Not that it is ever to prove them wrong on anything
You, as a dirty atheist, are not charitable!
So you can do two things. Either covert to a religion of your choosing and cough up some cash for the collection plate OR you could click on the donors choose contribution thingy on the right side of my page and help contribute to the education of some students. You decide!
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Kiwi Sauce
October 3, 2011 at 07:23 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I had a peek to see their “evidence”. One is a study from a xtian polling organisation, the Barna Group, which shows that atheists give far less than xtians. Looking here it would appear that much of the money that xtians give to charity, is being given to churches. I, on the other hand, donate my money directly to the organisations I wish to help, e.g. Women’s Refuge, SPCA, ambulance, a local hospice,… I also don’t keep a running record of how much I give, barring the ones I do via automatic payment.
So, if they removed church donations, I wonder how the comparison would stack up.
raymoscow
October 3, 2011 at 10:28 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My usual reply to Christians who claim that Christians are more charitable is to point out that very, very little of what churches do actually helps the poor or needy.
I was on the business boards of several churches in two denominations, and I never saw help for poor people reach more than 1 or 2 percent of the budget. And even that, I would argue, is mostly for PR purposes.
The other 98% of Christian “giving” is for activities that not only are not charitable but which are positively harmful.
Kiwi Sauce
October 3, 2011 at 17:51 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Exactly, it’s not charity or altruism when you’re almost wholly helping your ingroup.
I would love to see a breakdown of where church donations go, clearly there are no income taxes involved so the actual income stream for churches is pretty damn high. I would say this is the worst example we have here in NZ. They have a lot of poor members who are in dead end, minimum wage jobs in a high rent city (Auckland). Their leader has given himself the title “Bishop” and our damn news media preface his name with it. Grr…
unbound
October 3, 2011 at 13:02 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I always get a chuckle out of such claims. Xtians donate to support their clubhouse…on average only a percent or two of their donations end up actually helping the community.
On the other hand, I donate to charities that actually help people (e.g. United Way)…so nearly all of my money goes to help those in need.
So…a xtian that donates $10,000 / year (yeah, this is way high, but I want to be nice about it) = $100 to $200 in actual support of the community and those in need.
My $2,000 / year donation to United Way (actually, I donate more) = $1,500 or more in actual support of the community and those in need.
Furthermore, I’ve been the Treasurer for a local high school association. Some xtians are very involved and helpful, but most xtians are not. In fact, more than 75% of the known atheists are active supporters (my wife – another atheist – is President)…whereas less than 25% of the xtians help out at all.
So xtians, in my experience, have a long way to go to demonstrate the same level of charitable support that atheists actually, functionally provide.
unbound
October 3, 2011 at 13:04 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[note to self to proof-read better]
– I’ve been Treasurer for 2 1/2 years.
– The 1% to 2% is the national average, so not just a number pulled out of the air.
D Johnston
October 3, 2011 at 15:09 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For the benefit of those of you who don’t have an in-depth knowledge of CP: Their atheism article and all related sub-articles are the products of one Ken DeMeyer, who is more than a bit obsessed with atheists (and gays, but that’s another story). Ken is in his 40s, unemployed and is likely somewhere on the autism spectrum judging by his behavior. He spends upwards of 18 hours a day on CP, creating troll articles in a vain attempt to get prominent atheists to mention him. If you want to know how desperate he’s getting, his latest efforts include six articles on bestiality.
Point being, leave the sad little man alone.
Assassin Actual
October 3, 2011 at 15:38 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kendoll’s 18 hour editing sprees are ledendary. But yea, I wouldn’t drive your internet-mobile over to CP and try to duel the Kendoll. Its a safe bet to assume that all their moderators are a little off balance.
Glodson
October 3, 2011 at 16:54 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would prove CP wrong, but I don’t see the point. Reality beat us to it.
But I’ll still donate my money to those that need. it. And I’ll keep my irrational belief that no one believes what is written at CP because the alternative is just too fucking scary.
michaelpark
October 3, 2011 at 19:37 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Want more evidence? One day after Hemant Mehta posted this: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/10/02/thats-one-way-to-support-the-special-olympics/, my donations page jumped from 7% to 31% of my target goal. Many of the donations are specifically labelled as being from atheists, and based on timing I would guess some of the others are as well.
meanmike
October 3, 2011 at 23:32 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow. I learned a lot about myself from that page that I never knew before. They did leave out the part where we ritually sacrife humans to the god of god not existing. Blessed be his non-existence.
