Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
There Are No Atheists in Soup Kitchens?
Telegraph's Martin Beckford raises an important point about the charitableness of nonbelievers, but at the raising of said point, another I fear is missed.
[ . . . ] atheist groups [ . . . ] don't run soup kitchens or adoption agencies, and they don't own village halls in which they could hold jumble sales.
When they do act as a group, as letter writers have pointed out, they spend tens of thousands of pounds on an advertising campaign designed to reassure their fellow non-believers rather than helping the needy.
[ . . . ]
The Atheist Bus Campaign has undoubtedly been a success, not just for the money it raised but for the public debate it has sparked.
But if those behind it really want people to like them, and accept their views, I would suggest they find a way to show that atheism can benefit society and not just the individual.
It's true, some research has suggested that the nonreligious are less likely than the faithed to do "good works"; Syracuse University public administration professor (oh, and the American Enterprise Institute's new president, cough cough) Arthur C. Brooks found in a study that religious people were 25 percent more likely than those he considered secularists to give to charities, and 23 percent more likely to volunteer their time to a cause (Christian research organization the Barna Group has reached similar conclusions). Brooks partly chalks this up to the tendency among the unaffiliated to be politically liberal, and therefore preferring government solutions to social problems over private charity-supported solutions. Take that as you will.
He may be right about the differences, as he also notes that religious people give more to nonreligious/secular charities even than do secularists. Brooks seems to conclude that because of that, the idea of a "reward in Heaven" can't be the prime reason, but I wouldn't be so quick.
Nonetheless, I think people tend to forget that secularists, and particularly atheists, usually don't have the communal foundation of a church or some such institution as a social springboard to charity and volunteerism. It is one thing to independently decide to do something nice for the community or the needy, and quite another thing (though no less important or admirable) to do so as part of an organized activity or simply encouraged frequently by religious leaders. Atheist groups, such as they are, while not uncharitable, are not comparable entities to churches and the like. They are, generally, political and intellectual, not spiritual, and I would guess less communal as well.
To reemphasize, I guess. I don't know for certain that this is why there is disparity, but I do believe that "atheist groups" and churches/religions are too often compared as analogues for one another when they actually serve very different purposes. Surely, it would be wonderful if everyone, regardless of affiliation, "gave" more, and yes, it would certainly only help the atheist movement's cause (whatever one believes that to be). But just as we do not compare the exercise habits of the Marines versus the chess club, let us remember the purposes of the groups we are talking about before drawing conclusions about their members' character.
And I wonder, how many people taking part in President-elect Obama's Day of Service will be nonbelievers?
[Originally posted at Bloc Raisonneur]
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Hank Fox's comment on
Hank Fox's comment on secular charities or charity-like organizations made me wonder: do the religious people counting up who gives how much to charity even count these as charities?
I mean, I think Planned Parenthood, for example is a charity in the sense that it greatly improves the lives of poor people--but would these people agree with me?
Would they count the Sierra Club as a charity? What about organizations to improve literacy? Or the ASPCA?
If not, maybe atheists are simply drawn to contribute to charities that aren't "good enough" to count in the eyes of our religious critics.
Charity
You have to also wonder if they count churches themselves as charities.
Gezackly!
I have a strong suspicion that tithes to the church count as charitable giving in all these surveys. I mean, the IRS counts it that way, why wouldn't the religiously-motivated surveyers?
Some of the money given to the churches is used for true charity, but judging by the number of new church buildings I see, it looks like a lot of it goes back into pimping the performance space. Which is true for most of the theatres in my area, for instance, too, so I guess it's kind of the same thing.
But it sure seems like cheating to consider building either new churches or new theatres "helping your fellow man".
Soup kitchens
Hey all. I wonder what you guys think of this article in the Times of London. It's about the role evangelicals are playing in Africa's development, even within secular charities.
Hearts & Minds
Yeah, too bad it rips their own culture out by the roots and replaces it with Christianity. You might feel peace and bliss after a lobotomy too. And I've certainly noticed that steers seem a lot more content and gentle than bulls.
And sure, I believe this person is a "confirmed atheist." Absolutely.
This article creates just another phony two-value argument, and the two choices are Christianity and
The other two, or ten, or fifty choices ... where are they? Where's Education? Mentoring? Role models? A culture of Reason?
