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Vaniver comments on The Atheist's Tithe - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is because the road to 10% starts at 1%, and the road to 1% starts at donating every week, and the road to donating every week starts at donating once.
Social acceptability is local.
I don't see your point. The road to taking the vow of poverty and donating everything to the church starts in the same place.
Certainly true. Do you think the OP's proposal could lead to pockets of socially-forced tithing and these pockets wouldn't really intersect with the highly-religious communities?
Churches tend to be gradualist organizations, because they want to contain a broad selection of society and they're in it for the long haul. If you don't donate now, that's okay; maybe you'll donate some tomorrow. If you donate some now, that's good; maybe you'll donate more tomorrow. If you donate more now, that's great; maybe you'll donate even more tomorrow.
Habits have power and are hard to shift, and many churches deliberately target the meta-habit of improving your habits slowly for the better.
It is not clear to me, especially because I like definitions of "religious" that focus on practice rather than philosophy (leaving open the possibility of non-theist religions). A humanist organization that, say, meets regularly and has shared values and considers tithing a condition for being a full core member sounds a lot to me like a highly religious community.
So, given that the churches have been doing all this for a long time, I read it as an argument that the current rate of giving is the asymptotic limit for the social technology the churches have been using.
Sure, but in this context we're talking about the social structure of the US (and, in general, Western) society and I'm using the word "religion" in a very conventional meaning.
Agreed. I read the initial suggestion as basically 'get atheists up to the levels of religious charitable giving,' which is why I thought it was silly that a response was 'but that might make the religious give more.'
Sure. I don't think it's that unconventional to refer to, say, UUs as religious, and I expect there to be more secular communities who act like UUs even if they don't self-identify like UUs.