catsittingstill: (Default)
catsittingstill ([personal profile] catsittingstill) wrote2010-01-23 03:55 pm

I made a donation today to help Haiti

I found an article about the Richard Dawkins Foundation's collecting paypal donations to send to Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross, and made a donation.  No big deal, except in the process of finding it I came across another article.

It's what I've come to think of as typical--saying basically that if an atheist gives to an atheist charity the fact that there is some faint hope of fighting the pervasive prejudice against atheists by donating means that donation doesn't count, and besides, your conscience comes from God and how can atheists be so dumb that in spite of experiencing their conscience they deny God.  The usual.

He's got me all wrong.  I gave through an atheist organization because I turned down the heat and gave up soda pop to scrape together money to be able to help people out.  I emphatically don't want it squandered on gilding and limousines, or--God help us--on solar powered talking bibles

Your mileage may vary.  If you feel that what a Haitian child with two broken legs who hasn't eaten in  week really needs is a solar-powered talking bible, by all means fund it.  But I hope that I--and most people!--have better sense.

atheist donations

[identity profile] patternbuilder.livejournal.com 2010-01-25 10:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I donate through Kiva.org. They have an atheist lending team that is the largest and I think has lent over a million dollars so far. Their stated purpose is to refute the idea that only churchy types do good works. Seems the issue is that secular giving isn't aggregated by a known agnostic group.