How a Religious Sect Landed Google in a Lawsuit (nytimes.com) 111
A video producer claims he was fired after he complained that an obscure group based in the Sierra foothills dominated a business unit at Google. From a report: In a tiny town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, a religious organization called the Fellowship of Friends has established an elaborate, 1,200-acre compound full of art and ornate architecture. More than 200 miles away from the Fellowship's base in Oregon House, Calif., the religious sect, which believes a higher consciousness can be achieved by embracing fine arts and culture, has also gained a foothold inside a business unit at Google. Even in Google's freewheeling office culture, which encourages employees to speak their own minds and pursue their own projects, the Fellowship's presence in the business unit was unusual. As many as 12 Fellowship members and close relatives worked for the Google Developer Studio, or GDS, which produces videos showcasing the company's technologies, according to a lawsuit filed by Kevin Lloyd, a 34-year-old former Google video producer.
Many others staffed company events, working registration desks, taking photographs, playing music, providing massages and serving wine. For these events, Google regularly bought wine from an Oregon House winery owned by a member of the Fellowship, according to the lawsuit. Mr. Lloyd claimed he was fired last year because he complained about the influence of the religious sect. His suit also names Advanced Systems Group, or ASG, the company that sent Mr. Lloyd to Google as a contractor. Most of the Google Developer Studio joined the team through ASG as contractors, including many members of the Fellowship. The suit, which Mr. Lloyd filed in August in California Superior Court, accuses Google and ASG of violating a California employment law that protects workers against discrimination. It is in the discovery stage. The New York Times corroborated many of the lawsuit's claims through interviews with eight current and former employees of the Google business unit and examinations of publicly available information and other documents. These included a membership roster for the Fellowship of Friends, Google spreadsheets detailing event budgets and photos taken at these events.
Many others staffed company events, working registration desks, taking photographs, playing music, providing massages and serving wine. For these events, Google regularly bought wine from an Oregon House winery owned by a member of the Fellowship, according to the lawsuit. Mr. Lloyd claimed he was fired last year because he complained about the influence of the religious sect. His suit also names Advanced Systems Group, or ASG, the company that sent Mr. Lloyd to Google as a contractor. Most of the Google Developer Studio joined the team through ASG as contractors, including many members of the Fellowship. The suit, which Mr. Lloyd filed in August in California Superior Court, accuses Google and ASG of violating a California employment law that protects workers against discrimination. It is in the discovery stage. The New York Times corroborated many of the lawsuit's claims through interviews with eight current and former employees of the Google business unit and examinations of publicly available information and other documents. These included a membership roster for the Fellowship of Friends, Google spreadsheets detailing event budgets and photos taken at these events.
Re:Join the Club (Score:4, Insightful)
All it takes is one cult member and all is lost. One Aerospace firm we contracted with, all the engineers were from the same school. This cult behavior actually resulted in the failure of one mission. An acquaintance of mine works for a division of a major oil firm. Almost all upper management is from the same church.
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Is it a cult, or is it a belief system? The success of a cult depends largely on the influence of a single person or a few people who have outsized personalities. A belief system has moved on from that. Scientology, for example, once was a cult, but now is a belief system, but still just as wacky.
What this article leaves out is if there's any individual in the Fellowship of Friends calling the shots, either explicitly or otherwise; that's a straight-up cult.
But Christianity is a belief system; you can't j
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You're splitting a fake hair. It's a polyester complaint. It is a real problem, and it doesn't matter which word you use, the problem is the same either way.
Re:Join the Club (Score:4)
It has an unreasonable amount of control over its members actions and thoughts.
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Scientology is still a cult.
It has an unreasonable amount of control over its members actions and thoughts.
Is the amount of control that more widespread religions, such as Christianity and Islam, have over its members actions and thoughts not unreasonable?
The main difference between cult and religion is that a cult is smaller, less organized and newer than a religion. Both Christianity and Islam started out as cults and grew into religions over time. The same is probably true for all religions.
