:

h/t: Michael

Cool NASA dudes

August 9, 2012 • 12:26 pm

NASA: dispelling the image that scientists are nerds.

First, meet Adam Steltzner, who designed the crazy, Rube-Goldbergish system for landing Rover on Mars.  There’s a National Public Radio profile of him which you can either read or listen to. But the salient fact is this (emphasis mine):

He has pierced ears, wears snakeskin boots and sports an Elvis haircut. He’s quick to laugh and curious about everything. Steltzner’s laid-back style makes team meetings a jolly affair. I stopped by one of those meetings during my visit. The jollity was still there, but it was clear that the prelanding tension was rising.

And he’s a handsome dude, too:

But the guy who has received most of the attention is Mohawk Guy, with the eponymous haircut and stars shaved into the side of his head. As the Atlantic reports:

The wearer, it turns out, was mission Activity Lead Bobak Ferdowsi, manning the controls in NASA’s self-imposed sea of powder-blue polos. Ferdowsi gets a new hairdo for each new mission — and this particular coif was the one voted on, for the Curiosity landing, by the rest of his team. It was meant to be patriotic as well as cosmic: Apparently the original design was supposed to incorporate blue.

Another nice-looking fellow:

Of course he was subject to many “tweets”(these from the Atlantic piece):

And he even replied:

As HuffPo reports, Bobak has received many marriage proposals on Twitter, e.g.,

And of course Ferdowsi now has his own tumblr page (“NASA needs more mohawks”)—now up to 16 pages of images, many of them hilarious, like this one:

Why can’t fruit flies inspire such ardor?

Guest post: NASA, atheism, Mars, and God

August 9, 2012 • 10:16 am

Who remembers Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the earliest New Atheist of our era? Here reader Sigmund remembers her (he’s edited out a clip for us) and her dislike of the scripted religious aspect of NASA missions.  If you think of her, as some do, as a humorless, bigoted zealot, you’ll be surprised at her humor in the video.  But her fabled assertiveness comes through loud and clear!

As Wikipedia notes:

She is best known for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling ending official Bible-reading in American public schools in 1963. Officially-sponsored prayer in schools had been ended a year earlier by the Supreme Court in Engel v. Vitale. O’Hair later founded American Atheists and became so controversial that in 1964 Life magazine referred to her as “the most hated woman in America.”

That’s true, for I remember how reviled she was.  Back then it was not okay to be an out atheist—especially one that actually accomplished something.  Now it’s easier, though still hard: O’Hair’s spiritual (do I dare use that word?) heir is Jessica Ahlquist.

O’Hair met a sad end:

In 1995 [O’Hair] was kidnapped and murdered, along with her son Jon Murray and granddaughter Robin Murray O’Hair, by former American Atheist office manager David Roland Waters.

But on to Sigmund’s post:

Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Richard Dawkins and Experiment P

by Sigmund

The justifiable feelings of pride in the accomplishments of science in landing the Curiosity rover on Mars are sometimes accompanied by the worry that religion will, yet again, try to sneak its foot in the door.

A commenter, “Lansolo” on Richard Dawkins site raised the following point:

“I’m dreading the day that a US astronaut steps onto the surface of Mars for the first time, and utters the requisite soundbyte praising god for the beauty of the universe that he created, and for delivering the crew safely to their destination. When I hear scientists talking about “God,” it’s hard for me to take them seriously as scientists. I guess not all astronauts are scientist though.”

To which Richard Dawkins replied:

Don’t despair, things may not be as bad as they seem. Last year, at the splendid STARMUS conference in Tenerife that brought together astronauts and scientists, I had many agreeable conversations with Bill Anders, astronaut who famously read from the first Chapter of the book of Genesis while orbiting the moon on Apollo 8 in 1968. Major General Anders, a gallant, intelligent and entertaining man, told me he has no respect for religion. He read the Bible in space only because he was told to by NASA.

What Dawkins is referring to here is something that I had heard about previously but had mistakenly assumed as an apocryphal tale spun by Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Her organization, American Atheists, had filed a federal lawsuit against NASA in 1969, aimed at preventing a reoccurrence of religious encroachment in the Space Program, something she regarded as a violation of church/state separation (the lawsuit eventually failed as she was judged to lack ‘standing’ in the matter.) The incident involved the three astronauts of Apollo 8, the first manned mission around the moon, reading from the book of Genesis as the Earth came into view on Christmas Eve, 2008. The occasion is also famous for the capture, by Bill Anders, of the famous Earthrise photograph.

O’Hair can be seen in the following excerpt from the 1970 documentary ‘Madalyn’, revealing that the “spontaneous” event was actually carefully scripted by NASA, “Experiment P” – an indictment finally confirmed by Bill Anders’ admission to Dawkins.

Fastest mammal on the planet: cheetah sets world speed record

August 9, 2012 • 6:10 am

Here’s the fastest 100-meter dash run by any living mammal (I’m not sure, though, whether some aquatic creatures might not beat that, and falcons, of course, can dive at 200 mph+).