I guess I’ll just wait for that UFO to take me away.
Seriously, the page is like a characature of the Christian Right’s ill-informed image of atheists.
Alice
October 17, 2011 at 01:36 (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m pasting in a summary from the atheist donor team’s message board on kiva.org
The atheists, agnostics, and about a dozen other terms in the name->( AASFSHNR) group is the top lender – about 5.2 million so far. Almost about to lap the kiva christians group. However, there is only one pan athiest group (AASFSHNR), sort of, and lots of religious groups. So the following analysis was done by one of the team members, comparing total atheist giving to total religious giving on kiva.
……..
Warning… if figures give you a headache, then look away now!
Eldon, I’ve been asking myself the very same thing ever since I’ve been here and folk have been crowing about beating the Christians in the total loaning figures. You’re right about there being a LOT of littler churchy teams out there – in fact there are a total of 856 teams listed under the category of Religious Congregations.
So . . . as the point has been raised, and as I also want to know the answer myself, I spent an hour or two today with the team lists and a spreadsheet. I looked at the top 200 teams in the Religious Congregations category (which took the team lending total down to $1625 by team 200). I took out all the non-religious teams (such as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster etc) and all the non Christian teams. If I wasn’t sure whether they were ‘Christian’ or not, then I looked at their ‘why we loan’ and their ‘about us’, and if necessary I googled the name. So I’m pretty sure that the results are reasonably accurate. Obviously they are not 100% accurate as
a) I’m not infallible, and
b) the numbers for the larger active teams are changing minute by minute.
I allocated an arbitrary total amount of $250,000 for the teams below the top 200 – which I think is being generous, as they drop down below $1,000 very fast after that, and over 100 of the teams have a total lending amount of $0. Yep, $0! Why on earth someone would create a team and then not even make one loan on its behalf is quite beyond my comprehension… I didn’t look in detail at the teams below the top 200 as I didn’t want to waste any more of my life on this, and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the end result.
So now to the results:
We already know that if we compare AASFSHNR with the Kiva Christians alone, then we (AASFSHNR) ‘win’.
AASFSHNR = $5,237,100 vs Kiva Christians = $2,996,900
The Kiva Christians Team is listed under the Friends category btw, not Religious Congregations .
If you add all the Religious Congregations ($2,669,725) to the Kiva Christians, then the total is $5,666,625, which is slightly more than the AASFAHNR total.
Then as Susan says, there are the others that fit under the AASFAHNR umbrella – such as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Rabid Atheists, SubGenius etc. Their total is $967,300. So add that to ours and you get $6,204,400 – which you’ll be happy to know is more than the Christian bloc.
BUT THEN . . . if you want to answer Mr. and Mrs. Horseguy’s question: “are the non-religious teams out-loaning the religious teams?” then it’s a very different kettle of figures. The non Christian but still religious groups (Baha’is, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus etc etc) total $2,490,125. Add that to the Christian bloc and you get $8,156,750. So the answer is no. The ‘religious teams’ are out-loaning the ‘non-religious teams’ by $1,952,350.
NOW . . . we come to the BIG qualification. These figures only represent the loans that are ATTRIBUTED to the various teams mentioned, not the total loaning history of people who are religious or non- religious. If you took the total loaning history, you may get a different result for the final question. For example, I am a member of multiple teams, and the number of loans that I attribute to AASFAHNR would be less than 10% of my total. So as with all statistics, you need to ask the right question, and then take any result with a huge dose of scepticism. However I have a feeling that the ‘religious’ folk may well attribute most of their loans to their religious teams, while the ‘non-religious’ among us may be more prone to spread the loans around various groups, as I do. I have no proof whatsoever for this of course, just a gut feeling from moseying about the site and seeing what teams various people belong to.
……
So, I think atheists are proven generous.
To access the message board, join Kiva, go to community section, and join the Atheists team. And to plug my favorite charity, feel free to lend as well.