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Both Christianity and Islam started out as cults and grew into religions over time.
Islam transitioned much faster than Christianity, primarily because of astonishing success on the battlefield. Mohammad won a string of military victories that were hard to explain without God being on his side.
Christianity wasn't weaponized and mainstreamed until Constantine in 312.
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Mohammad won a string of military victories that were hard to explain without God being on his side.
It would take quite a bit of effort to lose a string of military victories, that's for sure.
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Mohammad won a string of military victories that were hard to explain without God being on his side.
What a load of delusional bullshit.
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But Scientology is definitely well within the extreme range. They even harass people who leave. Listen to "Oh No Ross and Carrie" episodes on Scientology. It's eye opening.
Re:Join the Club (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought "Well, they'll hard sell Scientology , and I'll consider that the price of admission." So I showed up, they told me dinner wasn't quite ready, but I could go into their educational area to wait. Then they left. The educational area was a room full of displays about Scientology with some videos on L. Ron Hubbard. I was in there about 10 minutes when a staff member came up to me. I thought "uh oh, here it goes". She told me that the food was ready and led me to the back of the facility. They had a massive spread of all sorts of food, with Japanese musicians playing and Scientology staff in white shirts and black pants serving. After a bit, they ushered everyone inside for the show we sat down, the performance concluded, and as I was walking out a guy asked if he could talk to me. "Uh oh, here it goes" I thought. He then asked if I enjoyed the performance. I told him I had, and that was it. The ONLY thing religious was a small booklet they handed out, about the performance, which had some "how to live a good life" tips. But they were very generic, like "be kind to others" or "try to help when you can" stuff.
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It's worth considering why humans are vulnerable to cults.
About 20 years ago and with the help of three women, I connected cults and drug addition. It's detailed in https://archive.ph/20120709131... [archive.ph] but in short, the first woman was ecstatically rapping about the rush she got from shooting up drugs. At a party, the second used the same tone of voice to describe her time in scientology. The third was Kennita Watson. At an Extropian party we were discussing this in terms of evolutionary psychology and joi
Re:Join the Club (Score:4, Funny)
Is it a cult, or is it a belief system?
Is a cult a...church without a softball team? This term has all the precision of "assault rifle."
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Is a cult a...church without a softball team? This term has all the precision of "assault rifle."
"Assault rifle" has a fairly precise definition. It's a select-fire rifle with a detachable magazine that fires an intermediate cartridge. "Assault weapon," on the other hand, is the term that has a nebulous, imprecise definition that generally boils down to "a semi-automatic firearm with a detachable magazine that looks scary."
Re: Join the Club (Score:3)
Dictionary quibbling aside, yes, this group is centered on a charismatic leader, Robert Earl Burton.
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Is it a cult, or is it a belief system? The success of a cult depends largely on the influence of a single person or a few people who have outsized personalities. A belief system has moved on from that. Scientology, for example, once was a cult, but now is a belief system, but still just as wacky.
What this article leaves out is if there's any individual in the Fellowship of Friends calling the shots, either explicitly or otherwise; that's a straight-up cult.
But Christianity is a belief system; you can't just sue a company because a bunch of your co-workers in a dept. happen to be Christian.
You certainly can sue a company if you can show that NOT being christian is an impediment to advancement or hiring.
"Cult" is just a prejudical term (Score:2)
"Cult" is one of those terms that needs to be explained because it means different things to different people. As such, it's essentially a worthless term for discussion. However, its existence in language continues as a pejorative, prejudicial term. The term in practice simply means something bad, and the specifics of the term are nonessential. The term is purely prejudicial, meaning that its intent is to convey that something is bad, without having to discuss the specifics of that badness, which is the
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Not just businesses. Roman Catholics hold about 30% of US Congressional seats.
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>Cults tend to dominate certain businesses, either religious or cultural.
Not just businesses. Roman Catholics hold about 30% of US Congressional seats.
23% of the folks in the US are Roman Catholic, so while they may be a bit overrepresented in congress it's a big difference from a tiny religion being a majority within a business unit.
