Removing Mormonism from History.

[Broomstick]

Nitpicking time....

But the sweat of your brow squeezed by the clergyman, who tells you that a God that you have no evidence for the existence of not only demands it, but considers it HIS to possess and not YOURS to give, and thus will punish you for robbery... er... "lack of faith in Him", and offers you nothing tangible in return is something you've got no problem with? That it is even moral to do, even though you are offered the choice of a man being held at gun point if what he is saying is true?

Not really. The payment to the organization both in olden times and in modern times goes into the infrastructure of the org. So you see it directly. It would build new places for worship, it would pay for the holy men, it would fund efforts to spread the word and gain followers, it would increase the power and influence of your org, etc.

You forgot "assistance to the poor and unfortunate", which used to be an even more important feature of the Christian churches, and charitable donations are also mandated by Islam. If you're poor but the church can through with food when you were starving and clothes and blankets when you were flooded out that one year and those Sisters in that nunnery over there tended your father during his final illness... well, contributing to the church starts to look like paying insurance premiums. Of course, the church doesn't always come through, but it does so often enough that church membership is prominent among the poor and downtrodden from self-interest as much as faith.

[Spoonist]

You forgot "assistance to the poor and unfortunate", which used to be an even more important feature of the Christian churches, and charitable donations are also mandated by Islam.

Completely agreed, but I skipped that one since not all religions have/had that. For instance Wotanic/Asatru had donations to the org but not any charities that I have heard of. Instead that was handled through the tribal collective and gave no brownie points in valhalla, but rather showed you to be an upstanding citizen of the community.
Well, unless you count giving taxes to the king who then build the temple and takes care of the poor.

[Gil Hamilton]

You forgot "assistance to the poor and unfortunate", which used to be an even more important feature of the Christian churches, and charitable donations are also mandated by Islam. If you're poor but the church can through with food when you were starving and clothes and blankets when you were flooded out that one year and those Sisters in that nunnery over there tended your father during his final illness... well, contributing to the church starts to look like paying insurance premiums. Of course, the church doesn't always come through, but it does so often enough that church membership is prominent among the poor and downtrodden from self-interest as much as faith.

The church does these things. God does not. I volunteered for a few years when I was a teenager at the East Liberty Men's Shelter (run by a church) and prepared dinner in the kitchen of another to serve there. The food was bought by the volunteers, the gas used to deliver it was ours, and the time and effort was ours. The church provided stoves and pots and pans, basically. God didn't do a blessed thing in the entire process, and if we take it as a given that God exists, he trivially could have filled their bellies by himself without any help from Earthly volunteers.

[Spoonist]

The church does these things. God does not. I volunteered for a few years when I was a teenager at the East Liberty Men's Shelter (run by a church) and prepared dinner in the kitchen of another to serve there. The food was bought by the volunteers, the gas used to deliver it was ours, and the time and effort was ours. The church provided stoves and pots and pans, basically. God didn't do a blessed thing in the entire process, and if we take it as a given that God exists, he trivially could have filled their bellies by himself without any help from Earthly volunteers.

So you have personal experience of a dissapointment with faith and the consistency of christian mythology. What does that have to do with the discussion regarding the tithe? I know plenty of people in smaller communities who are not religious but still use the church infrastructure and are paying the church tax for that. So they don't even believe in god and still see it as a good deal.

Sure, you can derail this into a discussion on whether the god as defined by christian mythology exist or not. But then you should at least be a little more open about it. Also if you have been that close to a faith org you probably know the response the apologetics would use against your argument, right?

[Simon_Jester]

As I see it, the most favorable interpretation possible for tithing and similar practices is that God/the god is like a parent saying "Yes, I could do your math homework for you, yes, I could do it in one tenth the time, and yes, that would free you up to go play video games. No, I won't do it. Go do your own homework."

I'm not saying that interpretation is true, or even that it's ethical given the nature of the "homework" we are left to do. But I think it's at least sane, if not one that reflects positively on the god being worshipped by the religion in question.

This is where my parallel discussion with Simon_Jester has lead. You can assume that a god requires these things, but it hinges on them wanting them for petty reasons. He involves Norse gods like Thor while I mentioned Greek gods like Dionysis; however, its completely understandable in their case. After all, most gods of most religions in history were completely non-abstract, they were reflections of the cultures that believed in them turned up to 11, superpowered in all respects, including the pettiness, ego, and wretchedness of those cultures. If you define them as Gods, then there is no problem. I concede that to Simon for super-entities, but not abstract deities. Incidently, this includes the God of the Old Testament, who was anything but abstract, but cruel, jealous, arbitrary and violent.

