I made a donation today to help Haiti

[catsittingstill]

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.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

My sense of right and wrong comes from my membership in a social species, and my ability to reason out the implications of what that means I owe the rest of my species.

My choice of where I donate depends on whether they do with the money what I want done. Some of my charities are religious-run, and as long as they spend their money on effective assistance for people I want to help, I don't mind that. Some aren't. I give to Doctors Without Borders. I also give to the Heifer International Foundation.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

The article is, as you say, bilge.

But the fact that Dawkins couldn't do this without making a debating point out of it, and thus laid himself open to having his priorities called into question, was, I think, an error of judgment on his part.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

"Where does our sense of right and wrong come from?"

Erm...the desire to help someone in need comes from our ability to imagine being in need ourselves. It's this fascinating concept called "empathy". We don't reach out to help people because we think the Sky Father will give us candy afterward (or at least not spank us); we do it because we know how much it sucks to need help and not get any.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

That's a toxic conservative RC site.

I think the impulse to send bibles is not entirely negative. People need dreams as well as food. Maybe they need dreams more when they don't have enough to eat. That said, meals and medical care first!

The question of where ethics come from is in fact a very significant and difficult one and not, I think, so easily answered by the claim of evolutionary sources. (Is there any human attribute for which this claim is not made?) Yet Christian philosophers seem to know no more than anyone else, despite all claims to the contrary, and most of their arguments seem to come from the pagan philosopher Plato, anyway.

[kittyguitar.livejournal.com]

It seems to me tht id Christians want the quake survivors in Haiti to hear the Bible's message they'd do better to follow the advice in the Bible itself--give the folks the practical help they need to put their lives back together, and then, if asked, explain how their faith inspired them to do this. Hopefully with the words of their own mouths, not some silly gadget.

Similar advice would well serve Dawkins. Give the aid with no strings, then when asked why, say, "Because this life is all we have and I can't bear to see my fellow humans spend it in suffering." Because I suspect that's why most atheists who do such things do them.

atheist donations

[patternbuilder.livejournal.com]

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.