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Cultural business globs are all over the place. It can be deliberate or just an unconscious result of what people are comfortable with when hiring.
My brother worked as a land surveyor for a (Canadian) construction firm that hired mostly English, as in the UK, educated engineers and managers. The founding partners were English. A local lumber outfit is pretty much all Ukrainian and you can guess the common speech in the yard. We have a real estate firm that is 100% women. I wouldn't call any of these
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Yuppers.
Always verify. Never skip processes or jump over steps.
No matter what the purpose of an organization is, it pays to do some formal design and define org structure, roles, responsibilities, and processes. Then follow the plan.
Eliminates a lot of grief.
Re:Join the Club (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get how people keep holding up James Danmore as some sort of martyr. He was an idiot who wrote an email offering solutions based on his stereotypes of what women need and then argued with actual women when they told him he was wrong. A lovely combo of arrogance and stupidity. Quite frankly, keeping him at google would have opened them up to all sorts of liability as well as making other employees less likely to want to continue working there..
Re:Join the Club (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get how people keep holding up James Danmore as some sort of martyr. He was an idiot
That's why. As an idiot, he's an ideal hero for other idiots to worship.
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But he wrote a document with lots of links. Sure, his analysis was complete garbage, but CITATIONS!!!
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Whether he was right or not doesn't really matter here. He was asking fair questions which totally have their place in a culture which encourages honest discussions. Other employees could agree or disagree (with real arguments, sourced research debunking his points if need be) but engaging in the sort of political fight that happened was the real issue here, which HR should have condemned on both sides.
I don't know him. He may well be a toxic person (explaining the outraged reactions against his paper and
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Whether he was right or not doesn't really matter here.
True.
He may well be a toxic person
Holy shit what is all this black and white fuckery?
Damore was fired for being toxic to work getting done peacefully at Google, full stop. Whatever else is or isn't true, that's his employer's right barring any contract to the contrary. That's the only 100% black and white thing in this whole story. So why are we arguing about this shit again? Putting the facts aside for a moment (so we aren't arguing about them) what's served by digging up this story and having a fight about it here and now? We're cert
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So why are we arguing about this shit again? Putting the facts aside for a moment (so we aren't arguing about them) what's served by digging up this story and having a fight about it here and now? We're certainly not going to get down to the real issue and have an honest conversation about capitalism, the workforce, value creation and destruction, or the fundamental structure of our society and who it serves, so all we can possibly do here is have a superficial scrimmage over some bullshit.
Personally that's the reason I'm posting here. It doesn't always work (there are always useless conversations) but once in a while I get some really interesting answers, links to papers, articles, insightful point of views, ... which make me change my mind. That's the whole point of discussing with people who don't share your point of view: they can teach you quite a lot or at least make you better understand the problem.
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Wait, you can't use the word "hormone" here. No wonder you're currently at 0 and labeled Troll. Man, some people just never learn. Do better. /s
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Perhaps because is is a kind of martyr?
Please tell us how misogynists are an oppressed group.
You may agree or disagree with what he had to say,
Most of the people whose work he cited disagreed with what he had to say, and stated in clear terms that he did not understand what they wrote.
but he had a right to express his opinion, and he did so in the proper forum.
In fact he did not have a right to express that opinion (which was ignorant as fuck) in that venue. He had a right to have that opinion, and to express it. Someone with such poor reading comprehension as his (as proven by the authors of several papers he cited stating that he did not understand them) should run hi
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"I bet you're against CRT, too."
The cad! Where's my fainting couch? I bet you're against Javascript, too, I can tell those guys a mile off.
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I don't get how people keep holding up James Danmore as some sort of martyr. He was an idiot who wrote an email offering solutions based on his stereotypes of what women need and then argued with actual women when they told him he was wrong. A lovely combo of arrogance and stupidity. Quite frankly, keeping him at google would have opened them up to all sorts of liability as well as making other employees less likely to want to continue working there..
Maybe because he was invited to give opinions, gave them, and then was persecuted for it?
