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[Max White]

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.

Another penalty for another logical falsity!
Well, two really, but the second is forgiveable and not something I would argue with.
You are now asserting that the group of people that would only give money to a charity that relates to their beliefs is the 'vast majority'. Now where did I say that?

And if your wondering, the second one was asserting that we have bigger problems, but despite the assertion being logically false, it is most likely factually true.

[Glowcat]

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?

I'd say the furtherance of social good from such donations would be an intrinsically good thing. However, in cases where said donation entrenches a control structure which as its mission furthers overall negative social goals such as opposing the teaching of Evolution (or attempting to let non-science like ID be taught in schools), seeks to oppose homosexuals from being married, or other actions of a similar vein the action can no longer be considered purely good. This refers to the action of donation itself. A person who is unaware of what their money is being used for is at no fault and a person who donates for goals that fail to include social good is not a person whose behavior is good despite the potential good from the action they take.

The issue with Religious Charities is that they often enough do these things, and even the tamer ones encourage bad thinking in the form of faith and disregard for evidence that challenges our beliefs, as per one of MZ's arguments.

[Virex]

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.

While that's true, you can't get away with sloppy writing, and unfortunately this paper lacks coherence and doesn't even try to relate to the reader's reality. Tone down the hostility and toss in some anecdotes for a start.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Another penalty for another logical falsity!

Alright, first off, quit that. Hell, neither of these are even logical fallacies anyway. Neither was the last one for that matter, as I explained when you said it before.

You are now asserting that the group of people that would only give money to a charity that relates to their beliefs is the 'vast majority'. Now where did I say that?

You implied it through the words "The ideology is what drives some, take it away, and the charity dries up too." with "dries up" implying that "some" is a large group.

And if your wondering, the second one was asserting that we have bigger problems, but despite the assertion being logically false, it is most likely factually true.

I am not asserting we have bigger problems Max, read it again. I am asserting that if you are correct about charity drying up without religious faith, then most people have no empathy whatsoever. If that were to be true, and thankfully it isn't, then we most certainly would have bigger problems as most of our species would by psychopaths.

[Grek]

I really didn't want to get into this, but here I go anyways:

You can believe they are not, through the lack of proof to their existence, but there is no proof to the contrary either.

Contrary to the popular claim, an absence of evidence for an entity's existance is indeed evidence for the absence of the entity. As P(X or ~X) necessarily equals 1, any increase in the credibility you give to X has to come with an equal and opposite decrease in the credibility that you give to ~X and vise versa. If seeing some evidence would result in your assesment pf P(God) going up and P(~God) going down, the opposite happening, you not seeing that God-supporting evidence, means that your assessment of P(~God) necessarily has to go up and your assessment of P(God) down. And that still applies if you swap God for souls, heaven, newtonian gravity, quantumn chronodynamics and your stock market predictions.

Since we consistantly fail to see anything that would imply the existance of God, souls or heaven, our assessment of the likelihood of those propositions must continously spiral downwards as we grow more experienced, or else we are lying to ourselves.

Incorrect belief in the existance of souls and an afterlife and a merciful God who looks over you is very dangerous! People neglect their bodies, kill themselves and others, withhold medical treatment and consistantly fail to be sufficently cautious due to their unwarrented belief that the universe is fair and just when it really isn't, or that death isn't as bad as it appears because when you die you don't actually die for real, and that you'll be revived someday by magic that isn't actually going to happen. That sort of naivete is incredibly harmful, and people really would be better off without it.

[Max White]

I'd say the furtherance of social good from such donations would be an intrinsically good thing. However, in cases where said donation entrenches a control structure which as its mission furthers overall negative social goals such as opposing the teaching of Evolution (or attempting to let non-science like ID be taught in schools), seeks to oppose homosexuals from being married, or other actions of a similar vein the action can no longer be considered purely good. This refers to the action of donation itself. A person who is unaware of what their money is being used for is at no fault and a person who donates for goals that fail to include social good is not a person whose behavior is good despite the potential good from the action they take.

