Are you aware of hitchens' canonical retort to the "but charity!" line? Cause it is brought up like every other debate, but I will type it out in any case.

Anyways, he fully acknowledges both that a) religious people do good things like charity and b) that religious people do these good things in the name of their religion and because they feel they ought to do it because of their religion. However, as he frequently challenges the audience, not a single one of these good things could not equally be done by an atheist. When it is done by a religious person or organization, very often there are bits of bad that slip in whether it is wasting time proselytizing or no abortions in woman's health centers or no condoms in Africa or whatever else. Even when this is not the case and there is no way we can see that the effect is bad, there is something diminishing about doing something because your religion tells you to do it and not because you genuinely feel it is right. It is not quite as good an action, in my mind, when the intent behind it has this scary heaven/hell dichotomy motivating people to act in certain ways.

The statement is certainly hyperbolic and silly, and clearly is meant as an attention grabing by line, but the sense in which he actually means it while still over the top is not nearly as ridiculous nor immediately countered by simply pointing out something good a religious person once did.

It's of course possible for atheists to be charitable. At the same time, in practice, many of the people who really want to get their hands grubby and take risks in the third world or on urban Skid Rows tend to be devoutly religious.

So empirically, Hitchens' position doesn't add up.

How does that detract from his position? His position is NOT "athiests are more likely than religious people to do charity or other good things". He is arguing that the charity is lessoned by both being perverted by things like proselytizing and that the religious motivations diminish it. Now you can push back on those points, if you wish. But some sort of world calculus of good things done by religious people is just irrelevent of his meaning.

Now it is worth pushing back on your framing, of course. Namely, many charity workers are religious because many people are religious. Nonetheless, there are innumerable secular NGOs and charities out there doing all this hands grubby risky stuff in third world countries. Usually they don't make it dependent on proselytizing, and no abortions, and no condoms and the like so it is quite a bit more effective.

But yes, your point does burn down the strawman of somebody who claims that no religious person ever does good things. Thankfully, that is not christopher hitchens view.

On monocausal stuff see:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=218

It is no straw man. He said "religion poisons everything". It doesn't. In all likelihood, religion increases significantly the amount of private aid to poor people.

LOL, so true. The Bible is full of admonitions that Christians feel free to completely ignore.

It (Hitchens claims no religious person ever does good things) IS a straw man. The example Hitchens used a lot was of Hamas and Hezbollah i.e. they are well-known for charitable work but very few people are going to defend them on that basis.

Agreed.

Source? I know there was a study in Canada recently that showed religious people giving much more to charity than the non-religious, but that significance evaporated once you removed donations to charities whose only purpose is to promote religion.

This is a very strange clause as very few "charities whose only purpose is to promote religion" exist. Can you cite the study?

My guess is that it's once you remove donations to "churches," but I could be wrong.

So this would mean the religious contribute significantly more money/time than the non-religious. Do you have any numbers to back this up?

Ironically enough one of my older brothers is the director of just such a charity. I can PM you details if you like (it's not that exciting though).

Can't find the actual study but an article & response is posted here

I don't but have seen a few studies quoted and haven't really seen atheists arguing the point so I'm prepared to believe it.

Yes, and I just explained the sense in which he means that byline which is explained in more length than just three words. Now you can disagree with the sense in which he means this, if you will, but what you are saying is not a contradiction to the sense that he means this. Sorry.

Look, we can have the "does being religious make you more or less charitable" debate again if you guys really want to but it really is irrelevant to hitchens' point.

Meh. I don't claim that such organizations fail to exist.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/71-542-...009001-eng.pdf

The chart in question ($1038 vs. $295) is on page 25.

Regarding the article you linked:

I could not find the original dataset, so I cannot delve any further into the claim than what is contained in the report that I linked.

But I take issue with the characterization. For example, the church I attend would probably only mark "the advancement of religion" in some multiple choice form, but we also have a food pantry and partner with homeless outreach organizations. So I think the implication provided is false.

Here's something from a US study:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/p...w/article/6577

I grant that this comes from a conservative think tank. But I've spent enough time googling around for stuff and I have to get to work on other things.

Aaron, the burden of proof isn't on me as I've made no claim.

If you or whoever wants to be able to say that theists are more charitable than atheists you need to provide a credible source.

It's worth noting that churches are automatically classified as charities for taxation purposes. Add in the policy of tithing and suddenly there's a huge amount of 'charitable donations' that are, at best, extremely murky in terms of being humanitarian.

I grant that *you* did not make the claim. You merely cited a criticism of the claim and I've pointed out that the criticism does not seem to be legitimate.

Ahhh, the "credibility" game. You cited an article that contained a source (and I found the actual source for you). I've cited a source independent of your source. Both sources point to the same conclusion. You will find many other sources that point in this direction. Which one will you find credible? Who knows? (Probably none of them because you'll find some reason to think they're all biased.)

You're welcome to make that claim. But now you realize that you can't hide behind the "I didn't make a claim" line, right? Now go prove to me that such charitable donations are "at best, extremely murky in terms of being humanitarian."

Yeah, you are unconvinced by Dawkins and I'm unconvinced by a right-wing think tank. Stalemate I guess.

I've not read the whole report thoroughly as yet, but from a bit of scanning and ctrl-f'ing it seems like the study asked about "whether and how much they gave and volunteered to “religious causes” or “non-religious charities” over the previous 12 months. " but never brings up that distinction again, which does seem interesting.

Yes I think it's murky. As in, it's not clear. If there's some public record of what church donations get spent on feel free to show that I'm wrong. Do YOU know what proportion of the collection plate in your church goes to humanitarian causes? If not, how am I unfairly saying it's "murky"?

