{"id":3614,"date":"2015-10-26T15:23:23","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T20:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3614"},"modified":"2015-10-26T15:23:23","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T20:23:23","slug":"scientology-loses-dutch-tax-exemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/10\/26\/scientology-loses-dutch-tax-exemption\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientology loses Dutch tax exemption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/freethinker.co.uk\/2015\/10\/26\/blow-to-scientology-in-the-netherlands\/\">The Freethinker<\/a>, we have the story of how Scientology recently lost their tax exempt status in the Netherlands. (The original story was partially reproduced in my <a href=\"http:\/\/newsok.com\/article\/5456014\">local news outlet<\/a>, for some reason.) I\u2019ve seen a handful of freethinkers celebrating this decision, but it\u2019s unclear to me whether it can really be called progress. Here in the United States, we have plenty of Protestant preachers who are at least as sleazy and profit-oriented as the Scientologists. <\/p>\n<p>Those who preach the so-called \u201cProsperity Gospel\u201d are fairly shameless about soliciting donations, as eloquently expounded here by John Oliver:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Televangelists: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7y1xJAVZxXg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I cannot think of any fair and coherent legal scheme which would exclude Scientology while still allowing these massively popular peddlers of false hope to continue to get a free pass. Perhaps you can. Any ideas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at The Freethinker, we have the story of how Scientology recently lost their tax exempt status in the Netherlands.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}