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.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

They both have good reputations, as far as I know. Is Heifer International religious? I thought the idea behind it was very clever (this is the one where you donate X amount and buy a cow or a goat or some chickens or a donkey, right?)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Heifer International as an organization is Christian in its philosophy and the motives of its founders (and, as far as I know, its current administration) for doing what they do. But it does not evangelize, or as far as I know, speak at all of religion to the people it helps. It just sends them geese, or whatever, and teaches them how to take care of same. I don't have any reason to care whether the folks who are shipping my geese to somebody and training them in the upkeep of their flock are doing so out of their own faith, or their own atheistic consciences, or any other motive, so long as that is what they are doing with the money I give them.