Yawn: Mormon church earns $7 billion a year from tithing, analysis indicates

 

Nothing says “unimpressive” like learning that the Mormon church rakes in $7 billion a year.

That’s how much the Catholic church brings in from interest … in a day.

From NBC online:

Relying heavily on church records in countries that require far more disclosure than the United States, Cragun and Reuters estimate that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints brings in some $7 billion annually in tithes and other donations.

It owns about $35 billion worth of temples and meeting houses around the world, and controls farms, ranches, shopping malls and other commercial ventures worth many billions more.

The church claims 14 million members around the world, more than half outside the United States. All are supposed to tithe, or give 10 percent, of their income, which Mormons frequently interpret as pre-tax earnings. But only about 40 percent of Mormons counted by the church actually attend weekly services in the United States and Canada, and in many countries, including Mexico and Brazil, only a quarter of nominal members are active, according to Cumorah, an independent research group headed by a devoted, active Mormon.

 

What the kids are up to

As many of you know, I have an on-going series in which I post what those annoying atheists over at reddit.com/r/atheism are posting. I call the series, “What the kids are posting.”

But this is a twist called, “What the kids are up to.”

Instead of their offensive graphics and jokes, here’s a story that regular-reader Paul just sent me that you need to check out. I’ll post some of the story below. Read the rest here.

Disbelief has never been so evil.

Irreverent atheists crowdsource charitable giving

(Reuters) – Atheist bloggers have shown their charitable side by swarming to donate money to Doctors Without Borders, in what turned into the humanitarian agency’s biggest online fundraiser.

Doctors without Borders (DWB), also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, gets about 4,000 hits on its U.S. website on an average Sunday. Last Sunday that number ballooned to 50,000 as a horde of redditors, subscribers to the social media site reddit.com, thundered across the DWB homepage.

Thousands more clicked through from the atheism sub-reddit, a site normally given over to finding holes in religions and picking fights with creationists, and headed for a dedicated site at firstgiving.com, where they have so far given $180,000.

“It’s amazing, what’s going on. The amount being raised is amazing, definitely,” said Natalie Favre, an MSF spokeswoman in Geneva. “We don’t control any of this.”

Many donations were tagged with messages such as “Because god won’t,” “Good without god” or even “Good without Zeus.”

“I WAS gonna buy some Taco Bell… but screw it,” wrote DJW3NCH, who donated $5.00 via firstgiving.com.

Thanks, Paul!

***UPDATE***

I meant to include that this probably won’t change the public perception of atheists as worse than rapists, that regular-reader Xina reminded me of recently via Twitter.

Read here.

Super Gonorrhea: let the crazies go nuts

The fundies are going to have a heyday over the recent finding of a strain of gonorrhea resistant to current medicine.

“It’s a sign from God!” they’ll scream.

Ugh.

From one article:

Scientists have discovered a new strain of gonorrhea-causing bacteria in Japan that is resistant to available treatments.

Since the 1940s, the sexually transmitted disease known as “the clap” has been easily treated with antibiotics. But the new strain of Neisseria gonorrhoeae has genetically mutated to evade cephalosporins — the only antibiotics still effective against the infection.

“This is both an alarming and a predictable discovery,” lead researcher Magnus Unemo, professor at the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria in Örebro, Sweden, said in a statement.

Remember when even god himself called disease a supernatural issue? “Demons! The Demons will get ya!”

Those were the days. 

The religionistas will likely miss the fact that it’s evolution in action.

If your hand is bigger than your face, you are gullible

Apparently the South Koreans have spent a considerable time comparing hands to penises. In this article, there’s a correlation between the size of a man’s fingers and his penis. If a man’s index finger is shorter than his ring finger he may be blessed with a large penis, and therefore ridiculously more respected in certain circles.

Quote:

“According to our data … the shorter index (second) finger than ring (fourth) finger you have, the longer stretched penile length you have,” wrote Tae Beom Kim at the urology department of Gachon University Gil Hospital in Incheon, South Korea, in reply to questions from Reuters.

Previous studies have shown strong evidence that prenatal testosterone may determine finger development as well as penile length, a relationship that Kim and his colleagues launched a study to focus on.

King Kong and I have something in common: my index finger is six inches shorter than my ring finger. And my index toe is shorter as well.

Via JMG