KittyKatBlack wrote:I'm an atheist, but I'm a moral atheist. I mean a joke is one thing, but some people take their religion very seriously. I'm all for making crack shots about religious shortcomings as much as anyone else, but I'm not really big on people going around pretending that they have power in a certain religion because some website gave them an official paper, and mocking the things that they take seriously. I'm not realy upset or anything, and I'm not really targeting anyone on this forum in particular with this post. I'm mostly directing this towards the sites that offer this kind of thing to anyone who fills out a form and hits 'submit'. I can see the humor in it, but I think the execution is rather tasteless, if in fact there is anything legal about the 'promotion'. It's one thing to walk around with fake buisness cards saying you're a priest even though you're not... but if you are legally recognized as one without even being part of the religion, and go around mocking it by using these legaly binding credentials, I find that sort of distasteful. Of course, I don't know if it's a joke, or legally binding or not. I'm just going on what it looks like to me. Sorry to bust up the party, but I felt I should say something. (Since I've seen people do thisn in the past, before I even got here.)
The credentials are legal if you submit them to the Clerk of Courts for your county.
However, you are a priest only of the religion who conferred this to you. For the Internet Church, you're a priest in that church alone. You can call yourself a Bishop, Priest, Rabbi, Priestess, etcetera and have it officially documented that way, but that doesn't make you a Christian priest, Jewish Rabbi, etcetera.
There are some good things that go along with being ordained. You can for example, turn your home into a place of worship and deduct the rent; donate your salary to the church and have it pay you a living wage, etcetera. GREAT way to beat taxes, but you need a professional accountant or you'll screw up all the paperwork and get hammered by the IRS.
