In what looks to be an attempt to justify tax-exempt status for churches, Christianity Today has released a charming infographic detailing the economic value a church provides to its surrounding community. The information is based on a study by Ram Cnaan that purports to show that 12 historic churches in Philadelphia add an estimated $6 million in annual economic benefits to the community. Some of the economic benefits considered are divorces prevented, drug addicts helped, trees, school services, and so on.

However, I took a look at some of the data, and I’ve come to completely opposite conclusions. These churches, far from helping their surrounding communities, are an economic blight. Here are the results of the original study, together with my commentary demonstrating that these figures actually show economic detriments:

• Out of town members who attend church spend about $15 in town (probably buying something stupid like bumper stickers about how Jesus is a copilot). However, if they weren’t in church, they probably would have went to a football game and spent over $50 on overpriced beer. Net loss of approximately $100.
• In a related issue, churches save about $78,750 ($15,750 per person helped) by getting people off drugs. However, this translates to less money spent on beer, cigarettes, and meth. People who aren’t drunk or high also inconveniently do silly things like save their money, rather than blowing it all at the racetrack or buying hookers. The economic detriments to beer companies, drug dealers, hookers, racetracks, and janitors who mop up vomit more than offset the money saved here. Plus, seriously, the churches only help five people per year get off drugs? Must be all that Jesus-blood drinking that makes it so difficult.
• Churches save $22,500 by preventing divorces. That is, each couple saves $900, a sum of money that is probably promptly spent on vibrators and pornography for the people trapped in such love-less marriages. However, this does not factor in the money lost by preventing divorces. By keeping unhappy people together, divorce attorneys lose about $22,500 in legal fees. By preventing the married couple from breaking up and dating again, churches prevent an estimated $10,000 from being spent on dinners and movies, ice skating, putt-putt courses, and so on—activities that married couples never engage in because they are too busy unconsciously counting each other’s flaws.
• School services save about $3,489,926. Of course, these religious schools offset these costs by teaching their students to believe that Jesus rode dinosaurs and that evolution is a lie. The cost of re-educating these poor, deluded saps in college, and in correcting their lower scores in science achievement tests, is incalculable. But it’s probably a gazillion dollars or thereabouts.
• Volunteer hours worked saves about $94,770 (average weekly hours × 52 weeks × $20.25). But these volunteers are just teaching people to be lazy. All those homeless people come in expecting their free soup, and then they think, “I never have to work again! After all, soup is all I need to survive, and it’s free!” Plus, these people are volunteering to perform a service that gives away costly soup for free, when they could be out shopping at malls or buying beer. And seriously, they estimate the wage for volunteer work (which is typically low-wage, menial labor) as $20.25 per hour? HAHAHAahahahaha ha…ha…ha…heh. That’s the sound of millions of people in the food service industry laughing their asses off right now. And then crying. And then shooting themselves in the face because that’s the amount of money they should be getting if we lived in a just society. What kind of “volunteer” work are these people doing that is worth $20.25 per hour? Are these volunteer investment bankers giving out investing strategies to the homeless?
• Suicide prevention saves $58,800. Of course, this figure does not factor in all the people the church causes to commit suicide, like molested altar boys, stigmatized gays, or people who were just bored during service and thought suicide sounded like a better option. Let’s just call this one a draw.

As you can see, many of these supposed economic benefits are questionable, especially when one ignores reality and makes up figures for opposing costs and detriments, as I have rigorously done (rigorous make-believe is very tiresome). Aside from these criticisms, though, a lot of the original data just seem to be grasping at straws. They include the economic benefits of the church’s lawn (based on water retained) and trees. Bitch, I have a lawn and fucking trees, too, but you don’t see me getting a goddamn tax exemption. I wonder why they didn’t include economic analyses of the pews (free seats, saves $25), the bell towers (free alarm clock, saves $12), and the cobwebs in the attic (decreased fly and mosquito presence, saves $3). Did they include the economic benefits of child molestation, which provides a future boon to therapists and prison guards, or the benefits of turning a nutrient-poor cracker into a protein-rich meat of Christ?

