$19M Mandir

I disagree that any construction project actually honors any deity. Construction is there to glorify the builder and patrons.

Glorious buddhist construction is an oxymoron, but it keeps the monks out of trouble while they try to out glorify each other.

That said, it is their money and this is a way to get it back in circulation instead of wasting away in their coffers. Hiring people to do construction *is* helping the poor.

here's the google link for an image search under "Buddhist temples"

just glorious, glorious stuff:

images.google.com/images

*yawn*

None of this changes the assertion that one could, in good conscience, feed a lot of hungry people with $19M. Or even build public restroom facilities for the ancient Hindu temples in India which are currently being defiled with human waste for the want of better infrastructure.

We don't need more temples. We don't need more churches. Peace of mind shouldn't have a price tag, and the money people spend in that alleged pursuit is a slap in the face to those who can't meet their own basic needs.

Hey, Rax. Well, it is not just a matter of any numbers here I suppose.

Now that I have been following this somewhat for a while (it began elsewhere), it appears that real the issue is: Building a house of worship in the US of A (to be more precise, in the city where my friend resides ;-)

If I am not mistaken, and at the risk of sounding like devil's (deity's?) advocate here, these are the same people who build a temple in the north of London near Wembly, which happened to wound its way into the Guinness Book of records also. I suppose that was the 'largest' house of worship out side of India, until this one. Now, that London structure costed a bomb at that time. The interesting part is where the money came from. The story goes that the legendary Wembly stadium is only near-by, and all those 'followers' of this said faith volunteered for a decade or so to collect beer-cans and stuff from within and around the stadium after every weekend match, load them for recycling, collect credit, and add that to the construction kitty.

Now, throwing a little bit of economics into this, a hand-gain of roughly 10,000 GBP every week for ten years could easily build a corpus of GBP 5M over a decade. For simplicity, let's consider inflation and depreciation are cancelled out by interest and a little surplus. So, we have roughly $10M at the end of our first decade, which I think was the cost of construction at that time. Whether empty beer cans could fetch you 10k per week or not is a separate issue (central London make more than three times that as minor congestion charges).

The point is, $19M is just a tag line for Mickey to add to his article's hit count (oops.. that was below the belt, I guess... sorry Mickey ;-)

IMHO, talking about numbers is a sere waste of more numbers in this case, let alone ranting about how else it could have been used.
The point is: what is the issue in building a house of worship? After all, do you need that? (especially whilst you are a non-practicing atheist?)

>> So, unless we're discussing why that money isn't going into child education or health-care, it is foolish to count pennies when you're losing by the pound. <<

I agree with the sentiment - but at the same time I feel it is very justified to speak out in defense of the good people who built this Temple. They are being publicly criticized in a way that is just appalling to me. What makes it even more appalling is that this Temple is a symbol of diversity and tolerance.

Once this kind of unfair and potentially harmful public criticism is out there - it is important to respond to it.