I have that same impressions of wasted time, money, talent, and energy every time I go by a professional sports structure.
I get the impression he’s read or been taught this, and doesn’t understand its complete rubbish to claim this evidences a deity.
He’ll go away angry and convinced apostates are too ignorant and biased to understand a deity exists. We’ve seen it all before, and as always the irony is off the scale.
Sadly until he abandons or learns to question what he’s been indoctrinated into believing, he will never be able to think for himself.
Sport stadiums don’t claim to represent god. They don’t demand that their sports fans send them money (as tithe). They don’t get a special status to NOT pay taxes.
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They sometimes provide value for money as well…unlike woo woo superstitions…
Not sure how it works in Canada, but in the U.S. virtually all professional sports arenas have been built and/or renovated with tax dollars. The billionaire team owners threaten to take their ball and go to another city otherwise. Also, the highest paid public employee in the vast majority of states is a college basketball or football coach. It runs in the millions of dollars per year, with one football coach getting 9.1 million. What really yanks my chain on that one is that while many players get scholarships they receive no money and are often screwed in other ways, like not allowed to make money on, or be compensated for the use of, their own likeness. Many student athletes are poor, and the demands of the sport make it impossible to have outside work. I like sports, and understand it can generate money for a college or city, but think it’s divvied up poorly with too big a burden on taxpayers.
Corporate socialism at work.
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Does Canada have the same/similar set up as the US in say high school and college football/hockey? Is cricket widely played in Canada?
Here in Oz little attention is paid to any high school sports. I think most universities have some sports, but it’s no big deal.
For at least the first half of the twentieth century, professional football and cricket players were paid a pittance for playing. All needed to have other jobs.
Most of our centers for post-secondary education are not even close to the level of commercialization in the US. A talented hockey player will not find advancement in college towards playing in the pros, they must use the minor league system. A talented football player can not find a path to the NFL in Canada, they seek out US colleges and a scholarship.
That’s about what I figured. Otherwise my Canadian mother would have said something. Mum was a Patrick, a famous name in Canadian hockey.
My grandfather played for “The Vancouver Millionaires”. Mum’s brother Joe played hockey at Harvard. A cousin, Murray ‘Muzz’ Patrick, played for and later managed the New York Rangers. Manager Craig Patrick is a distant cousin. Sitting at my desk, in front of me is a [used] New York Rangers puck given to me by Muzz when I met him in 1985. A gentle giant of a man who sadly suffered from the Patrick family curse of alcoholism.
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If I remember correctly, the Harvard team is essentially recruited from the student body, you know, like a real team.
OK. No one ever said, it was just mentioned in passing.
—For the important family stuff there’s The Book: “The Patricks Hockey’s Royal Family” by Paul White. My uncle gave every member of the family a copy. Apart from those, I think it may have sold 2 or 3 copies.
It’s still in print. First editions are now about $100.
For interest I add the wiki entry for my grandfather, Frank Patrick. I never met him.