The issue with Religious Charities is that they often enough do these things, and even the tamer ones encourage bad thinking in the form of faith and disregard for evidence that challenges our beliefs, as per one of MZ's arguments.

Often do these things? That would imply a majority. On what basis do you present these claims? I mean if you want to put it out there, your going to need some study bigger than 'three soup kitchens turns me down'. It is like your trying to say that the majority of religious charities 'seeks to oppose homosexuals from being married, or other actions of a similar vein the action can no longer be considered purely good', and that's a huge accusation there. Anything less then sound evidence would be discrimination and hate based on nothing more then somebodies beliefs.

Alright, first off, quit that.

NEVER!!!!

You implied it through the words "The ideology is what drives some, take it away, and the charity dries up too." with "dries up" implying that "some" is a large group.

You take the ideology from some men, and their charitable nature soon follows, nothing saying the majority.

I am not asserting we have bigger problems Max, read it again.

Your not saying their are problems bigger than people being over religious zealots? So your implying that people being over religious zealots is our biggest problem?

[Il Palazzo]

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.

Just pointing out that you've most likely misunderstood the argument there. Read it like this: Religious charities have to conform to both the secular law AND to the religious moral law promoted by the religious organization on whose authority and teachings they're depending to entice a given group of people to donate, which simply gives them another level of control against misuse of the funds. Dishonest people of secular charities have only the law to worry about.
This was not the argument about possibility of moral behaviour without god's guidance, as you have treated it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I am not asserting we have bigger problems Max, read it again.

Your not saying their are problems bigger than people being over religious zealots? So your implying that people being over religious zealots is our biggest problem?

Where in the world are you getting this from?

[Max White]

I am not asserting we have bigger problems Max, read it again.

Your not saying their are problems bigger than people being over religious zealots? So your implying that people being over religious zealots is our biggest problem?

Where in the world are you getting this from?

...
 
The hell were you replying to?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

.....never mind, I think we've had a cluster-miscommunication.

[Glowcat]

I'd say the furtherance of social good from such donations would be an intrinsically good thing. However, in cases where said donation entrenches a control structure which as its mission furthers overall negative social goals such as opposing the teaching of Evolution (or attempting to let non-science like ID be taught in schools), seeks to oppose homosexuals from being married, or other actions of a similar vein the action can no longer be considered purely good. This refers to the action of donation itself. A person who is unaware of what their money is being used for is at no fault and a person who donates for goals that fail to include social good is not a person whose behavior is good despite the potential good from the action they take.

The issue with Religious Charities is that they often enough do these things, and even the tamer ones encourage bad thinking in the form of faith and disregard for evidence that challenges our beliefs, as per one of MZ's arguments.

Often do these things? That would imply a majority. On what basis do you present these claims? I mean if you want to put it out there, your going to need some study bigger than 'three soup kitchens turns me down'. It is like your trying to say that the majority of religious charities 'seeks to oppose homosexuals from being married, or other actions of a similar vein the action can no longer be considered purely good', and that's a huge accusation there. Anything less then sound evidence would be discrimination and hate based on nothing more then somebodies beliefs.

The issue with Religious Charities is that they often enough do these things

I was not arguing for a clear majority of cases as that would be hard to prove given a lack of statistics. On the other hand, most of what I listed are popular among America's Evangelical population, and even if I did say there was a majority I wouldn't be pulling it out of my ass to assume a sizable number of religious charities were like the Salvation Army in how they actively use their status to cause harm in the world.

As an international church and charity which supports and helps any person regardless of sex, race or religion, The Salvation Army believes that, contrary to the Executive's view, the proposed repeal would increase discrimination and result in more bullying in our schools. We can easily envisage a situation where, due to active promotion of homosexuality in schools, children will grow up feeling alienated if they fail to conform.

This? This is why Religious Charities can be really bad. They use their money and power to do real harm in the world.

[Miggy]

I really didn't want to get into this, but here I go anyways:

You can believe they are not, through the lack of proof to their existence, but there is no proof to the contrary either.