To be sure; the ancient Israelite concept of God was very like a less laid-back version of Zeus or some such. I mean, he actually had a back, according to them...

A Platonic God might still value minds, and states of mind, though. It's hard to judge exactly how or why or what They ought to value if They're behaving ethically, because that would be so insanely beyond our frame of reference. Perhaps the state of mind They would desire is one of blind, hyperdedicated faith. Or maybe it's a philosophical mindset that tries to examine the purpose of things (teleology-wise), or the nature of things (science-wise). Maybe God wants art critics. I don't know, and it varies both between religions and within religions.

We could reasonably label a Platonic God that wanted people to be in certain states of mind to be immature, cruel, or petty; in other cases the label doesn't stick well.

What God supposedly punishes us for is being actively evil. Other than that, god does not actively punish; He may withdraw protections that He previously extended in response to faith but in almost all cases, we are punished by the consequences of disobedience, not by an obsessive deity with a naughty/nice list. My ringmaster reference was to someone who put on a big show and is actively involved in all aspects of what's going on. God does not seem to resemble either trait; conventional Christianity largely believes that God has no direct dealings on the Earth and I haven't heard of ready-made chapels descending from the clouds recently.

(emphasis added)

That view has no biblical support at all. Not in the OT, the NT, nor in the BoM. Instead it is repeatedly showed that the biblical god, either personally or through ordered agents, interfere and has direct dealings with earthlings.

I suspect that Serafine used the present tense for a reason. Classical Protestant Christianity mostly denies the existence of contemporary miracles,* and classical Catholic/(Orthodox? Not sure about them) Christianity does not but generally only claims very small-scale miracles.

*And by miracles I mean MIRACLES, stuff that no sane person could possibly think of as anything but an act of of divine intervention. Outright violations of the laws of common sense and/or physics.

Not really, you have got it backwards. They are intended to punish people who do whatever the makers of the law regards as being wrong.
If you don't see the difference you have spent to much time in bible class. You see in the biblical law you would be right. Those laws are intended the way you worded it. Secular law is not.
One example would be to commit an act not mentioned in the law but still against the wishes of the law makers. In secular law you can not be punished for that and the law makers would have to write a new law to cover that. But in biblical law you can break the implications of the law and thus be punished.

There have been secular societies where the laws worked that way; I wouldn't care to live in them, of course.

[Gil Hamilton]

As I see it, the most favorable interpretation possible for tithing and similar practices is that God/the god is like a parent saying "Yes, I could do your math homework for you, yes, I could do it in one tenth the time, and yes, that would free you up to go play video games. No, I won't do it. Go do your own homework."

I'm not saying that interpretation is true, or even that it's ethical given the nature of the "homework" we are left to do. But I think it's at least sane, if not one that reflects positively on the god being worshipped by the religion in question.

But this isn't homework. Doing homework isn't the responsibility of the parent, because the parent isn't attempting to learn the material that the child is. In the case of charity, actual people are suffering. If the deity wants something DONE about this, he should fix it. I've heard the apologetic that God IS doing something about it and his volunteers are his agents, but which is more rational; trivially fixing the problem or tasking people with considerably less ability to do the job? Moreover, its clear that people are incapable of actually solving the problem of the poor and suffering on their own, yet somehow this deity permits it to exist in order to give good believers something to do? That's bizarre and even a bit cruel, to utilize agents who aren't as capable when it is a trivial task for a deity.

I've always hated the apologetic that bad things are permitted to exist by a deity because it allows people to do good by fixing it, but what kind of sicko deliberately allows bad situations and suffering for the chance that its believers can resolve it?

To be sure; the ancient Israelite concept of God was very like a less laid-back version of Zeus or some such. I mean, he actually had a back, according to them...

The obvious difference, clearly, is that Zeus was getting laid on the regular basis. When was the last time you've heard of Yahweh going on a date?

A Platonic God might still value minds, and states of mind, though. It's hard to judge exactly how or why or what They ought to value if They're behaving ethically, because that would be so insanely beyond our frame of reference. Perhaps the state of mind They would desire is one of blind, hyperdedicated faith. Or maybe it's a philosophical mindset that tries to examine the purpose of things (teleology-wise), or the nature of things (science-wise). Maybe God wants art critics. I don't know, and it varies both between religions and within religions.

