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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Donating to the poor is destructive if it's manipulative, which it can be as we've seen from MZ's experience. If you aren't unconditionally helping those in need, then you aren't being altruistic, you're conditionally providing assistance to get what you want out of someone else.

This is why secular charities are better, which has been my argument from the beginning.

Penalty for logical falsity.
You are asserting, from your small sample group, that all religious charities function to manipulate. This is false.

I am asserting, from my small sample group (which is more than just MZ but his example is the most readily available), that religous charities sometimes are manipulative, and have a motive to do so. This is true.

Secular charities are purely out to be altruistic as a mission statement. While there is the potential for corrupt individuals inside a secular charity as well, they do not have an ideological excuse for their actions. "I'm a greedy jerk." is a lot less convincing than "It is the will of God Almighty that we use our efforts to convert the sinners to His Will." as an excuse. 

[Strife26]

I'm also, by the reasoning that giving conditionally is bad, doesn't that mean that I should allow nazi serial killers on the run from the law for burning orphanages with white phosphorus, destroying public safety networks, causing various sundry strife, and whistling Eric Clapton songs access to my soup kitchen?



Not blindly accepting something is a far cry from the death of organized religion, I'd say.


Secular charities can be manipulative as well, sure as heck. See world funding organizations that exist to take people's money, because a non-profit organization can have a perfectly well paid CEO or the society to help firefighters that gives 6% of revenue to actual firefighting organizations (both of which I can attest to be true).

[Max White]

I did mean it to have some shock value, especially replacing churches with X. Prof is a very loud evangelical christian who "has proof" that "men walked with dinosaurs" and "there was a great flood", namely because he understands nothing about fossil formation and geological strata respectively (and has demonstrated those lack of fundamental knowledges in class.)

...
 
 
 
How can we help? I want this fucker's head on a pike.
I suggest going at this from a pure 'Religion is scientifically wrong, and that is intrinsically bad' angle.

I am asserting, from my small sample group (which is more than just MZ but his example is the most readily available), that religous charities sometimes are manipulative, and have a motive to do so. This is true.

This is why secular charities are better (then non secular), which has been my argument from the beginning. 

You might have meant sometimes, but that was not what you were asserting.

[Grek]

I did mean it to have some shock value, especially replacing churches with X. Prof is a very loud evangelical christian who "has proof" that "men walked with dinosaurs" and "there was a great flood", namely because he understands nothing about fossil formation and geological strata respectively (and has demonstrated those lack of fundamental knowledges in class.)

You are so going to get an F on this paper.

[Strife26]

No, I'm guess D. It's not quite bad enough for him to bring attention down on himself with an arguable F.

[Max White]

No marker would dare give this an F, he would get he's ass handed to him for pressing he's beliefs in a class. Normaly at least, I never took Philosophy but I hear you can get away with some pretty dodge logic.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm also, by the reasoning that giving conditionally is bad, doesn't that mean that I should allow nazi serial killers on the run from the law for burning orphanages with white phosphorus, destroying public safety networks, causing various sundry strife, and whistling Eric Clapton songs access to my soup kitchen?

Chances are you wouldn't know about that. If you did see and recognize a famous serial killer in your soup kitchen, you should obviously call the police due to the threat the individual poses to the other people around them.

I am asserting, from my small sample group (which is more than just MZ but his example is the most readily available), that religous charities sometimes are manipulative, and have a motive to do so. This is true.

This is why secular charities are better (then non secular), which has been my argument from the beginning. 

You might have meant sometimes, but that was not what you were asserting.

I am asserting that, as a whole, secular charities are superior because even the potential of using an ideological argument to manipulate people is severely reduced from that of a religious charity.

[Max White]

I am asserting that, as a whole, secular charities are superior because even the potential of using an ideological argument to manipulate people is severely reduced from that of a religious charity.

While yes, they do have that going for them, transparency is not the only measure of quality of a charity. I could assert that religious charities are superior as they can appeal to a winder audience, who are compelled to donate on a more personal level, thus collecting more revenue to work with.
Your measure of quality is too narrow to properly assert anything.

[Strife26]

I'm also, by the reasoning that giving conditionally is bad, doesn't that mean that I should allow nazi serial killers on the run from the law for burning orphanages with white phosphorus, destroying public safety networks, causing various sundry strife, and whistling Eric Clapton songs access to my soup kitchen?

Chances are you wouldn't know about that. If you did see and recognize a famous serial killer in your soup kitchen, you should obviously call the police due to the threat the individual poses to the other people around them.

At what level of conditions can I demand of my soup kitchen goers? Shirt and shoes? Clean language? Listening to a radio set to death metal? What if that radio is christian radio? Can I tell them God Bless You as they walk out the door?


I'll assert, that in part, Secular charities are more prone to being used to directly misuse charitable funds, as due to the lack of a direct moral authority above (a religious one largely dependent on a church's support).

[Glowcat]

Break over. It wasn't going to work anyway.

Person who donates to Religious Charity but NOT Secular Charity = Jerk
Person who donates to either Religious Charity or Secular Charity = Cool

How wrong you are... How to best point this out to you, I wonder?
What do you make of a person who does not donate to charity?

I'd call a person who doesn't donate at all either A) Greedy, if they have the means but not the desire to contribute anything towards society, or B) Ineligible due to lack of funds to spare.

This is also completely irrelevant to my argument as all people who belong to the class of JERK != all people who are JERKS belong to the class of people who only donate to Religious Charities (rather than both Secular and Religious Charities in an effort to do good).

