BOTH! The bureaucracy is shit at helping people. I saw it first hand. I feel religious
houses are best to help people who need help as of right now. When the gov.
steps in it becomes a corrupt mess.

As for the priest who suggested you murder your co worker… WUT?!

Another time I told a minister that I was suicidal and he told me that I would go to hell if I did it. He then quoted some Bible lines then walked me to the church door and set me on my way.

@WhyNow Their advice didn’t help. Was so bad that I assumed that the church is not geared towards giving good advice? Or helping the poor?

Bible verses to help someone in distress and advice to kill a co-worker is pretty bad.

Which begs the question?

What training does the typical priest, minister or pastor have to help those in distress, or suicidal, or in need of counseling?
Is the training on par with a psychologist or psychiatrist? Or EMT paramedic?

All three. Worshiping God is done through various avenues. Fellowship is one (socializing) and to love one another. Jesus tells us to help those in need (charity). So socializing and charity are forms of worship. There are many other ways to show our love for God.

That being said, not all churches are the same, nor are all religious leaders.

They are for syphoning money from the cattle, so the clergy class can lavishly live in luxury in their golden palaces and get wasted on blow and get blown by hookers and altar boys in their private jets.

None of the above.

They are for raising money to hire ministers or priests, send money to the national church office, and have a mechanism to control their adherents into a philosophy. And make women less important.

If churches do things like minister to the sick and help the hungry – not all do – that’s a side benefit. But the primary purpose of any church is to make money continuously.

It’s always about money.

@ragingloli Yet churches give a vast amount of money to help the needy all around the world. Guess that means nothing to someone as hate filled as yourself.

Primarily, they are for helping themselves.

They’re a profit making hypocrisy.

If it was a priest, then I assume he was catholic. ‘nuff said.

As to your question, I think it’s all three goals, plus making some money.

I have to agree with above observations about the church. The institution of the church
has over many years learned how to collect vast sums of money, keep vast vast sums
of money and most tragic of all… protect their own even if not deserved.

But the church goers (the ones leftists disdain most of all) are good people, overall.
They will organize in seconds to feed those who hungry, those who need help. I
know this firsthand. I have seen bishops come for photo ops. while these keep doing
what they do.

By contrast MV took 46 hours to get the national guard to hustle away 50 migrants.

It’s totally ridiculous to lump all churches or synagogues or mosques in the same boat and make generalizations about them.

But the church goers (the ones leftists disdain most of all) are good people, overall.

There are probably as many ‘good people’ in the church goers group as there are leftists who don’t ‘disdain’ them.

Sheesh @WhyNow Generalize much?

@smudges Yes and YES! These things I see.

1. I was mostly agreeing with above posts about the church as an institution.
2. People of any faith and spirituality (I’ve met enough) are good people. All?... NO.
But enough for me to generalize? A very big yes.
3. Do leftist (not liberals, not democrats) disdain people of above #2 yes!!!
They do not trust any question or challenge to their authority!!!

Sure this is my opinion and sure I am generalizing. But

Make of this what you want, but only 0.09% of the Federal prison population is atheist. Apparently churches do not do a very good job of getting their members to behave properly.

^ Is that the federal prison? Nothing like a prison sentence to make you profess
your love of god on the chances it might get you released.

I call a bullshit.

“If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly-you too are a mighty sinner.” – Martin Luther

@WhyNow What do Atheists in prison have to do with churches getting people to behave properly?

@LostInParadise There are a couple views that could be gathered from your information. The first is that atheists only make up about 3% of the US population so it is a relatively small percentage of the population and you would expect a small percentage in prison population.

Another thought is that if you want to go with percentages, blacks make up about 40% of the prison population while they make up only about 13.5% of the total population of the country. Your statement could also be “Apparently blacks don’t do a very good job of getting their kids to behave right.”. You could look at another side of that and say that at 58% of the prison population being white/hispanic when they make up about 75% of the total population that whites and hispanics DO a good job of getting their people to behave.

Isn’t it funny how statistics can be looked at in so many ways?

.09% of prison population compared to 3% of total population is pretty good. That is a factor of 30.

As for the other populations, you have to figure in the fact that crime rate is highly correlated with income level, which in turn relates to prejudice. Atheists have been able to overcome the prejudice that Americans have toward them. Who would you think would have a better chance of being elected president – a black Islamic woman or a white man who was openly atheistic?

They’re for extracting money and obedience from the gullible. No, seriously…religion is a means of social control and a way to extract money from people. That’s the MAIN purpose and always has been. You think it’s an accident Jesus talked about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s? You think it’s an accident they advocate tithes? Blind obedience…sorry, they prefer the term ‘faith’.

Ask yourself, if there was a REAL God that ACTUALLY wanted to be worshipped, do you really think it makes ANY SENSE for him to hide from us? Even if he wants to protect free will and all that, by making his existence known only through a book of unknown authorship….this was the best way he could think of to tell people about himself?

The other irony about religion is that everyone thinks their religion is the “RIGHT” religion, and all others are totally incorrect, got it wrong, mistaken, going down the wrong path. Catholics think Catholocism is the right religion, Protestants think their religion is the right religion, Muslims think their religion is the right religion, Jewish people think their religion is the right religon, etc. I know, I know, it’s called “faith.”

@jca2 That’s why I love Unitarianism. We take aspects of all religions and believe that each person’s own spiritual path is valid. There is a strong social justice component as well.

@janbb: Friends go to the Unitarian church and they like it a lot. They (my friends) happen to be former Catholics who grew up the Catholic way – with lots of fears of eternal damnation, burning in hell, guilt, paranoia about the wrath of God. It’s really terrible. When I was little, Catholic friends would tell me about all the mortal sins and they were so scared of it all.