We could reasonably label a Platonic God that wanted people to be in certain states of mind to be immature, cruel, or petty; in other cases the label doesn't stick well.

That doesn't strike me as making God anything but a jerk.

[Spoonist]

There have been secular societies where the laws worked that way; I wouldn't care to live in them, of course.

Conceded. I adjust my statement to modern-democratic-secular law.

The obvious difference, clearly, is that Zeus was getting laid on the regular basis. When was the last time you've heard of Yahweh going on a date?

Well he did it once at least, although he used a pseudonym...

[Samuel]

Does it really require all that much effort for a king to say "slave, turn the pages of the book for me"? It's not the effort but the pettiness of the use that I'm thinking of.

It requires more effort to say that than turn the page. Being all powerful means all things are easy.

God could do so, true. But part of the requisite faith is faith in His existence which would be sort of defeated by a magical megaphone on every street corner proclaiming His existence.

But wanting faith that you exist is not something that makes any sense to aspire to.

Showing true faith would never kill you; believing in something that can't be seen and isn't true isn't faith. But in speaking of the Christian God, we can be sure that it's not the amount of the contribution but the faith involved in it; the widow's mites were used by Jesus as an illustration of great faith cherished by God although two mites is less than one cent.

Except this is the trust faith and not the belief in existance faith.

They are intended to make people act in whatever way the makers of the law regards as being right. In my "hate speech" and "hate crimes" example, they are meant to ensure that people say the "non-hateful" thing and do not "hate" the person they are committing a crime against lest they be punished. Clearly, someone regards "non-hate" and not "hating" to be the moral and good thing and full intend that those covered by such laws be made to act in a moral way. You cannot make a man be good; you can make him act in good ways but this does not make him good.

I'm not seeing the problem with that. Laws against murder operate in the same fashion. You don't make people good by keeping them from killing each other, but you do prevent people from being killed, which is the point. The goal of laws is not to make people better, but to prevent them from doing things you don't want them to do.

[Simon_Jester]

But this isn't homework. Doing homework isn't the responsibility of the parent, because the parent isn't attempting to learn the material that the child is. In the case of charity, actual people are suffering. If the deity wants something DONE about this, he should fix it. I've heard the apologetic that God IS doing something about it and his volunteers are his agents, but which is more rational; trivially fixing the problem or tasking people with considerably less ability to do the job? Moreover, its clear that people are incapable of actually solving the problem of the poor and suffering on their own, yet somehow this deity permits it to exist in order to give good believers something to do? That's bizarre and even a bit cruel, to utilize agents who aren't as capable when it is a trivial task for a deity.

Yes. Which is why I said 'most favorable', not 'good'. In this case, 'most favorable' is equivalent to 'least unfavorable', with the god's goal being to bring about the existence of people who have either:
-Suffered,
-Done something about other people's suffering, or
-Watched other people do and/or not do anything about suffering.

No, none of those is a particularly positive and compelling rationale. I'm not saying it is; please try to understand that. I'd rather identify, consider (and discard?) the most logical reason to do something than fool around with less logical reasons simply because they allow me to cast the idea in a more retarded light.
_____________

To be sure; the ancient Israelite concept of God was very like a less laid-back version of Zeus or some such. I mean, he actually had a back, according to them...

The obvious difference, clearly, is that Zeus was getting laid on the regular basis. When was the last time you've heard of Yahweh going on a date?

I've heard mumbles to the effect that in the old, old, heavily suppressed original Bronze Age Israelite texts, he had a female consort. I cannot prove this, but it would be interesting if it were true, and even more interesting to figure out what happened to her.

A Platonic God might still value minds, and states of mind, though. It's hard to judge exactly how or why or what They ought to value if They're behaving ethically, because that would be so insanely beyond our frame of reference. Perhaps the state of mind They would desire is one of blind, hyperdedicated faith. Or maybe it's a philosophical mindset that tries to examine the purpose of things (teleology-wise), or the nature of things (science-wise). Maybe God wants art critics. I don't know, and it varies both between religions and within religions.

We could reasonably label a Platonic God that wanted people to be in certain states of mind to be immature, cruel, or petty; in other cases the label doesn't stick well.

That doesn't strike me as making God anything but a jerk.

If a Platonic God wants art critics, then They could conceivably get them without being a jerk. If They wants armies of hyperdedicated faithful... not so much.