At what level of conditions can I demand of my soup kitchen goers? Shirt and shoes? Clean language? Listening to a radio set to death metal? What if that radio is christian radio? Can I tell them God Bless You as they walk out the door?

I think not being a bigot is a good way to run a charity. You know, not discriminating against people because of irrelevant BS... as opposed to turning them down for being violent murderers.

[Max White]

I'd call a person who doesn't donate at all either A) Greedy, if they have the means but not the desire to contribute anything towards society, or B) Ineligible due to lack of funds to spare.

This is also completely irrelevant to my argument as all people who belong to the class of JERK != all people who are JERKS belong to the class of people who only donate to Religious Charities (rather than both Secular and Religious Charities in an effort to do good).

Don't you go inheritance and generalisation on me boi, I invented polymorphism!

So let us assume that the person in question is able to donate, it saves us a lot of effort. Clearly if they are unable to donate, it is not their fault.
So, if it is intrinsically bad to not donate, would you say it is intrinsically good to donate?

[Miggy]

I'll agree with MZ that you guys should chill out. You are verging on hostility.

In order to perhaps drive the focus elsewhere, I mentioned in my post that I disagreed with your notion (the world would be better off without religion) while still being an atheist myself.

The thing is, you assume that logical thinking concludes definitively that things such as god, heaven and souls are impossible, which makes it false to proclaim that they are real. If god doesn't exist, teaching little kids that he does is misinformation and even propaganda.

But the entire problem is that you can't definitively prove that god, heaven and souls are unreal. You can believe they are not, through the lack of proof to their existence, but there is no proof to the contrary either. Have you died, and found that there was not a heaven? Do you know every intimate detail of the human brain's working so much that you can rule out a soul? Do you know all facts concerning the creation of the universe, so that you can definitely prove that there was no god involved?

The answers to all of these are no. I am myself an atheist, and I cannot answer yes to any of those questions. The thing is though, I find it more likely that god, souls and heaven do not exist, since I can much easier rationalize those as out-dated human-made constructs, attempting to explain a world we don't undestand, rather than as definitive proof. But still then, I can only believe them to be the case, it is only probability not certainty.

In the end, this means that, to me, religion is subjective and not objective. In the same way you cannot say "Rock music is bad, techno is good!" or the opposite, you can't say "Atheism is right, christianity is wrong!". Your religion matters as much as your favourite colour, in my book.

I will make this clear though, I do not believe that religion and science should overlap. I do not believe that christians should ever look to the bible to answer questions such as "Why does the sun rise in the morning?". We know for a fact that the sun rises due to the earth's rotation around the sun, and whatever the heck the bible might say otherwise is an outdated theory. But pose yourself the question: If the bible consisted of nothing more than the ten commandments and various moral stories (assuming these moral stories contain modern and not outdated "how to treat your slaves" stories), would that hinder science in any way? Would it make for a bad society?

In the end, if I find a person that does good and is happy, purely because of the morals of christianity, what right do I have to tell them that I think they are wrong. They're happy. They're doing good. I should not force my view of the world onto them to change them, since I could only do so for the worse.

And that's why I don't believe that religion has to go. If it makes people happy, and if it makes them do good, there's nothing you can replace it with that will be better. You'll be changing the world for the worse. Does religion need to change its role in the world? In some cases yes. Does it have to go completely in order to make the world a better place? No, I do not think removing religion would make the world better, and for a time it might even make the world worse.

EDIT: Holy 9 posts while I was typing batman. And now people aren't even angry anymore?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I am asserting that, as a whole, secular charities are superior because even the potential of using an ideological argument to manipulate people is severely reduced from that of a religious charity.

While yes, they do have that going for them, transparency is not the only measure of quality of a charity. I could assert that religious charities are superior as they can appeal to a winder audience, who are compelled to donate on a more personal level, thus collecting more revenue to work with.
Your measure of quality is too narrow to properly assert anything.

Hence why I advocate that we should try to make a less religiously based society so that secular charities can appeal to this wider audience. That way, we get the best of both worlds. Plenty of charity, no ideology.

At what level of conditions can I demand of my soup kitchen goers? Shirt and shoes? Clean language? Listening to a radio set to death metal? What if that radio is christian radio? Can I tell them God Bless You as they walk out the door?

All of those things would be fine for the soup kitchen goers. You can tell them God Bless You as they leave if you wish and it won't break the secularism of the charity so long as you are telling them so as Strife26, not as The Bay 12 Soup Kitchen.

I'll assert, that in part, Secular charities are more prone to being used to directly misuse charitable funds, as due to the lack of a direct moral authority above (a religious one largely dependent on a church's support).

Don't bring that into this. Using your god as a debate point is meaningless to me because I don't validate its existence. You might as well be telling me Santa-based charities are better because Santa is always watching them.

[Max White]

Hence why I advocate that we should try to make a less religiously based society so that secular charities can appeal to this wider audience. That way, we get the best of both worlds. Plenty of charity, no ideology.

Once again, you are assuming that people will continue to be charitable without their faith. The ideology is what drives some, take it away, and the charity dries up too.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Hence why I advocate that we should try to make a less religiously based society so that secular charities can appeal to this wider audience. That way, we get the best of both worlds. Plenty of charity, no ideology.

Once again, you are assuming that people will continue to be charitable without their faith. The ideology is what drives some, take it away, and the charity dries up too.

If the vast majority of people on this planet cannot find it in themselves to have even a little spark of human empathy for someone else and only do altruistic things out of the fear of the wrath of an ethereal godhead, we have way, way bigger problems than a lack of charity.

But I don't think that's true. I think that they can, and atheists in the secular charities that already exist are proof enough of that.