In the end, further study is needed to truly determine the economic worth of churches. And maybe one day, after all sides of the issue have been considered, and every tree, lawn, and leaf are examined for their economic consequences, we’ll finally have an answer.

(Via The Friendly Atheist)

Every year, with the precision and regularity of an atomic clock, Fox News finds a way to invent controversy by imagining the impending doom of Christmas, which is supposedly being attacked on all sides by liberals, Jews, and atheists alike, who are militantly waging a war on Christmas. The evidence offered for the cultural demise of the United States’ most prolific holiday usually amounts to holiday catalogs emblazoned with sayings like “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” or “Tis the Season.” Obviously, shout the scaremongers on Fox News, the fact that these catalogs—decorated with images of Christmas trees, Christmas lights, and Santa Claus—do not explicitly say “Merry Christmas” is evidence of a vast, left-wing conspiracy to destroy Christmas. I can only imagine impassioned and frightened Fox News viewers huddled in their suburban homes at night, hearing dastardly tales of a liberal siege on Christmas, fearfully gripping their shotguns on their paid Christmas vacations from work as the blinking Christmas lights of all their neighbors filter through their drapes and the sounds of Salvation Army bells rung by men in Santa suits reverberates through their homes. Tis the season to be delusionally paranoid—so much so that one would almost consider it plausible that a holiday celebrated by almost everyone, that even serves as an economic bedrock for most retail businesses, is going to end because a few brochures say “Happy Holidays”. One has to wonder that when the Christians were stealing the Christmas celebration from the pagans, did pagan news outlets of the time also sensationalize the death of Christmas, with portly, socially conservative pagans angrily carving shrill anti-Christian ramblings into stone tablets?

Well know about retailers who advertise “Christmas in July” sales to drum up extra revenue; well, I have my own Christmas in July corollary. Or at least Christmas in September. It’s the war on Christmas in July!  For those who don’t know about the war on Christmas, this Fox News report—detailing that Christmas is being sabotaged by secular humanists and atheists who advertise on buses—embodies the standard story.

Why the bus ad is being framed as an attack on Christmas is not adequately explained. The advertisement in question merely says, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” At the bottom is a picture of a person wearing a Santa costume shrugging. Obviously, the purpose of the ad is to inform others that belief in God is not necessary for moral behavior. Santa and Christmas are only tangentially relevant, and are only included because the phrase “be good for goodness’ sake” is a riff off of a line from a popular Christmas carol.

Belief in God isn’t even necessary to celebrate Christmas, particularly because Christmas is becoming an increasingly secular holiday. The pagans understood the true, feel-good nature of Christmas, focusing on portly fat men and spritely elves and joyous gift-giving. Christianity, of course, tried to incorporate the pious, serious Jesus, but that hasn’t worked out as well, because Jesus makes people feel guilty, ashamed, and sad. The guy was beaten and crucified for our supposed sins, has never told a joke, and incessantly preaches. If he showed up at a cocktail party, his hands bloody, his body gaunt, preaching about fire and brimstone, he’d be a total buzz kill. This is why secular culture has largely uprooted Christmas from the Christianity that was haphazardly glued to the holiday in the first place. The Christians stole the holiday from the pagans, and now the secularists have stolen Christmas from the Christians. Christmas is about snow, lights, horridly bland television specials, forced internment with one’s family members, and rampant materialism. Jesus is, at best, a hazy afterthought—akin to the embarrassed recollection that one is married after waking up half drunk in another person’s bed. So you see, the “war” on Christmas, or at least the silly Jesus-fied version of it, has already been won. Religion hasn’t been the most important part of Christmas for a long, long time, and it’s time the conservatives stopped waging their little rebellion against our secular celebration of family, gift-giving, and charity.  Leave our godless, secular holiday alone!