National Geographic gives the story:

Sarah the cheetah has shattered the world record for the standing 100-meter dash, clocking a time of 5.95 seconds—making Olympian Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds look positively stodgy by comparison.

On a USA Track & Field-certified course established by the Cincinnati Zoo, the 11-year-old cheetah was radar-timed at up to 61 miles (98 kilometers) an hour, according to a Thursday announcement by zoo officials and National Geographic magazine. The magazine photographed Sarah and other zoo cheetahs for a project to be featured in its November issue, which will include unprecedented high-speed pictures.

Sarah’s June 20 sprint is the fastest timed 100 meters ever run by anything on the planet, the officials said—though it was no suprise to Cathryn Hilker, founder of the Cincinnati Zoo’s Cat Ambassador Program, who helped raise Sarah from a cub.

“Nobody can run like Sarah,” Hilker said. “She’s special. I always knew she could run under six seconds, but to see it happen like this is wonderful.”

“She looked like a polka-dotted missile,” added National Geographic photo editor Kim Hubbard. “I’ve never seen anything alive run that fast.”

When I saw the video on YouTube, I thought that cheetahs in the wild, which are literally running for their lives (e.g., their dinner), might go faster.  The article addresses that issue:

As astonishingly swift as Sarah’s world record time of 5.95 seconds might seem in a human context, it’s almost certain that cheetahs in the wild—lean, hungry, chasing down antelopes for their own survival or that of their cubs—have run considerably faster.

“This is just for fun, as far as they’re concerned,” Hilker said. “They know they’re going to get fed. They can see the finish line.”

h/t: Ben Goren

Another setback for secularism in America

August 9, 2012 • 4:40 am

I’m from Missouri (show me!), and so am especially disturbed at the latest doings in my natal state.  On Tuesday, by a 5-1 margin, voters approved a “right to pray” amendment to the state Constitution that guarantees what the residents already have, but adds a couple of nefarious provisions.  Missouri’s Constitutional Amendment 2, voted in by a 779,628  to 162,404 margin, reads in part (download the full text here):

Section 5. That all men and women have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; that no human authority can control or interfere with the rights of conscience; that no person shall, on account of his or herreligious persuasion or belief, be rendered ineligible to any public office or trust or profit in this state, be disqualified from testifying or serving as a juror, or be molested in his or her person or estate; that to secure a citizen’s right to acknowledge Almighty God according to the dictates of his or her own conscience, neither the state nor any of its political subdivisions shall establish any official religion, nor shall a citizen’s right to pray or express his or her religious beliefs be infringed; . . .

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure:

  • That the right of Missouri citizens to express their religious beliefs shall not be infringed;
  • That school children have the right to pray and acknowledge God voluntarily in their schools; and
  • That all public schools shall display the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution.

And here’s the bad part: the amendment also guarantees

that students may express their beliefs about religion in written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their work; that no student shall be compelled to perform or participate in academic assignments or educational presentations that violate his or her religious beliefs; . .

That is, students aren’t compelled to learn about or write about evolution, the Big Bang, or even things like medicine if they contravene what a student has been brainwashed to believe.

As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

Any immediate impact of the amendment, which takes effect in 30 days, is still unclear. The new amendment broadly expands the protections in the state’s constitution by adding new sections on religious issues. In addition to protecting voluntary prayer in school, the amendment:

• Ensures the right to pray, individually or in groups, in private or public places, as long as the prayer does not disturb the peace or disrupt a meeting.

• Prohibits the state from coercing religious activity.

• Protects the right to pray on government property.

• Protects the right of legislative bodies to sponsor prayers and invocations.

• Says students need not take part in assignments or presentations that violate their religious beliefs.

That last provision may soon become the subject of litigation, some critics warned. They said it could lead to students skipping science classes or assignments when they disagree with teaching about the origins of man.

Supporters said those fears were overblown.

Overblown?  The state constitution makes it legal for students to miss classes on evolution.  If that’s not bait for a lawsuit, I don’t know what is.  Better to litigate now than wait for the students to start boycotting their biology classes.  “Freedom of religion” is not the same as freedom to refuse, in public schools, exposure to truths about the world that happen to contradict iron-age myths.  That last provision is, I believe, aimed specifically at evolution. In what other area of instruction are students’ religious beliefs “violated”?

An editorial in Tuesday’s New York Times, written before the amendment passed, warns of further dangers:
But the amendment is unnecessary because the state and federal constitutions and court rulings already guarantee these rights. It would, instead, create confusion and wreak havoc in classrooms by giving students the right to refuse to read anything or do any assignments that they claim offends their religious views. . .

Another change could lead to litigation about where nonsectarian, constitutional invocations cross the line into sectarian, unconstitutional prayers; instead of seeking the Almighty’s blessing, for example, officials at public events could ask for Jesus’s blessing.

