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> There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently. Why would you be surprised at this? In (e.g.)

> There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently. Why would you be surprised at this? In (e.g.) Christianity, caring for the poor and sick has been one of the central tenants since its inception, so why wouldn't formal institutions be organized doing so? Before the welfare state—which is a fairly recent invention—the largest organization would have been the Church (and its various religious orders: Dominicans, Franciscans, etc), which would have worked towards its three-fold mission of worshipping God, evangelizing, and serving the poor: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9m-pNsFPV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9m-pNsFPV0 It can reasonably be argued that the very idea of taking care of the poor, etc, only came into Western civilization because of Christianity. As someone who presumably lives with-in Western civilization and adheres to its (general) values, you take the idea for granted, without perhaps examining where it/they came from: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Holland_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Holland_book) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_Wor...

iscrewyou 3y ago
Great points. But you missed the mark. The discussion is about taxes not if religions should own hospitals. The same poor people you mention have to pay taxes while the religious organizations get special cuts. If we are blind to how profitable and mutually beneficial relationships hospitals and insurance companies have, there is nothing else to discuss.
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > The discussion is about taxes not if religions should own hospitals. This sub-thread is, as I was commenting on: > There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently.
tialaramex 3y ago
> It can reasonably be argued that the very idea of taking care of the poor, etc, only came into Western civilization because of Christianity. You can try that argument but it's not very convincing. I think you could do equally well arguing that slavery is the fault of Christianity, or warfare or various other things humans have sometimes done and sometimes not done... The ancient Greeks (so, significantly before Christianity and also influential for "Western civilization") have a whole bunch of goddesses representing the idea of specific kinds of being nice to others. Plutarch is like "Philanthropy is a good idea".
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > You can try that argument but it's not very convincing. I think you could do equally well arguing that slavery is the fault of Christianity […] You can also argue for a Flat Earth, but all your arguments given would be bad: given that slavery existed before Christianity arrived on the scene, and early Christians (e.g., Gregory of Nyssa) argued against it, that would contain a bunch of bad arguments as well. The history of Western thought as outlined in (e.g.) Siedentop's Inventing the Individual shows how Christianity moved the needle from slaves to serfs to individual freedom: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18740986-inventing-the-individual https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18740986-inventing-the-i... This can further be expounded on in Brundage's The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession illustrating how everyone—pauper to Pope—was afforded a fair shake at justice (due process in law) going back to (at least) the Middle Ages: * https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo5620943.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo562094... See also Whitman's The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial for an interesting run-down on that topic: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_of_Reasonable_Doubt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_of_R... > The ancient Greeks (so, significantly before Christianity and also influential for "Western civilization") have a whole bunch of goddesses representing the idea of specific kinds of being nice to others. And how many orphanages did the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans have? (Versus leaving children outside to die from exposure.) Or hospitals: > The declaration of Christianity as an accepted religion in the Roman Empire drove an expansion of the provision of care. Following First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE construction of a hospital in every cathedral town was begun. Among the earliest were those built by the physician Saint Sampson in Constantinople and by Basil of Caesarea in modern-day Turkey towards the end of the 4th century. By the beginning of the 5th century, the hospital had already become ubiquitous throughout the Christian east in the Byzantine world,[3] this being a dramatic shift from the pre-Christian era of the Roman Empire where no civilian hospitals existed.[1] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hospitals#Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hospitals#Roman_Emp... The current-day 'Western values' are Christian values. The most recent instance of non-Christian values being practiced in the West would probably be Nazism, and before that Nietzsche's observation that you either accept a supernatural entity and have (e.g.) Christian values, or you have nihilism and morals are arbitrary (in After Virtue, MacIntyre outlines why any one system (by Kierkegaard, Marx, Kant, Hume, etc) is just as arbitrary as any other (agreeing with Nietzsche in the binary choice that is available)).

iscrewyou 3y ago

Great points. But you missed the mark. The discussion is about taxes not if religions should own hospitals. The same poor people you mention have to pay taxes while the religious organizations get special cuts. If we are blind to how profitable and mutually beneficial relationships hospitals and insurance companies have, there is nothing else to discuss.

throw0101c 3y ago
> The discussion is about taxes not if religions should own hospitals. This sub-thread is, as I was commenting on: > There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently.

tialaramex 3y ago

> It can reasonably be argued that the very idea of taking care of the poor, etc, only came into Western civilization because of Christianity. You can try that argument but it's not very convincing. I think you could do equally well arguing that slavery is the fault of Christianity, or warfare or various other things humans have sometimes done and sometimes not done... The ancient Greeks (so, significantly before Christianity and also influential for "Western civilization") have a whole bunch of goddesses representing the idea of specific kinds of being nice to others. Plutarch is like "Philanthropy is a good idea".

throw0101c 3y ago
> You can try that argument but it's not very convincing. I think you could do equally well arguing that slavery is the fault of Christianity […] You can also argue for a Flat Earth, but all your arguments given would be bad: given that slavery existed before Christianity arrived on the scene, and early Christians (e.g., Gregory of Nyssa) argued against it, that would contain a bunch of bad arguments as well. The history of Western thought as outlined in (e.g.) Siedentop's Inventing the Individual shows how Christianity moved the needle from slaves to serfs to individual freedom: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18740986-inventing-the-individual https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18740986-inventing-the-i... This can further be expounded on in Brundage's The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession illustrating how everyone—pauper to Pope—was afforded a fair shake at justice (due process in law) going back to (at least) the Middle Ages: * https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo5620943.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo562094... See also Whitman's The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial for an interesting run-down on that topic: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_of_Reasonable_Doubt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_of_R... > The ancient Greeks (so, significantly before Christianity and also influential for "Western civilization") have a whole bunch of goddesses representing the idea of specific kinds of being nice to others. And how many orphanages did the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans have? (Versus leaving children outside to die from exposure.) Or hospitals: > The declaration of Christianity as an accepted religion in the Roman Empire drove an expansion of the provision of care. Following First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE construction of a hospital in every cathedral town was begun. Among the earliest were those built by the physician Saint Sampson in Constantinople and by Basil of Caesarea in modern-day Turkey towards the end of the 4th century. By the beginning of the 5th century, the hospital had already become ubiquitous throughout the Christian east in the Byzantine world,[3] this being a dramatic shift from the pre-Christian era of the Roman Empire where no civilian hospitals existed.[1] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hospitals#Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hospitals#Roman_Emp... The current-day 'Western values' are Christian values. The most recent instance of non-Christian values being practiced in the West would probably be Nazism, and before that Nietzsche's observation that you either accept a supernatural entity and have (e.g.) Christian values, or you have nihilism and morals are arbitrary (in After Virtue, MacIntyre outlines why any one system (by Kierkegaard, Marx, Kant, Hume, etc) is just as arbitrary as any other (agreeing with Nietzsche in the binary choice that is available)).