Contrary to the popular claim, an absence of evidence for an entity's existance is indeed evidence for the absence of the entity. As P(X or ~X) necessarily equals 1, any increase in the credibility you give to X has to come with an equal and opposite decrease in the credibility that you give to ~X and vise versa. If seeing some evidence would result in your assesment pf P(God) going up and P(~God) going down, the opposite happening, you not seeing that God-supporting evidence, means that your assessment of P(~God) necessarily has to go up and your assessment of P(God) down. And that still applies if you swap God for souls, heaven, newtonian gravity, quantumn chronodynamics and your stock market predictions.

Since we consistantly fail to see anything that would imply the existance of God, souls or heaven, our assessment of the likelihood of those propositions must continously spiral downwards as we grow more experienced, or else we are lying to ourselves.

That is a good argument, although I don't find it conclusive. You say it will spiral towards atheism as we find more proof for atheism, but is it currently all the way there? My argument is exactly that neither P(God) or P(~God) is 1, so we cannot state either as truthes. While one might be bigger than the other, necessarily lending that one more credibility, I do not agree that the stakes are stacked so high that we can proclaim is as the definitive truth.

The secrets of the universe is unraveling before ss without the explicit need of a god, but we haven't found all of the secrets yet.

Incorrect belief in the existance of souls and an afterlife and a merciful God who looks over you is very dangerous! People neglect their bodies, kill themselves and others, withhold medical treatment and consistantly fail to be sufficently cautious due to their unwarrented belief that the universe is fair and just when it really isn't, or that death isn't as bad as it appears because when you die you don't actually die for real, and that you'll be revived someday by magic that isn't actually going to happen. That sort of naivete is incredibly harmful, and people really would be better off without it.

I find no other option than to agree with this. It is bad for people to rely on religion as their ultimate saving grace, and go all in on that front.

I can only think of two semi-counters to make:

Would those people be less naive, and better off, without religion? Is religion the fundamental cause to those people's actions, or merely an instrument through which they channel their naivety and immortality-complexes? Would removing religion not cause them to rely on something similarly vague and unrealistic?

Does the amount of people who take harm like this due to religion outweigh the amount of people who take joy in religion? Is this such a big majority that it would be wise to proclaim religion as false, and tell the people who relied on it for happiness and understanding to suck it up, or is it a minority so that it is more wise to simply make those few people be more cautious, instead of stripping away the sole meaning of existance from the majority?

[anzki4]

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

What about person who donates to Secular Charity but NOT Religious Charity?

[Glowcat]

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

What about person who donates to Secular Charity but NOT Religious Charity?

The Jerk part comes when charity is used for other things. Since secular charities are neither for or against religion it's hard to attach any motive that doesn't involve goodwill to donations. That was the important distinction.

[Grek]

My argument is exactly that neither P(God) or P(~God) is 1, so we cannot state either as truthes.

You can't get probabilities of 1. No matter what you do, there will always be a non-zero chance that every time you observed ~X, you made an error, or that a cartesian demon is controlling your senses, or that you live in a computer simulation, or whatever hypothesis would best explain why, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary, X could actually be true. But I would say with a great deal of confidence that P(~God) should be at least 0.995 for you, once all of the evidence is taken into consideration. Not absolute eternal truth, of course, but certainly not the sort of odds you would want to wager your decidedly mortal soul on.

Would removing religion not cause them to rely on something similarly vague and unrealistic?

In some cases? Certainly. Maybe even a plurality of religious people. But I'd say that the benefit given to those that would take due caution without religious reasoning influencing their thoughts well oughtweighs the emotional anguish that would result from the transitional period between a religious society and a nonreligious soceity. Scandinavian nations, for example, have a very low rate of religiousity, but a very high quality of life. They do not miss the joy from religion, as they were never brought up to think that religion is a requirement for happiness. If you take the long view, over several generations, the good that comes from your children's children being cautious and prudent enough to avoid an early death and to put money into medical research and the funding of hospitials and all of the other things that would be done if not for unreasonable religious sentiments, it is definitely worth it.