Oh, but they were bad opinions! Okay :)
Re:Join the Club (Score:5, Insightful)
You know who is a subject matter expert on what women need in the workplace? An actual woman. I'm a white male, but many of my friends aren't so I ask a lot of questions. I have learned that sometimes I don't have even the slightest idea about the issues others face.
He could have taken the feedback he was given by other employees and announced that he learned something, instead he doubled down and refused to accept he was wrong.
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You know who is a subject matter expert on what women need in the workplace? An actual woman. I'm a white male, but many of my friends aren't so I ask a lot of questions. I have learned that sometimes I don't have even the slightest idea about the issues others face.
He could have taken the feedback he was given by other employees and announced that he learned something, instead he doubled down and refused to accept he was wrong.
Perhaps a ritual self-denunciation? Mao-style?
Re:Join the Club (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a ritual education? That's what he's lacking. Most of the people he cited outright said he didn't understand them. But he went all D-K anyway, and then doubled down on it.
The biggest thing people are forgetting here though is that they seem to think that Damore was justified in embarrassing his employer and I get it, I really do. It's a farce that we give up our rights when we enter the workplace, but that's the way modern societies are set up. And fundamentally, it doesn't matter what kind of idea you're expressing on company time, if it doesn't suit the company agenda then they're going to have to let you go. And frankly, what you do on your own time reflects on them too — if you're a tool, what does it say about them that they employ tools? — so as long as employment is voluntary, being shitcanned for being an inconvenience to a for-profit entity is the central reality of employment.
But in summary, Damore didn't know what he was talking about, most (all but one) of the experts he cited said he misunderstood the cited works, and he chose to double down on that instead of admitting that what he said was both incorrect, and unhelpful to his employer. And that last part is the absolutely fundamental issue leading to his termination. The same people shouting that Damore was railroaded are typically passionate supporters of the purest capitalism possible, under which terms Damore would have been fired out of a cannon and directly into the sun for the crime of irritating his employers, and not even ashes would remain.
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But in summary, Damore didn't know what he was talking about, most (all but one) of the experts he cited said he misunderstood the cited works, and he chose to double down on that instead of admitting that what he said was both incorrect, and unhelpful to his employer. And that last part is the absolutely fundamental issue leading to his termination. The same people shouting that Damore was railroaded are typically passionate supporters of the purest capitalism possible, under which terms Damore would have been fired out of a cannon and directly into the sun for the crime of irritating his employers, and not even ashes would remain.
None of which has anything to do with the fact that he was invited to share his opinions on an internal system, under the idea that such a thing was fine and google was all about openness, etc.
Lefties always love to say they want "difficult conversations", until one, you know, actually happens or something ...
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You know who is a subject matter expert on what women need in the workplace? An actual woman. I'm a white male, but many of my friends aren't so I ask a lot of questions. I have learned that sometimes I don't have even the slightest idea about the issues others face.
He could have taken the feedback he was given by other employees and announced that he learned something, instead he doubled down and refused to accept he was wrong.
Perhaps a ritual self-denunciation? Mao-style?
I think a game of thrones shaming march, after which he is exiled to the Atacama desert. 8^)
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You know who is a subject matter expert on what women need in the workplace? An actual woman. I'm a white male, but many of my friends aren't so I ask a lot of questions. I have learned that sometimes I don't have even the slightest idea about the issues others face.
He could have taken the feedback he was given by other employees and announced that he learned something, instead he doubled down and refused to accept he was wrong.
Can you imagine? The very idea of a person holding a wrong opinion! That is something that must be stomped out. For only when we marce in lockstep to a brave and stunning future, united as one with the correct thought and actions, will be be able to claim the title of acceptable.
Look - Damore was an idiot. There is no way shape or form he should ever have offered his opinion on anything. In a place like Google, that is survival skill number one. If your opinion can get you fired in a place like Google, y
Re:Join the Club (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't get how people keep holding up James Danmore as some sort of martyr. He was an idiot who wrote an email offering solutions based on his stereotypes of what women need and then argued with actual women when they told him he was wrong. A lovely combo of arrogance and stupidity. Quite frankly, keeping him at google would have opened them up to all sorts of liability as well as making other employees less likely to want to continue working there..
