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From: tdn@spice.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA (Thomas Newton)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: "Tax Supported" Churches.
Message-ID: <459@spice.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 02:16:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: spice.459
Posted: Thu Oct  3 02:16:05 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 05:20:52 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 19
Xref: watmath net.politics:11331 net.religion:7884

I seem to remember that there was some very early court case involving some
state vs. the Federal Government, where the state wanted to tax federal land.
The judge said something to the effect that "the power to tax is the power to
destroy", and ruled that the Federal Government was immune from the tax since
it should not be subject to interference from the state.

It seems to me that the people on this net who are attacking tax exemptions
for churches are the people who invoke "separation of church and state" most
often.  This seems inconsistent:  if giving government the "power to tax" is
giving government the "power to destroy", then making churches anything other
than tax-exempt gives the government the "power to destroy" churches, which
most definitely goes against the idea of separation of church and state.

(Note:  I'm not in favor of either creationism or secular humanism. The former
presents bogus 'science' using religion as justification; the latter presents
a particular set of moral/ethical codes as being the 'objective' set, when in
fact science can only give us information and NOT moral/ethical values.)

                                        -- Thomas Newton


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