UKH

Well there seems to be a lot of these posts recently and I thought I'd share an observation

One of the Dawkins et all debunks is that people should/could do charitable acts out of altruistic kindness and not out of fear. Now whether or not they're doing it to buy a ticket to heaven, I don't think it matters. I work and vouldnteer in healthcare, volunteers make a massive difference in peoples lives. They provide a genuine kindness that would be sorely absent otherwise. And a very large number of them are religious (Christian, idk what sect though)

I can't help but notice how small the atheist minority is? They've even got Sundays free to do it why are they so underrepresented?

I'm atheist. But I can't help be impressed with the charitable efforts of the religious. People can argue all they want but there are people out there making a difference... Or maybe I just need a large sample

In reply to Kemics:

Religious people might be people with certain psychological needs. Doing charitable work might be one way that those needs are met, the feeling of belonging that church gives might be another, the positive spin on the world - that someone love us all - another.

Atheists might, on average, have a different array of psychological needs and thus display a different set of behaviours.

Are religious people nicer and more altruistic? In some societies, indeed in ours, they might be. In others, the most religious display the most hatred and violence.

In reply to Kemics:

A couple of bad cases...

a) Mother Theresa, a nasty little woman into self-promotion, sycophancy and the effective neglect of those she was supposedly caring for.

b) Irish Catholic charities and children or unmarried mothers.

In reply to Kemics:

It's an interesting observation.

One thought is that religions tend to be organizations or at least organized and thus have networking capability. It's easier to do something as group and a group is by definition more people.

Atheists don't have weekly community meet ups or any community at all because atheism is not a shared belief system or ideology like religion. I think that sense of community is one of the positive aspects of religion that our wider society lacks.

There is also the desire for religions to recruit more people and involvement with needy people is an effective way to that.

On the whole it is because we are nice people.

To expand, a way of expressing our faith is to willingly (er, not through fear or obligation) give up some time and perhaps some cash to help those less fortunate. Christ said, in effect, "love me. And love one another". To give to/do charitable works is a way of expressing that.


It is however by no means exclusive to those who have belief. Plenty of people give up time and cash for all sorts of charity- charity shops are staffed by volunteers, for example.

Sx

In reply to lowersharpnose:





I suppose Nelson Mandela was a terrorist and Ghandi was a creepy , racist pervert as well . I can't think of anyone who has consistently stuck to their own principals over a long period of time . Underneath it , no ones back is straight . This is why making people into heroes is a bad idea .

In reply to Kemics:

I am an atheist and volunteer for DofE and Scouts, I can't think of any of the volunteers in our DofE group that are overtly religious apart from 1, some of the Scout leaders are but not many, most pay lip service to the promise to be honest, I refused to take the promise myself.

Steve

In reply to Kemics:

I have no idea (nor interest in) the religious status of my co-volunteers.

I don't tend to bring up religion in conversation - too many worthwhile things to talk about

In reply to Kemics:

If this is true (and I have no idea whether it is), I think stp probably hit on the main reason - community.

Religious groups form communities, and people in communities tend to feel more need or desire to live up to the standards of those communities.

That may be doing more caring and charitable work (which I agree is great, regardless of the initial reason for doing it). Or it might be grouping together to protest about people from different groups being given certain rights.

Atheism is a lack of belief, and people don't normally form community groups based on something they don't have, so atheists are probably less prone to this effect.

In reply to Kemics:

I'd be interested to see how many people running the London marathon are doing it because of their religion and how many are doing it for other, non-religious reasons. Note that being religious and doing charity work can be independent of each other.

True altruism cones from a personal feeling to do right, not because scripture says you should.

In reply to Kemics:


Do you have actual numbers for atheists being "underrepresented"? It's an important issue, so we should discuss it on based on decent evidence, rather than anecdote.

For one thing, how do you know whether someone is religious or an atheist? Religious people will often give indications (e.g. wearing a religious emblem, or talking about their church), but most often atheists don't. Afterall, atheism is what someone doesn't believe, so in a charity context there is no reason for them to indicate that they are an atheist.

In reply to SethChili:

If you are interested:

Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens
youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60&
youtube.com/watch?v=_0UpVoSPIZI&
youtube.com/watch?v=6Pei8lSiv6s&

I can't think of anyone who has consistently stuck to their own principals over a long period of time

No good if your principles are wrong and the cause of suffering.

lsn

In reply to Sarah G:

charity shops are staffed by volunteers, for example.

Not the best example. The Salvation Army were recently found to be using "forced" labour in their shops, as were several other charities

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/workfare-godliness-chr...

In reply to Kemics:

It is an interesting debate. I believe, as others have said, community is the key.
On the whole it is my observation that religions with a strong missonary ethic tend to be very charitable as a recruitment drive (look how good we are come and join us etc.) this tends to cover Christianity, Islam and Judaism, but also Paganism, Sikhism, Buddhism and various Hindu sects where "good acts" generate good karma and ensure a good reincarnation in the next life. Other religions, most notably Satanism, see nothing wrong with charity but do not regard it as a major issue.
Atheists are not a community, their only common ground as a group is that they "don't" believe in something so you are less likely to get atheists forming charitable groups or even advertising that they are atheists when doing charitable work. For instance I know many atheists, including myself, who do charitable work but do not promote atheism through it. Perhaps that is because for an atheist it is an individual decision to be charitable rather than a group pressure and in this country charity has always been on the whole largely associated with religion. Even so there are many atheist charitable institutions, such as the humanist society

In reply to:
There are loads of big secular charities.

They are not affiliated or associated with any religion and religion plays no part in their ethos.