Maybe because he was invited to give opinions, gave them, and then was persecuted for it?
Oh, but they were bad opinions! Okay :)
Cue Admiral Ackbar saying "It's a trap"!
Don't even ever express an opinion that is politically based in your work environment. Especially at a firm like Google, where the company lives with simultaneous claims of being woke, as well as a tool of the patriarchy. Gebru and Mitchell on the other side found that out, although their actions were more of an insubordination and ethical nature.
I have my opinions. But at work, if asked for my opinion, my response is "What do you want it to be?"
Actually, I simply state "I have no opinion."
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Between the opinions of the likes of drinkypoo who's certain that Damore is a misogynist and only idiots choose his side which is totally wrong and to be condemned, and others who think he may have been misguided but tried his best to understand and yet others who agree with Damore and feel he's misunderstood (I recall several prominent psychologists who actually supported his statements, or some if them, contrary to some other opinions here), I find your position, expressed in the post above but also nearby, the most useful. Thank you.
The thing is, none of his opinions promoted violence, or illegal acts. So in a normal workplace, that should be tolerated. But really, the difference between the sexes is not supposed to exist, so he was better to keep his stupid mouth shut. It's the world we live in today. And I don't doubt that some psychologists support some of his opinions.
Okay - while I'd never express this at work, because I'm not dumb, here's an opinion. One of the worst aspects of modern feminism, which is at the root of his fi
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Thinking back of your initial point, I just recalled that at my current workplace the official rules include disallowing the topics of religion and politics for discussion.
Regarding your closing point, the funk
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I don't get how people keep holding up James Danmore as some sort of martyr. He was an idiot who wrote an email offering solutions based on his stereotypes of what women need and then argued with actual women when they told him he was wrong. A lovely combo of arrogance and stupidity. Quite frankly, keeping him at google would have opened them up to all sorts of liability as well as making other employees less likely to want to continue working there..
When will people learn that in a business environment, you either go with the flow, or keep your yap shut.
As a counter example, Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru are held up as martyrs by some.
James Damore held some opinions and published them within the organization. Gebru refused to comply with a retraction request regarding her claims that Google's language processing was discriminating against women of color. Mitchell removed sensitive documents and was scanning company emails for evidence of peo
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I'll note that Damore was fired for his opinion, expressed in the wrong place;
So, giving feedback when asked for that feedback is expressing in the wrong place? That is an odd position to take.
Do you think? How about if an outfit is looking for people with "wrong" opinions to get rid of?
We must realize that in the Western world at present, a person can be purposely destroyed if they voice an incorrect opinion. When you reach that point, it does follow that there might be fishing expeditions to winnow out the "wrong" people, and achieve a purity of thought.
As noted before, Google is in the weird place of simultaneously being a woke company and a tool of the patriarchy. So they are eating th
Re: Join the Club (Score:1)
His main sin was that he put the onus on Google to fix their unhealthy culture. He took direct aim at rhs patriarchy and unhealthy patriarchal structures.
And feminists came out of the woodwork to defend Google and their patriarchal oppression of both women and men.
It was the damndest thing. Feminists wanted Google and Google alone to say when going home from work was a betrayl worth firing you. They liked the abusive, squeaky wheel gets the grease kind of promotion sysytem that favors the good ol boy net
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"Never fight the patriarchy. Feminists will defeat you." Thank you for that. I'm going to start using it as my sig quote.
Oh, so THAT'S where that's from... (Score:2)
I wondered why it sounded so stupid. The post above explains that I guess.
