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

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The news stories I have seen suggest the Haitians are very religous and probably have all the bibles they need. Some new dreams might be both more entertaining and more helpful.

(Is there any human attribute for which this claim is not made?)

Why would there necessarily be any human attribute for which no stripped down, primitive precursor can be found in animals? We're not magic, after all.

Though it would be interesting, in some story of humans with magic, if some animals also possessed a rudimentary magical ability. :-)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say what's a stripped primitive precursor and what's just a different thing that looks similar: are we looking at a kitten and a housecat, or a housecat and a tiger? Or are we comparing a cheetah and a wolf? Conservative Christian philosophers usually come down on the cat & tiger side; materialist evolutionary philosophers on the kitten and cat. Truth of the matter is no-one knows, though.

Actually, Barbara Hambly actually did cat magic once, in Dog Wizard, I think it was. But it was a throw-away. Hmmm.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

remember that housecats and tigers are related too. Just more distantly.

You might better ask "are we looking at a housecat and a tiger, or a housecat and a rock?"

At which point I would think it would be easy to tell whether something is a precursor or not.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Good point. I was trying to suggest there's probably a relationship, but it might be a more complex one. I suppose I was being too complex!

Ideas, I've got. The ability to put them across, not so much.