Atheism and the eleemosynary impulse: how can I be most efficient in charity?

I’m missing something here. I did not mean that as a way to get in your face, and honestly believed it was a simple, nonconfrontational statement.

Apparently I was wrong.

I think it’s fine. The belief that it is presumably intended to combat, that their false god is the only source of good in the world, that is smug and condescending.

Well, I’m not going to claim to speak for anyone else, but to my ears “I do something because it’s right, not because god told me to” is very confrontational. There’s a strong implication there about other people. That’s my reading. That doesn’t mean anyone would agree with me!

Right, because those are the only two options–homeless or perfect.

:rolleyes: right back atcha.

Now, that strikes me as overly apologetic, arrogant and ever so vaguely whiny – as in “Gee, I’d love to be a truly nice person, but I can’t quite choke the rules of your Invisible Sky Fairy or his followers, so I just gotta try to be a decent person anyway, please accept my ungodly offering, even though I’m unworthy.”

If being offended makes you feel better, you go right on ahead and pray your way into prosperity.

“But” as a nice person and a devout infidel, I’ll be right here, wondering what the hell your problem is, even as I’m buying 11 on-sale kids coats and 14 backpacks in the local Penny’s (and filling the backpacks with easy-open nonperishible food) to take to the local heathen scooter-trash to distribute to area kids. I even buy the food from Walmart to maximize the calorie-per-dollar, despite my objections to their business practices.

Actually, I have, in my adult life, turned down several dozen invitations to participate in their religion by telling my fellow volunteers “No, thanks, we’re just not at all churchy” without mentioning my opinion of their motives.

However, the OP requested suggestions for a less evasive way to promote the fact that athiests can be decent humans, the simple statement " I do things because I am a decent person, not because god told me to" still seems to me to be a whole lot less “preachy” than the sermons the downtrodden usually hear.

Shall we return our focus to the OP?

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A couple of days ago I donated money to a halfway house again. It is enough to cover one week at the house. I don’t give homeless people money because a reasonably large number of them will just go out and buy whichever particular drug is destroying their life. Since I can’t tell if the homeless guys or gals are addicts, crazy or just having other serious issues giving them money is out because I don’t know what they’ll use it for.

By giving to the halfway house I am getting an addict/alkie a place to go for a week to start on the path to recovery. The guy who runs the place will only give a bed to someone he believes is serious about getting clean so there is a good chance the money is going to actually help someone get their life back on track.

As a side note, buying a homeless person booze or giving them cash so that they can buy booze is a bad idea. A large number of the homeless are alcoholics/addicts. If they have money the first thing they will do is buy which ever drug gets them loaded.

Slee

Nope, there really are people, even those who walk amongst us right here, who believe the only reason anybody ever finds themselves down and out, is because they either didn’t work hard enough, or didn’t pray hard enough. It makes them feel better about their own lives, because it means that they must be ‘good’ people because they are not getting punished by being homeless or poor or depressed, as opposed to the obviously ‘evil’ people who suffer from these afflictions.

Luckily, they will all face tough times, and hopefully will have an existential crisis big enough that they’ll implode when it happens, one way or the other. Not that I wish death upon anyone.

ETA: Luckily, if God exists, he’ll piss on them from a great height when they do end their stay here, too. Life can sometimes be good that way.

Wait, aren’t you the guy who used to go to AA meetings to find vulnerable chicks so you could purposefully devastate them emotionally, and didn’t you say that you would have physically raped those women if you hadn’t been too afraid of going to jail and getting a taste of your own medicine?

No offense, but I’m thinking you might not be the best example of a morally upstanding atheist.

Honestly, I don’t like your concept. Essentially, it’s proselytism for atheism under the cover of charitable work. I think you should kept the two things completely separate (joining some “Go Atheism! Go” organization and helping/funding a “Let’s help the homeless” charity).

Sorry, my mistake, I should only feed homeless guys. Carry on.