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If you missed the part in his memos where he squarely put the responsibility on Google for creating a culture where they would not have to incentivize or lower standards to get women and minorities to work there, that's excusable. He leveled a critical eye at Google's patriarchal and archaic management hazing practices that lead to an overwhelming number of men in the field, and in leadership positions. It even made them so uncomfortable they asked a select few employees to be on a secret task force to tr
Re: Join the Club (Score:2)
Women aren't by default experts on everything women anymore than a convicted criminal becomes an expert on the causes of criminality. He was speaking on aggregate, not on individual experiences.
If the women he supposedly argued with presented evidence against the data then that's great. If instead it was personal experience, even the dreaded 'my truth', then that's just nonsense.
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Hmm (Score:2)
the religious sect, which believes a higher consciousness can be achieved by embracing fine arts and culture
There are certainly worse things a religious group could believe. Not sure how that's relevant to the issue though.
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Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as they don't really believe in it and just want equal tax treatment with religions, I'm good with it.
Better still, remove the tax exempt status for churches and people will not need to pretend.
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Better still, remove the tax exempt status for churches and people will not need to pretend.
The power to tax is the power to destroy, and the federal government (and, by "incorporation", the state-and-lower governments) is required to keep its hands off religion - neither supporting one in favor of others ("respecting an establishment...") nor suppressing any of them ("prohibiting the free exercise..."). The religious tax exemptions arise from this, and actually predate the Bill of Rights (which doesn't cr
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Don't you have bombs to be sending to professors or something?
Seriously, get some education. Start with John Locke. And then Rousseau (Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique).
You are struggling to return to foolish monkeyhood, when as a species, we have already learned to think.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think that the OP was thinking along the same lines, and I asked for an authority because there isn't one. Federal Supremacy is written into the Constitution, religious tax exemptions are not, and it would be quite a trick to claim that equal treatment under the law is a form of discrimination. Recently, the conservative justices sort-of pulled that trick wrt some of the covid/crowd requirements by ignoring the states' rationale. I also half-remember a case where some municipality discriminated against a
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>The power to tax is the power to destroy,
Try living in a country without taxes and see how attractive it is to inward investment.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
The power to tax is the power to destroy
So?
and the federal government (and, by "incorporation", the state-and-lower governments) is required to keep its hands off religion
Bullshit. It's required not to treat any one religion preferentially.
neither supporting one in favor of others ("respecting an establishment...") nor suppressing any of them ("prohibiting the free exercise...").
Taxing their real estate the same as any other business in no way prohibits the free exercise.
The religious tax exemptions arise from this, and actually predate the Bill of Rights
And were actually wrong then.
The government doesn't recognize every religion, and therefore doesn't give every religion tax exempt status, and therefore does give preferential treatment to some religions. The simple fact is that giving tax exempt status to recognized religions is supporting some in favor of others, so all of that stuff you wrote is either bullshit or besides the point since no effort is actually made to be fair.
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If they fail to pay property taxes, and the government seizes the church, that burdens the free exeecise thereof.
This was a concern in one of the few decisions to actually address the question.
Best to remain in the fiction government voluntarily exempts churches. The above decision was in the context that exempting churches entangled government in religion, but the opposite, taxing them, entangled it more.
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If they fail to pay property taxes, and the government seizes the church, that burdens the free exeecise thereof.
If they do all the good stuff they claim churches do then it should be easy to apply for and receive a tax exemption. If they don't, then who cares?
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XKCD while a clever comic. Is not a proof.
Much like how people will often just use Rhymes and Old sayings (often from Ben Franklin) as reasons why such an idea is true.
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XKCD while a clever comic. Is not a proof. Much like how people will often just use Rhymes and Old sayings (often from Ben Franklin) as reasons why such an idea is true.
Or the bible or some other religious text.
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Re: Hmm (Score:3)
They also believe in an impending distaster, which the leader has predicted since the start of the organisation in 1970, and that the leader is a conduit for teaching from angels, giving the knowledge necessary to plant a seed that can survive the distaster.
I think maybe the wine and the fine arts appreciation is bait.
This kinda what happens (Score:4, Insightful)
When you hire people who are JUST LIKE "you"
Ya get a techbro culture or "everyone" from a small set of schools with remarkably similar mindsets.