Oh, no. Just Christianity. Africa needs Christianity. It brings a spiritual transformation. Even a confirmed atheist can see it.
I don't know...
It could actually be correct that something is needed. It sounds patronizing to think of Africans as being primitive in their beliefs, but when I read about people being killed for witchery, or the fuster-cluck that was South Africa's AIDS program for the last 5 years, it seems to be true that there's a lot of magical thinking there. And it can be very hard to shift from that to an enlightenment-style logical mindset.
Plus as someone notes down-thread (can't see it here from the composition page), Europe went through a similar series of stages.
So it may be that the methadone of Christianity is better than the cold-turkey of pure crystal secularism. Course we all know the problem with methadone. So what we need is something that fills people's "spiritual needs" (by which I mean ingrained mental processes) but isn't just another form of magic.
I fully expect that research has been done into changing magical thinking into logical, or at least reducing the transmission to the next generation, but I have never heard of it.
Yeah.
I understand and actually agree with you somewhat. Something IS needed. But ...
We've been yoked to this same shit for, what, 20,000 years or so? I want to move to the next stage, rather than just continue with THIS one.
I lost ten pounds some months back, and I was amazed at how good I felt. I was also disturbed ... because I'd had no idea how sick I was BEFORE I lost the weight.
I think our entire civilization is just like that. We're a thousand pounds overweight on superstition and magical thinking, and sick as hell, but it feels normal to us because it's all we know.
It's like we live in a society where they break our legs as soon as we're born, and all of us live entire lifetimes on broken legs, so we think this level of pain and madness is normal. Nobody knows what it might feel like not to be in pain, or to live among crazy people. Everything is twisted out of shape, and we stagger along together, with nobody knowing what straight and healthy legs might be like. Worse, we have these vast, influential organizations in charge of breaking legs, and their representatives are our most cherished speakers and mentors.
We all live in this society and we all have our moments of happiness and comfort, so we all tend to unconsciously accept that this is normal and right, and that good things are happening.
But I think we're sick. I think we're monstrously, murderously, insanely sick with the mindset that religion engenders. I think it's killing us, and I think it's happening faster than any of us realize.
And all too often, I think there's no stopping it, and we're only coasting toward an end that's already been bought and paid for, and is only waiting to be delivered.
I'm not talking about climate change, necessarily, but I talked to a climatologist about a year ago, and the first question I asked him was "Tell me the truth: Are we fucked?" And he said, unsmiling, "Yeah, we're fucked."
I could go on for days about the irrational, destructive paradoxes that we live in like fish live in water. Things that could be fixed, but that don't get fixed because people can't even imagine they're problems.
"Something" is needed, yeah. But is more leg breaking ALL we can come up with?
To be fair
To be fair, the guy was arguing that it was working, not that it was true. Christianity was tried and it produced results he could see and the results were good according to him. Maybe if there were 'Communist charities' or 'Reason charities' we would have something to compare the results with.
And I've certainly noticed that steers seem a lot more content and gentle than bulls.
If I read him correctly, he claims that Christianity didnt turn them into content and gentle steer. On the contrary. It made them more open, engaging, and assertive. It gave them a sense of being 'individual' such that they won't just acquiesce to the authority of the warlord, or something like that.
The other two, or ten, or fifty choices ... where are they? Where's Education? Mentoring? Role models? A culture of Reason?
There were those -- clean water, education and training and all that -- but he said Africa needs something else. If history were any guide, those other things like 'culture of reason' came in Europe after the Roman Church built universities when people became smart enough to question authority, even claimed divinely-given authority.
Link.
Ooops. Here's the link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/artic...
Jesus said; "The poor you will always have with you"...
...and a Humanist would answer; "Says you!" Of course we will always have the poor among us, if we wait until they are ignorant and hungry and their kids are headed for more of the same, and we spoon some soup into a bowl for them and give them a bag of our cast-off clothes. Or if we blame people for their misfortunes. I reckon the actual number of people who "deserve" to be poor is much smaller.
As a Humanist (who also happens to be an atheist) I want to see systemic changes to fix the root problems that lead to poverty. But in humanity's tortured history, only recently have we started to think those problems could even be solved. We've actually made a bit of progress in only a few centuries.