The wording would further encourage “the General Assembly and the governing bodies of political subdivisions” to invite ministers and others “to offer invocations or other prayers” at public sessions.

Amendment 2 springs from the view that religious freedom is vulnerable unless the Missouri Constitution is revised. But the Missouri Supreme Court has already said that the protection of religious freedom by the State Constitution is more “explicit” than what the First Amendment provides and its protection against government establishment of religion more “restrictive.”

If Missourians amend their Constitution, they will erode rather than enhance their religious freedom.

If this isn’t challenged in the courts, expect a spate of similar legislation in benighted states, and a new crop of kids who will emerge from school ignorant of their origins and those of every other species. Equating refusal to learn important scientific truths with religious freedom is a devilishly clever strategy, but won’t fly—unless it goes to the hyperconservative U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on issues like this.

h/t: Eliot

RIP Robert Hughes, Marvin Hamlish, Judith Crist

August 8, 2012 • 9:55 am

This last week has seen the passing of three notables from the world of art: Robert Hughes, Marvin Hamlisch, and Judith Crist. I liked them all, and I’ve linked to the obituaries in The New York Times.

Australian art critic and writer Robert Hughes died Monday at age 74 in the Bronx.  One of the few art critics I could actually read without seething at their pretention or obfuscation, Hughes called them as he saw them, and didn’t pull his punches. His books taught me a lot about art, and I particularly shared his famous disdain for the odious Julian Schnabel, whose “art” I found execrable. (Schnabel redeemed himself somewhat by directing the wonderful movie, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”)  Hughes is of course most famous for his television series (and later book) “The Shock of the New,” which I thought was very well done, and I loved his history of Australia, The Fatal Shore.  The man is gone too soon, but had been badly injured in an auto accident in 1999.

Here are two of his quotes from the NYT quotes page:

On the art market, in Time magazine, 1989:

If there were only one copy of each book in the world, fought over by multimillionaires and investment trusts, what would happen to one’s sense of literature – the tissue of its meanings that sustain a common discourse? What strip mining is to nature, the art market has become to culture.

From The New Republic, 1987:

The unexamined life, said Socrates, is not worth living. The memoirs of Julian Schnabel, such as they are, remind one that the converse is also true. The unlived life is not worth examining.

*****

Songwriter Marvin Hamlish passed away Monday in Los Angeles. He was 68.  As the NYT says:

He is one of a handful of artists to win every major creative prize, some of them numerous times, including an Oscar for “The Way We Were” (1973, shared with the lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman), a Grammy as best new artist (1974), and a Tony and a Pulitzer for “A Chorus Line” (1975, shared with the lyricist Edward Kleban, the director Michael Bennett and the book writers James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante).

All told, he won three Oscars, four Emmys and four Grammys. His omnipresence on awards and talk shows made him one of the last in a line of celebrity composers that included Henry Mancini, Burt Bacharach and Stephen Sondheim. Mr. Hamlisch, bespectacled and somewhat gawky, could often appear to be the stereotypical music school nerd — in fact, at 7 he was the youngest student to be accepted to the Juilliard School at the time — but his appearance belied his intelligence and ability to banter easily with the likes of Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin. His melodies were sure-footed and sometimes swashbuckling. “One,” from “A Chorus Line,” with its punchy, brassy lines, distills the essence of the Broadway showstopper.

“The Way We Were” is a schlocky movie which I loved (Redford [Hubbell] and Streisand [Katie] were an improbable couple, but the farewell scene in front of the Plaza Hotel always chokes me up). Hamlish’s song always reminds me of that finale, when the once-smitten pair exchange a few poignant last words before Streisand, still the radical, joins a demonstration.

Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.

Bring her for a drink when you come.

I can’t come, Katie. I can’t.

I know.

How is she?

She is just beautiful.   You would be so proud of her.

I’m glad.   Is he a good father?

Yes. Very.

Good.

See you, Katie.

See you, Hubbell.

Ban the bomb!

*****

Judith Crist died yesterday in Manhattan at age 90. She was a prolific movie critic who reviewed in several places, including the New York Herald Tribune, New York Magazine (where I read her), and the television show Today.  While I didn’t fancy her reviews as much as I did those of her contemporary Pauline Kael, I liked her (i.e., her opinions agreed with mine). From the NYT obit:

Her zingers could be withering. In March 1965, she panned three major releases in a single “Today” appearance: “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (“A kind of dime-store holy picture”), “Lord Jim” (“A lot of heavy five-cent philosophy”) and “The Sound of Music” (“Icky-sticky”).

Reviewing Anne Bancroft’s performance as a troubled wife in the 1964 film “The Pumpkin Eater,” Ms. Crist wrote in The Herald Tribune, “She seems a cowlike creature with no aspirations or intellect above her pelvis.” Of “The Sound of Music,” a box-office smash in 1965 and one of the most popular films of all time, she said, “The movie is for the 5-to-7 set and their mommies who think the kids aren’t up to the stinging sophistication and biting wit of ‘Mary Poppins.’ ”