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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

> But yeah, it's...evil when a religion gets transactional with it's charity.

Getting transactional with charity is the whole point. That's why religious organizations often fight against public programs instead arguing that religiously affiliated charity should take its place (receiving public funding to do so in many cases).

Utah in particular loves to under-fund programs, and let the church pick up the slack. The benefit to them is that it is both transactional, and allows them to exclude as they desire.

The Mormons might be nice, but they shouldn't be getting public money to provide public assistance. They should be cut out entirely and taxes should fund these programs directly and fairly.

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As far as I know, they don't get any public money[0]. It comes from donations from their membership.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_The_Church_of_Jesu...

But they're tax exempt - which is kinda like getting public money. Or at least, not paying money other businesses have to pay

So you want to remove separation of church and state?

I don't think that's a charitable way of interpreting the comment.

Mormons as a rule are very generous with the church, and often with church affiliated charities. If the deduction for charitable giving was removed, the Mormon church would do fine, and likely so would many of their charitable activities, and it would seem more like separation of church and state to me.

If the charitable giving deduction were removed, I guess I agree that at that point there wouldn't be a way to argue (from a constitutional perspective) against Mormons in Utah voting for low levels of government support.

As it happens, I'm not convinced the "all charity should be provided by religious institutions in Utah" narrative for Utah voters is actually accurate; Salt Lake City at least is fairly generous with the homeless, at a government level.

> Utah in particular loves to under-fund programs, and let the church pick up the slack.

But does Utah give that money to the church programs instead? It’s not clear from your comment.

Cynicism like that makes me sad. Cynicism is one of those weird attitudes that totally justifies itself. It is the psychological interior of the "defect/defect" Nash equilibrium. It's saying "Oh yeah, all politicians are liars, all charity is a scam," which tends to produce a world where all politicians are liars, and all charities are scams. When an exception occurs, the cynic says, "Yeah, that honest politician is going to get eaten alive by the liars; those selfless charities are going to go bad someday, out competed by the transactional ones." And everyone who believes this makes it more likely that it is so.

But spirituality is quite real, and there are those who really believe in selfless giving without expectation of anything in return. Lots of people. They exist in the "cooperate/cooperate" equilibrium, and honestly, it's better there. It's not that you don't see the cheating, the greed, especially in the name of charity, its just that you're choosing to do something different, something that feels more wholesome. (I say this as someone who's served a bunch of meditation courses, and really enjoyed it.)

You sidestepped actually addressing points made.

Why are religious organizations fighting public assistance programs? Why are their members arguing that a church should provide these same services instead? Your "criticise the crique" strategy isn't actually a retort, just an argument that religious affiliated organizations should be above criticism wholesale.

If religions want to stay out of politics, I'm all for leaving them be. But as it stands they're a major power broker, particularly at a local level, and therefore cannot be ignored (particularly when they're arguing for religious discrimination of public services).

You said, "Getting transactional with charity is the whole point." I disagree. It's the point for some, but not all religious charities. It is wrong to paint all with the same brush. I won't comment on the Mormon relation to the state; I know only about their relationships with some individuals.

My other point was noting the cynicism behind your view, and why I think there are better options.

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