Atheism and Charity

" I've found that most atheists make excellent citizens and their children are less likely to get in trouble with the law." Do you have anything to back that claim up? I just don't know how you would know much about whether children of atheists typically get into legal trouble. Are you a social worker, police officer, or corrections officer, or have you read any statistics that support this claim?

Hi again magtibaygom, That's a good point and may be true for some, but for others it's probably just rebellion. Blessings.

@Pose123: You have mentioned "atheists make excellent citizens and their children are less likely to get in trouble with the law". I have also observed that and I'm thinking why... Is it because some Christians think "it is OK violating the law or committing sin, after all, I can always ask God's forgiveness by entering the confession room"?

"it is too bad that you need to come to the defense of people in their generosity" Actually she went on the attack in the thread where this started saying any Christian that opposed Obama's healthcare bill was a hypocrite and didn't care about children. As a Christian I didn't appreciate being attacked and reminded her that Christians and Christian churches ran a large number of orphanages and hospitals that take care of adults and children. I also provided her with a study that showed religious people donate more time, money, and blood. This thread was really her way of retreating and starting a new fight where she could get people to side with her by playing the victim since nobody sided with her when she attacked Christians. I never set out to attack atheists, but rather defend the Christians who she was attacking.

I said this in reference to the christian hypocrisy, which is fact: The same people protecting the rights of the "soon-to-be-born" are not extending the same rights to those who are already living with deadly illnesses who desperately need medical coverage. I am not playing victim. I am looking for documentation to prove to you that atheists are equally as charitable, when you know you have the advantage of documentation on your side.

Valentine - I am happy to see you post here; I am glad it captured your attention. There are some diehards that would question seeing oneself as an part of a larger community. They may see it as a slippery slope to communism. A political thread is actually where this debate stemmed from, seeing as how they religion and politics go hand in hand. Needless to say, my challenger and I are in members of opposing parties, too. This reminds me of people accusing Sean Penn of going to Haiti for pr purposes. He personally helped save two people's lives, and, meanwhile, people are saying he did it for the recognition, where in - he did it for the work at hand. When I make donations to groups or organizations I support, I never include a footnote saying, "By the way, I am atheist." I find that gratuitous, and against the whole spirit of being charitable.

I don’t disagree with you in the least, gardengerty. But, I am afraid that my challenger has a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to religion, using this argument as proof enough that Christians are better people than atheists. He conceded that atheists do donate, but not as monumentally as Christians, and that is far from the truth. He does not take into consideration the lack of organization when it comes to atheism, or the anonymity. We favour doing the work for the cause, not to claim any glory for it.

The Bible has a story about people like that, both the Pharisee (high religious muckedy muck) who does his alms for the glory of men and the Gentile (outcast) who humbly says, Lord be merciful to me a sinner. Bible says the glory hogs get their reward immediately,as notoriety, others who give are rewarded in their hearts and in eternity. I did not see your discussion with the other user. I believe that God would judge me for trying to put someone else down, either you or him. Usually I stay out of religion discussions, and try to let my life illustrate what I believe. I do know Christians as well who give for the sake of giving, it feels really good to be able to give. You know that old saying "It is more blessed to give than to receive"? It is so true. I even have had people imply that it is sinful for me to claim charitable deductions on taxes, out of the same principle you are illustrating.

@ladybugmagic: Would you like to introduce to us your contender and challenger?

Very good perspective. It is so sad when we have to question an affiliation when we want to do good charity work. Luckily, because of ill reported stats, more and more non-religious charities are popping up. Not everyone knows them, and it may not be convenient when a local charity is nearby with a stellar reputation, but has a religious affiliation. I would donate no matter what, because the charity work is more important than the glory, and that is what has me upset - people use that against you. Thank you so much for your post!