Can ya say groupthink? I knew ya could.
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Can ya say groupthink? I knew ya could.
Yeah. Inevitably leads to failure. But that can take quite some time and can cause quite a bit of collateral damage.
Re: This kinda what happens (Score:2)
That's not the failure here, is it? Most Google employees are not part of this explicit end-times cult. And if you are, you are probably breaking a dozen internal rules if you covertly help your fellow members get into the organisation.
This seems to be a case of old-fashioned entryism. All remotely big and open organizations are vulnerable to infiltration by small but extremely loyal and coordinated groups.
Shit link (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop linking to paywalled articles FFS.
That's nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
A radical group of fundamentalist christians have taken over the United States Congress.
Re:That's nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Who share more beliefs with the Taliban than they care to admit.
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Who share more beliefs with the Taliban than they care to admit.
Ahh, you mean the talibangelicals. They have an unholy worship of authoritarianism, and are extremely interested in your genitals, your kids genitals, and love to dictate how people may use their genitals. All in the name of freedom and small government that can’t tell them what to do, of course.
Re: That's nothing (Score:2)
Haven't figured out if the new cult of child hormone adulteratiin and genital destruction is better or worse.
Ah well, the kids will tell us when they're older. And blame us to boot, i'm sure.
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As a practicing Catholic, the "Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians" who often get elected into office, are actually a very concerning bunch of folks.
A left leaning or a right leaning Catholic will often have a mass sermon which they find very distasteful, as the church is advocating a stance that is opposed to their earthly political views. However as a world wide church, with a defined hierarchy, it has its own opinions and views on topics that are not as much influenced by local or national popular op
Re: That's nothing (Score:2)
So as a supporter of an international child rape syndicate and pedophile protection scheme, you think fundamentalists are a concern?
Not sure if that completely invalidates your opinion, refutes your concerns, or makes them even more worrisome. Lets go with invalidates. I don't want to wander the labranthine passages of self justification that churns out child rape apologists.
Let's start with this: stop supporting a system that comitted, condoned, and covered up child sexual abuse on an internatinal scale
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So as a supporter of an international child rape syndicate and pedophile protection scheme
Oh man, wait until you learn about public schools!
Google has money (Score:2)
That's what really landed them in this lawsuit.
If they were a mom-and-pop store, no one (and especially no lawyer or disgruntled employee looking for a payday) would give a sh*t.
Too big to be quarky (Score:2)
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”
- John Lydgate
If you are a small company, you can get away with a lot of quarks, As you have a small group of hires, and a small group of customers who want your unique set of services, and enjoy your set of quarks.
If you are a large company, the best you can do is trying to please all the customers some of the time. those Quarks of y
Your turn! (Score:3)
First the Democrat and Republican parties were colonized by crackpots. Now it's the corporations' turn. It won't be long now before Chinese domination is complete.
Re: (Score:3)
That is the general Chinese plan. They show up and being seen the only responsible adult in the room, then people will gravitate to them as their best choice.
Sure Chinese government gives little real freedom, too full of rules and regulations, and a miserable human rights record. However, with major persons in the the US Government, having a fit because they are movies with Strong Female leads, or Gays who not villains or comic relief. Or going nuts because someone used a word or did a thing that was on
Unexpected (Score:2)
How a Religious Sect Landed Google in a Lawsuit
a religious organization called the Fellowship of Friends
Is this not normal? (Score:2)
I know, right? (Score:2, Interesting)
@#%$ cultists!!! Why can't they believe normal things like the rest of Google?
(Like that wearing a dress turns you into a girl, through transubstantiation or something?)
Re: (Score:2)
Cliques are okay but cults are not. (Score:2)
Every major organization has their little cliques usually based around colleges.
This seems unusually blatant.
Old News (Score:2)
They were very nice to but tried to convert us "non-Christians"*
*In my case, my brand of "non-Christian" was 'practicing Catholic' at the time . . .
This guy sounds paranoid. (Score:1)