Quote:
Originally Posted by Saya
They also provide indispensable charity work. Many adoption agencies in the states are religious, many disaster areas rely on them. Not all keep most of the money for building churches, Catholic Charities claims to use 90% directly for its programs, Patrick Stewart thinks you're a prick if you don't think the AJWS isn't awesome, I get most my news from the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and its been beaten in my head that to be a good Buddhist I need to help all beings. Not many religious based charities have the luxury of building holy buildings, and not all want to convert those they save, but a lot of them do a massive amount of work and we'd be crippled if they weren't there.
I don't think atheists are prone to be douche bags or anything, and most charities I support and volunteer with are secular, but religious communities do provide a way to get a charity recognized. Even the secular groups I'm apart of often have things donated from churches, for example a church offered its basement to us for a few events. I remember as a kid the churches would give us those unicef boxes to collect donations on Halloween, often the minister would make announcements for various events, some people I know really rely on the Salvation Army, a friend of mine is a minister of some sort in the SA (I really don't know anything about their ranks) and spent years in a school learning basically social work and came back hoping to start some much needed programs. The community itself is something thats very strong, influential and can be a very positive thing.
Sadly that does come back to bite us in instances such as the Catholic Charities threatening to stop its adoption services if it must cater to gay couples, which will be a nightmare, but supposedly secular adoption agencies have threatened the same. |
Hey everyone! Saya just made religion TOTALLY LEGITIMATE! Let's all keep allowing religion into our social policies and keep saying that DESPITE us being Atheists, we have to go ahead and say "HEY, You're doing some good every now and then, so you MIGHT be right about this whole religion thing and it's more POSITIVE than it is negative!"
Saya, your arguments are dumb. A secular charity is WAY better than a religious one because it's not done to appease superstition. We've covered all that already.
Plus, we've already identified that you're more interested in lifting the teacher because of an emotional outpouring than you are of the actual teachings themselves. I swear, it's like you're more interested in being a Buddhist than you are about being honest and right. Tell me, Saya, I exist and am just as decent as you and have pretty much the same moral code and yet I'm totally atheist. Are you broken or something? If I can exist on these terms with no divinity, why can't you?