Why do atheists let Dawkins speak for them?
Seriously…the guy can’t even talk about contributing to the relief effort in Haiti without trying to make some kind of irrational and irrelevant anti-religious statement.
Seriously…someone wrote this with a straight face:
It is widely imagined that, in times of crisis, religious people render aid in disproportion to their numbers. Richard Dawkins has now created an opportunity for non-believers to put the lie to this myth.
One hundred percent of the funds raised will go to Doctors Without Borders and/or The Red Cross (you decide). But giving in this way will send an additional message: one need not believe in God to care about one’s fellow human beings.
No…but it helps. Empirical evidence has verified, time and again, that religious people give way more of their money and their time to charity organizations, both religious and non-religious. Even if, in this one instance, atheists do in fact donate more money than believers (a highly unlikely outcome, it must be understood), the most they will have created is a statistical abberation…not a rule.
Then there’s this:
It goes without saying that your donations will only be passed on to aid organizations that do not have religious affiliations.
Who frakkin’ cares? Seriously…this is the sort of thing only an atheist or the most militant sort of Calvinist (note that the two species are more alike than different) could get hung up on. The money should go to the agency that is able to best translate it into effective aid for the people of Haiti! If that’s a secular group, so be it. If that’s a religious group…so be it! If the goal is helping people (and it should be), nothing other than the group’s dollars-to-aid effectiveness should be a consideration.
Of course, as Vox points out, Dawkins isn’t interested in helping people, not primarily. He’s interested in trumpeting the imagined virtues of atheism and atheists.
Which…kind of makes him the antithesis of his stated goal. But why would the champion of reason get hung up on something like that?
Ah, well…it’s no matter, really. One wonders if Dawkins will have the integrity to admit defeat at the hands of religious people when the final tally of donations comes in and it is seen that religious folk once again out-donated atheists by a wide margin.
Personally, I doubt he has the stones to admit any such thing; this contest will quickly vanish down a convenient memory hole. Still…it’s nice to dream.
