Split- US Donations

[VoiceofReason]

If you are going to quote it, live it. Otherwise, you are being hypocritical.

[snowberry23]

But your argument appears to be that your 200 is better and more important than Gates hundreds of millions.

[Tiao21]

the bible isn't a black and white document. You can agree with some parts of it and disagree with others. Even atheists would concede that the Christian faith lays down some moral guidelines that are hard to argue against. I quoted it because it adequately demonstrates the point I was trying to make, and no, I havn't taken it out of context!

[Slimjim]

Well, actually, you have taken it out of context. But I will let you try and figure out how.

[KaciB]

If I give 1% of my annual income to charity and Bill Gates gives 1% of his annual income to charity then we are in effect giving the same amount to charity.

If I give 1% and Gates gives 0.9% then I am giving more, regardless of how much more cold hard cash his 0.9% equates to.

Why are people struggling with this basic concept?

[Roscoeathetalkingdog]

Ok, you are doing 1 of 2 things here.

1) Trying to bait me into returning a hostile response

2) Proving you have no idea about the bible or the teachings of Jesus Christ.

So which is it?

[lacrosseislovee]

Your Bible passage was reasonable, but I wonder about the data. With respect to donations to the United Nations you're probably right. We probably do give less than other countries. I don't doubt it. But with respect to other donations, I genuinely wonder how much private aid is picked up by the statistics. There are many private-aid groups in the United States to which citizens voluntarily contribute after-tax dollars. Collectively the amount of money contributed is huge. This money goes overseas to help the sick and poor in other countries. Are those dollars reflected in the statistics? I sincerely doubt it.



You haven't displayed a very convincing coofftopicnd of the Bible yourself, but I don't want to argue with you about the "widow's mite" parable. Whether it's spot on or not you made a good point all the same. But, I do question whether the data accurately reflects how much American money really goes to other countries.

[thisfool]

I am actually a Roman Catholic (ret), one who went to church twice a week for 10 years, and suffered through 11 years of religious education (read: bible study with a week on Judaism and a week on Islam). So my knowledge of Bible stories is actually still pretty good.

[Mitko]

Actually, neither. I was being very serious. If you want to PM, I would be happy to explain why I think it is out of context.

[FR80C@]

For instance, the US was recognized as giving $35 million to the Tsunami relief. That turned into $350 million. And later turned into $981 million. All of that from the US Government. That doesn't count sources like the Southern Baptist convention which gave nearly $20 million plus volunteers from it's denomination. The United Methodist gave over $32 million. And the list goes on and on and on. And of course, while those church groups contribute to the disasters, they are contributing around the world, disaster or not. Our small church supports a number of medical missionaries who provide free medical care in third world countries.

While our financial aid is huge, I also do not believe the efforts of the Peace Corps is included in government aid dollars as it is both a volunteer function of the State department but also is seen as goodwill building. I may be wrong on this, but I couldn't find anywhere that it was included.