When we started volunteering at the shelter, they asked us what church we belong to (there’s a network of seven who share the responsibility for the shelter organization in our community) and we told them we don’t belong to a church. Honest answer to their question. I don’t feel the need to say anything more. Our actions speak for themselves.

So what’s your view? That outcomes in life are completely random? That Obama was just as likely to be homeless on the south side of Chicago as the President-elect, so he deserves no credit for being President-elect and would deserve no responsibility for being homeless?

That’s not what he said. Not all poverty is linked to random chance, but neither is it solely a fuck-up’s dilemma.

It’s not exactly atheism I’d like to proseltize; it’s critical thinking, which will inevitably lead at least to agnosticism if not weak atheism.

How many charities have “Christian” in their name? It may be a little pushy to actually deliver a sermon on why God doesn’t exist, but I see nothing wrong with having “Atheist” or “Secular Humanist” in the organizations name. Maybe if people see atheists doing good things, they won’t reflixively ignore whatever somebody says merely because they admit to being atheist.

In the first place, I don’t do that sort of thing any longer. I’m ashamed of the way I used to behave, and I am determined to never do anything of that sort again. I have never written a word attempting to justify my former bad behavior, or implying that it was anything but reprehensible.

In the second place, I never wrote that I would rape a woman. Here’s the post you’re alluding to if you disbelieve me. Again, I’m not seeking to defend what I did back then; my behavior was reprehensible. But I’ll thank you not to accuse me of doing even worse things.

I specifically wrote in the OP that I’m not terribly interested in proselytizing. I don’t care whether people go to church, so long as they don’t force their beliefs on others. Contrariwise, I am interested in rebutting the common belief that atheists are evil and callous, and that only Christians can do good deeds.

Just out of idle curiosity: are you a Christian? I ask because some of your other posts in other threads have seemed to imply that. If you are, then doesn’t Jesus’ admonition to take care of the poor contradict your statement? If you’re not a Christian, then of course it’s not relevant, and I apologize for bringing it up.

By the way, the woman wasn’t homeless; she was just broke, and had just left a clinic down the street from the office supply store where I met ehr. If you’ll reread the OP, you’ll note that I drove her home, and I waited for her to get inside before I drove off, being a good southern boy.

Actually I do have selfish motives. When I give to someone in need, it makes me feel good. I enjoy it, so I do it whenever I can. That motivates me quite as much as the notion that it is good for the world in general.

[Mod Note]Please take the debate about the effectiveness of charity elsewhere-it’s off topic[/Mod Note]

I see a real problem with the idea of atheists not “proselytising” when donating time and/or money for charity, because there is a big machine out there dedicated to promoting the “Charity is a Religious(mostly Christian) Idea” meme.

I didn’t say deny it, shut up about it, or be ashamed of it. I said don’t make a huge deal out of it. If you mention your atheism in the same tone of voice in which you’d mention picking up your dry cleaning or making tacos for dinner, you’ll go a lot farther than if you get really strident about it.

Imagine tapping a random stranger on the shoulder and saying “Hey buddy, I’m Jewish. Want to make something of it?”

I wonder if you have mistaken me for some sort of believer.

I think most of us who give do so for just these selfish reasons. Giving to someone in need benefits me at least as much as it benefits them.

As an atheist, I occasionally feel imposed on by Christians who think they are doing good. I’d hate to see atheists do the same thing even for really good reasons, y’know?

Am I the only person who opened the thread in order to find out what ‘eleemosynary’ meant?

See. this is one thing I admire the Christians and other religious believers for: their willingness to do difficult charitable works. This does not, however, mean in any way that I share their theology.

I think that the number of religious charitable givers might be partly a result of overall religious numbers though.

Here in North America, there are many Christians, and so the small percentage who are willing to do such works adds up to a lot of people. There are not so many Neo-pagans, and so Neo-pagan charities are thin on the ground. Doesn’t necessarily imply that Neo-pagans are less likely to give. That would have to be established from a study of their beliefs and their habits on a per-person basis.

I think it would be good to have more non-Christian helping organizations visible on the streets; it would break that meme that ‘only Christians can be charitable’, which is not true.