Posted on 08/24/2013 1:47:16 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Atheists have long argued that atheism is not a religion as they deny the existence of God or any other form of deity. Atheists, starting with Madalyn Murray O’Hair, are the ones that led the efforts to remove the Bible, prayer and all aspects of Christianity out of the public schools, government buildings and property.
Christians have long argued that atheism is a religion as it is a belief in no God and that by removing Christianity from schools established atheism as the official religion of the public school system. It is impossible to have a vacuum of religious belief and when one religion is forcibly removed from a system, another religious belief will automatically replace it. But we have been unsuccessful in convincing the courts of this fact, but now, thanks to government lawyers, Christians may be able to make this argument in courts around the nation.
It all started in 2009 when Laurie Gaylor, Co-Founder and Co-President of the atheist organization Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit in California to get the parsonage tax break taken away from clergy. Currently, ministers and clergy are allowed to take a percentage of their income as a tax-free housing allowance and Gaylor doesn’t believe that’s fair.
The California lawsuit was eventually dropped, but they later re-filed the lawsuit in Wisconsin in 2011.
However, her efforts have been turned in a direction that she did not expect. Lawyers for the federal government are now saying that leaders of atheist groups can function as ministers since atheism can be considered a religion and therefore, Gaylor and her husband would eligible for the tax-free housing allowance.
This has further rankled the atheist leader who has told the government attorneys that she does not want the tax break. She told them:
“We are not ministers. We are having to tell the government the obvious — we are not a church.”
Yet this mess started when Gaylor’s own board of directors voted to give her and her husband Dan Barker, also Co-Founder and Co-President of FFRF, a $15,000 a year housing allowance. Gaylor and Baker said they could not claim the housing allowance as tax free income because they were not clergy.
To everyone’s surprise, the federal government disagreed with them. The federal attorney’s filed a brief with the Justice Department in which they argued that Buddhism or Taoism does not include a belief in God but are recognized as religions. Therefore, atheism should also be recognized as a religion and that their leaders do qualify for the tax-free housing allowance.
Gaylor says she and her husband will continue to fight to do away with the exemption as they don’t believe any religious groups deserve any special treatment. I suspect that she realizes that if she and her husband accepted the tax break that it would be their admission that atheism is a religion and they can’t allow that to happen.
But if the federal government is arguing that atheism is a religion, then how do they justify public schools teaching that there is no God – aka atheism. Science classes all across the country fight to prevent biblical creation from being taught because it is a religious view. Instead, they push evolution, which says there is no God and thus, according to the federal government, is a religion and therefore should not be allowed to be taught in public schools either. Christians around the nation need to jump on this precedent and fight to get evolution out of the public schools or force them to allow the teaching of both evolution and creationism side by side.
So..if the Feds now claim that Atheism is a Religion...then all court rulings favoring them would now be considered “establishment of religion”? Might be a way to overturn some of the anti-Christian court rulings over the years
I expect the day will come when Government declares itself a Religion, THE Religion and a tyrant like Obama its Pope.
Religion=theism. No religion=atheism. Simple as that.
“I expect the day will come when Government declares itself a Religion,”
______________________________________________
They already have, even though they do not acknowledge it.
We know it as Communism, the godless religion.
the·ism
[thee-iz-uhm]
noun
1.
the belief in one God as the creator and ruler of the universe, without rejection of revelation (distinguished from deism ).
2.
belief in the existence of a god or gods (opposed to atheism ).
So no, it’s not as simple as that.
Mammalian evolution is heterosexual...
Goodbye gay marriage.
Congress can use the tax code to favor any group it pleases.
Distinction without difference.
For not being a religion you seem to be quite evangelistic in your proselytizations.
Nope. They believe in “nogod”
There’s an entire cult of belief based on “nogod”.
“nogod” is bigger, badder, smarter...even ‘brilliant’ according to the cult of nogod.
Nogod’s creation story begins with nothing that proceeds to something that gets zapped and becomes life that transitions from one kind to new kinds to us and probably to ufo cultures someplace in space.
The morality of nogod is survival of the fittest, and the practice of nogod is do what you like.
The end result of nogod is annihilation and the eventual destruction of everything into nothing again.
Nogodders sue, agitate, preach, practice, and proselytize.
Nogod....the atheist religious answer to everything: Origins, meaning, destiny.
One to add to your list: under atheist "doctrine" there is no such thing as soul or spirit - and the mind is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain.
An epiphenomenon is a secondary phenomenon which can cause nothing to happen. In other words, the atheist is not culpable for anything "the brain did it."
Also, several years ago with the 7th Court of Appeals determined that atheism is a religion, I predicted it would actually help us in throttling the '62 decision which banished God's name from public schools and ultimately resulted in atheism being the established religion of the U.S. (as it is in so many European countries.)
From the article:
It all started in 2009 when Laurie Gaylor, Co-Founder and Co-President of the atheist organization Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit in California to get the parsonage tax break taken away from clergy. Currently, ministers and clergy are allowed to take a percentage of their income as a tax-free housing allowance and Gaylor doesn’t believe that’s fair. The California lawsuit was eventually dropped, but they later re-filed the lawsuit in Wisconsin in 2011... Lawyers for the federal government are now saying that leaders of atheist groups can function as ministers since atheism can be considered a religion and therefore, Gaylor and her husband would eligible for the tax-free housing allowance. This has further rankled the atheist leader who has told the government attorneys that she does not want the tax break.I'd like to see her and her husband get a nice neck break.
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