I said nothing of tax exemption status as frankly, I don't care if churches of any faith are tax exempt or not so long as the standard applies to all of them. What I'm concerned about are laws that FORCE them to act in opposition to their religious doctrine. THAT is a violation of the establishment clause under the 1st amendment. Take for example the case in New Jersey where a church was sued, and lost, because they refused to let a gay wedding take place on church property. Religious freedom is not bigotry. Nobody's forcing anyone to subscribe to any religion. Gay people can get married in New Jersey, but they have no right to force churches to allow the marriages on their property.

Amen to that!

Networking for a cause and being proud of charity work is okay, if it is in the name of the cause. Doing it to boast your religious so it makes you charitable is not. Take a look at this link, one that you referred to as a left wing hater site, or whatever you called it. http://www.godlesshaven.com/articles/godless-charity.html Scroll to the section on conditional charity. That is absolutely NOT okay, and it is NOT okay to manipulate things when people are in need of help. A noteable atheist however made a sizeable donation to kids wanting to go to a catholic school. How often do religions support something against their beliefs? Because I know you will not read it, or read it only with the intent to prove me wrong, I copied an excerpt of the conditional "charity" some religious groups offer. Catholic and Christian charity groups may help a lot of unfortunate people, but there are drawbacks to religious charities. In November of last year, the Archdiocese of Washington threatened to withdraw charity efforts from D.C. if a bill respecting gay marriage passed into law [4]. The Christian Children's Fund turned down a donation of more than $17,000 that was raised in memory of Gary Gygax [5], creator of the popular Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, which has been condemned by numerous conservative Christians over the years.

I don't see anything wrong with people knowing exactly who is alleviating their suffering. Are you saying that they should hide their faith when doing good work? Frankly I don't care what symbols, if any, people carry when they're helping those who need it. If I were a cross, should I hide it in my pocket before I help someone?

That should have been "If I wear a cross, should I hide it in my pocket before I help someone?"

The truth evidentally tortures you, because I have answered your question, time and time again: If atheists do give just as much, or more as some would like to believe, then why is there no evidence of that? We don't organize or congregate, but that is beginning with social networking and the blogosphere. Given that we don't meet weekly, we don't meet up and schedule blood drives at our local meeting site. But, when blood drives come to our work, we are likely to donate, not to tell the person or anyone conducting a study, "I am an atheist, and I donate blood,", but, we don't even bring up our religion. We just donate blood in the event we can, and be glad that someone gets it. You don't take into account anonymity. You know very well that providing documentation will be difficult under these circumstances, yet you continue to say your study is obviously the truth. The truth, which apparently hurts you to the point of denial, is WE DON'T KNOW, because we don't boast or identify our religion when we do charitable things. We just do charitable because it is the right thing to do.

I remember giving someone water on a hot day and he asked if I was christian. He was dumbfounded when I said, "no", and said, "I can't believe there are other good people in this world." It's scary when people have such a misconception. And sad, really.

Lady, a part of the problem is that people siding with private industry aren't necessarily approving of the actions of the insurance companies. Some believe that private industry, if allowed to compete as private industry needs to, can do a much better job than government at efficiently running something. If, for example, ALL private insurance companies competed across the entire nation, then the ones who do abuse people would go extinct. But instead of letting business be business, the government decided to say, "Hey, we can do a better job." I'm not sure government has anything to hang their hat on to say they could do a better job. So far, they've only proven to be effective at tugging at people's heart strings, like yours, and making them think of private industry as evil. Some businesses are. But they're the ones that need to go away. And if they are allowed to compete in the open market, consumers will weed them out. Private business MUST conform. The government does not have to. Private businesses need profit to operate. The government can drive us all into trillions of dollars worth of debt and make us think it's our fault it happened. If the government is the great watcher and stepper-in of private industry when it goes awry, then who does the same for the government? ................................. BadPenny5, I think you misunderstood what I meant. Maybe I should have explained it better. I'm certainly not talking about individuals. An individual can, as you illustrated, provide THE ultimate sacrifice. There's nothing more charitable than that. I'm sure people from all over the world are extremely generous and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. What I meant was, simply, in countries where the government acts as the great equalizer of all people, there aren't as many "causes" as there are here. Government plays a much larger role in deciding where the collective tax dollars go. Not to say that people aren't incredibly generous! I don't mean that in the slightest. And when it comes to huge disasters that the entire world is aware of, I know that people are extremely generous. What I'm speaking of is more the day-to-day little causes that some folks in a social-like country might not even be aware of because it's the government attempting to handle it with their idea of "fairness." So you took me wrong there.