The religious will keep treating symptoms and that's fine; it keeps them out of the pool halls.
No athiests in soup kitchens
I am the parent of a child with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. He has been through two years of chemotherapy and cranial radiation. The treatments led to a stroke, cerebral edema and fungal pneumonia, all of which, thank goodness, he recovered from. Treatment is still continuing, and to put it mildly it has been one long nightmare.
Athiest parents of pediatric cancer patients are very few and far between and I am basically on my own in my beliefs - and lonely.
I have witnessed such a massive outpouring of help, emotional and practical, to those families who attend Churches and the like. On two occasions I have received welcome assistance from religious organisations, I felt like such a hypocrite yet I needed a helping hand so badly. As much as I appreciated their love and kindness I so dearly wish there could be someone or something out there who understands the way I feel and could help me through this.
This is so true, yet I so wish it wasnt ... "Nonetheless, I think people tend to forget that secularists, and particularly atheists, usually don't have the communal foundation of a church or some such institution as a social springboard to charity and volunteerism".
Maybe someday, if I have any strength left, I would like to see if its possible to form some sort of local charity of athiests and agnostics. I learned the hard way that there truly is a need for it!
http://skittlesupdate.blogspot.com/
Made more dfficult...
This is of course made more difficult by the fact of raw numbers: there probably aren't all that many atheists in a given community in order to form such an institution.
However, I do think that this is the age in which locality/proximity becomes less important than shared ideals and philosophies, and support can come in many more forms than the immediately physical. So we are at an incredible communal disadvantage, but we may have been, as they say, born at the right time.
I have often thought about
I have often thought about how atheists lack the community that church congregations provide believers. There are groups like Atheists United who do organize meetings and events but they don't have many regional groups out there. I would have to go 25-30 miles to get to the nearest one. Within a ten minute walk from my home I can get to three different churches.
Non-religious charities are also pretty rare. When I was setting up the Theism Brain Armor page I wanted to find a non-religious charity to donate to and it was quite difficult. I ended up settling on Doctors Without Borders.
On a small, personal scale I think people are a little more likely to help those in the immediate community. Along those lines I've seen the local PTA act to motivate people to help particular families who are in need.
I don't know if just a lack of numbers of atheists that's the problem or if it's just that it's easier to unite people around a belief rather than the lack of one.
Non-theist Charities
The nice Christians have only lately come to accept the environment as something worth thinking about. Before that, I met several Christians (including my own brother) who thought the environment wasn't worth a care, because 1) God gave Man dominion over the earth, to subdue and rule over, 2) the End Times were coming, and 3) anytime he wanted, God could fix up any damage humans did with a wave of his hand.
So just about any environmental organization is likely to be secular. There are also lots of animal rescue groups out there with no noticeable godblesses involved.
AND ... any money you give to Planned Parenthood is guaranteed to go to good secular uses. You know, considering that business about the genocidal, satanic murder of innocent white Christian fetuses.
Lack of belief
That's key, and it points to the lack of a singular focus for any would-be atheist movement. Separationism? Atheist ascendancy? Humanistic happiness? All of the above?
Charity
On the other hand, atheists aren't fucking up civilization with lies and mental illness.
I've said many times in the past that the humans of 50,000 years or so ago were every bit as smart as us, and probably even smarter. Considering that we've had real science for only about 300 years, and have gotten HERE, imagine if science had started 20,000 years ago, or even 1,000. We could be functional immortals living on a paradise planet, with English-speaking chimpanzees for neighbors, watching Oprah interview book-writing elephants on Mars.
What held us back? Superstition, to begin with -- ignorance feeding on itself. But eventually, ORGANIZED superstition, superstition with a stake in people believing in it. Religion. Parasitic, stifling, debilitating. And a relentless, murderous enemy of every question, every discovery, every least scrap of newness and change and progress.
Even today, religion is still the greatest enemy of science and progress. Considering the End Times wackos in our midst, people with power who WANT the end of the world, religion stands a fair chance of killing us all.
The sheer COST of religion, if we could only know it, would probably stagger us.
Too bad these studies only look in one direction. "Atheism must be bad, Christianity must be good; let's find reasons why."
In other words...
There are no atheist charities, because atheists don't feel the need to conduct their charity in the name of atheism. Only the religious do that, tying every good deed to their irrational belief system.