Has the tough economy got you down? Things could be worse — you could be wasting lots of money on religion.
CNN profiles a Jewish family, a Muslim family, and a Christian family who lead faith-based lives beyond their means.
Collectively they spend thousands of extra dollars on kosher food, sharia-compliant mortgages, enormous families, “divinity school” tuition, faith-affirming private schools, synagogue-proximate houses, church memberships, contributions to terrorist organizations, panhandlers, tithing, charity, tzedakah, and zakaat. They’re not saving for retirement, for hajj, for emergencies, or for the coming economic collapse, based on the beliefs that god wants them to be poor, that Allah hates it when you invest in the stock market, or that if something happens to the primary wage-earner “There is no way the community will let me be unmarried for more than two years.”
The financial planners offer some unimaginative ways to save money at the margin, like “consolidate your loans” and “with 5 kids you probably need more life insurance” and “find a money market account that calls its interest payments ‘profit sharing’ in order not to offend Mohammed” and “don’t buy that big house you can’t afford, because possibly Jesus won’t provide!”
Since I am not certified as a financial planner, I will just point out that my advice “Your Religion Is False” would save each of these families thousands of dollars a year. In fact, this might be a great marketing strategy for my book. Does anyone have Suze Orman’s number?
I’m one of those saps who shelled out 14K annually (times two) for Jewish day school and spent a small fortune on all sorts of kosher trappings. Fortunately, my passion for cosmology turned my way of thinking around and I had a second awakening. Come June, I will be scooping up a small stack of your books to gift to friends and family.
“The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance my deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
Winston Churchill
ಠ_ಠ
Oh, that? That’s just the money you could be saving by switching to atheism.
Just stumbled upon your site and this entry caught my eye. I Just did some quick calculations; it looks like about 12% of our yearly income is spent the way it is as a direct or indirect result of our religious beliefs. Of this, about 80-90% is spent in support of various organizations doing humanitarian work (Invisible Children, Free The Slaves, Heifer International, medical clinics, etc). The other 10-20% (depending on the year) is spent in support of our local church or individuals doing evangelical or missionary work in the U.S. or abroad.
So if I were to suddenly agree with you that Christianity is false, I would obviously stop donating to any local church and would withdraw my support for any individual or organization whose work is mainly evangelical. But to read your post, it seems like you are saying that I could also be expected to stop supporting humanitarian causes. My question is, do you believe that there is something inherent in being an atheist that deters people from charitable giving, or do you as an atheist personally believe that charitable giving is either an immoral or wasteful way of spending money?
And I guess I would ask the same question regarding big families, private schools and the other things you mentioned; like charity, it doesn’t seem like spending money on those things is at all unique to religious people.
Thanks!