To be fair, maters - those opposing universal health coverage who blatantly say, "Let them be personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care,", "Let them die", or, "Not my problem, I take care of myself", obviously lack compassion with no debate. Those who question the constitutionality of it have some compassion in the regard that they care about protecting their fellow citizens and the constitution that was designed to protect them. But, unfortunately, in my opinion, in this one case, since this bill was so urgent, they should have sacrificed that, the way I had to sacrifice the protection of women's reproductive rights, in order to help save people who are dying every day. Those siding with the monopolizing health care industries, and who support their abuses, in the name of free enterprise do lack compassion, while 40,000 people die every day and generous profits are being made. A utopic version of the bill would be more like the way it is abroad, or even our neighbour to the north, but ours obviously is only a foundation, and it is treating the most urgent cases first, the way it should. Anyone opposing that, even if their reasoning holds some water, should reevaluate the better good right now.

Maters and I have a continued debate in a political thread in which I support universal health coverage, and he opposes our current bill. I am in favour of it, because people are dying, and this helps to cover people who insurance companies denied because of "preexisting conditions." I said that our bill and weaker version of healthcare is nowhere nearly as utopic as it could be, like Canada, the UK, and many Eurpeaon countries. Ours just puts more regulations on the insurance companies. I said those who oppose our bill most certainly lack compassion for the 40,000 Americans who are dying every year out of want of medical care. Some members of the tea party actually said, "Let them die" on television. We are debating over there, and unfortunately, it has trailed into this thread. He was not the person I had wished to attract, though it is quite likely he knows who my "challenger" is.

Well, let's think through this for a second, because this is one of the things that really confuses me about people on the left. Why does the underlying motivation really matter? Why is wanting recognition all that bad? Especially in relationship to charity. Let's just step through it logically. If the ultimate goal is to help people, does matter if one also wants a reward as well? Say I am one that wants recognition, and gives $10 to charity, and someone else is the 'pure selflessness' person, and they also give $10 to charity. Now if the goal is to help people, and assuming they were doing it under 'pure selflessness' reason, then why would it matter to them what reason I or anyone else, give to charity? Will his (selfless) $10 donated, help more than my $10 donated? Obviously not. So clearly... there must be some other motivation for giving, than simply helping other people, even to the 'selfless' person. Otherwise it wouldn't matter to them what reason anyone gave anything. Only that it was given, and helping people. What is that other reason? Here's my theory... The reason why the motivation, and recognition or reward, matter to people on the left is because they get their perks from believing their own motivations to be superior. In effect, the assumed motivation of 'for the good of humanity' is in fact the very reward for charity, that they claim they don't get. Again, not all liberals, leftists, or atheists, are the same. But it is often the case when I meet people who make the claim that they give to the poor for the superior reason, are often prideful and arrogant about it. It seems clear their reward is their own prideful belief in the superiority of their own motivations. So that's my take on it. For the record, I don't know you, and none of this is to be taken as a direct reflection of yourself. You could be an exception, and how would I know? This is just my general experience with other atheists, and leftists.

Very interesting and surprisingly fair outlook. I think that, in general, there are a lot of people, religious, and non-religious who give to give, but then there are the glory seekers who either want recognition or reward, and I will never understand that of any human. It makes me sad that people believe that non-believers don't give as much. I'd like to think we do, though it is not documented, because we do a great deal of work with human rights. I am sure it may be even, but we can't prove it, and for someone to use that lack of proof as though it makes the opposite true is gut wrenching.