Not quite. You are unconvinced by "Statistics Canada." Their data is clear. Dawkins' criticism of it... not so much so. As I noted, I can't actually get into the data to probe more deeply into the topic. I suspect that even if I had the original data set, it wouldn't say anything because I couldn't tie the institutions that only filled in one box with any particular organization to show that they do or do not participate in any particular humanitarian work.

It is, and it's for Dawkins to provide counter-evidence for his claim. Again,

It's on Dawkins to show that organizations fail to "feed the poor ... provide literacy, or lead other activities that we generally consider beneficial." I've left out the blood bank one because I don't think churches would take on the legal hassles of that. But you don't think that there are churches out there than run food banks? Or soup kitchens? Or literacy programs? Just because they don't fill in a bubble does not mean they don't do these things.

Edit: I have cited an example of an organization that does do these things but would not list it among its primary purposes. And I think it's not hard to see that it's not a unique type of situation for many churches (though you may disagree). The point here is that you're leaning on Dawkins' characterization and you're accepting it without question or proof.

What would I need to do to show you that you're "wrong"? Wrong about the murkiness? Wrong about being "humanitarian"?

I think you're being unfair because you're not making a clear criticism. Let's say I donate $100 to a humanitarian organization, but only 75% goes into the humanitarian work itself, and 25% goes into overhead. Does that make this a murky organization?

It's true that most* of the donations to a church tend to go to payroll. But that's true of basically every non-profit organization. Does that mean that this is a murky situation?

So what I'm looking for you to provide is a much clearer statement of what you think is wrong and why you think it's wrong. Simply slapping the "murky" label on it doesn't make for an actual criticism.

* Bad wording on my part. The largest single category of expenses is payroll.

Dawkins is referencing a well-established international metric for defining the purpose of a charity as laid out by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. Specifically he's referring to donations made to those charities designated as "Religion":

The JHCNSP report on charities in Canada lets us drill down a bit further and see that, of those charities who are in the 'Religion' category, 27% primarily benefit the members of that charity and 78% primarily service the local neighbourhood/town/city, as opposed to the wider province, national or international level.

Even beyond this, it's just totally disingenuous of you to protest that giving money to a church who may use some of it for non-religious purposes is the same as giving money to a secular humanitarian charity who use some of the money for overheads. I donate to the Richard Dawkins Foundation and I donate to Amnesty International but I'd only count one of those as a charitable donation in the context being discussed ITT, regardless of the fact that the RDF also have done things like organize secular donations to help after the Haiti earthquake.

Read closely:

"Only stated purpose" means that it's the only one that was marked on the list. Let's look more closely at the classification:

The types of activities I've mentioned (food pantry, homeless outreach, etc) are "auxiliaries" of such organizations. My point is that the characterization given:

Is false. These charities do, in fact, do most of these things (again, probably not blood banks).

Also, the article was posted by "FRANKUS1122" and Greg Oliver. I don't think that Dawkins goes by either name. You want to be very careful about who you attribute statements to.

Ummmmm... so what you're saying is that 73% of these organizations benefit people OTHER THAN those who are members of that charity. And this is supposed to be something that's held AGAINST churches?

And 78% of these are local organizations is bad because... you don't like local organizations? I really don't follow your complaint here at all.

That's not what I said. I was asking you to clarify what it is that you find "murky." You have not clarified what your actual objection is.

That's fine. Except that this would go against the point that the article is making, since RDF is almost certainly not an organization "whose only stated purpose is 'the advancement of religion.'"

Only 4% primarily benefit people outside their membership, not 73%. The remainder primarily benefit both in-group and out-group. Out of all the categories only "Business and professional associations and unions" spends a lower percentage primarily on non-members. Compare this 4% with the 57% of "International"* charities who primarily benefit non-members.

Before you claim that your 73% figure still holds because you are clumping together all those who benefit others in any proportion - the key things I'm questioning is how much money goes from the collection plate to the poor, given that $10 in the collection plate is counted as equivalent to $10 to Amnesty International for the purposes of these surveys.

*organizations promoting cultural understanding between peoples of
various countries and historical backgrounds, as well as those
providing relief during emergencies and those promoting development
and welfare abroad

I think you're just doing your usual obsfucation, but allow me to state it all again.

Every church is a charity. Churches have tithing and/or collection plates. These count as 'charitable donations' while being completely unclear about what this money is spent on. Given this, the data only supports the premise that the religious donate more to charities including churches. The data also suggests that more than 1 in 4 churches don't do a significant amount of charity work.

So when someone says that the religious give more money to humanitarian causes I'm saying that this is far from clear, given the data. 96% of churches (or 'Religion' category institutions) DO NOT primarily benefit those outside of it's membership. We don't have figures that show what proportion of donations from the 69% that benefit both members and non-members go to humanitarian causes, but this obviously has at least some sort of impact on the efficacy of donations.

The murkiness should be self-evident to an unbiased person. If churches are de facto charities, then even if a church spends all the money it collects on making golden calves then your collection plate money gets counted the same as an atheists donation to Amnesty International. I'm not claiming that all churches are doing this (obviously) but it means that the data doesn't prove what you and others want to claim it proves. It's not a question of me 'not believing the data' it's that I don't accept your interpretation of the facts.

Just lol.

Right... I don't see how this contradicts my word usage. You're the one who put forth the 23% number and all I did was point out the consequence of that number.

Consider them compared. What's your point? Why are you suddenly concerned about "international" charities? You realize that you're talking about an increasingly narrow band of groups, and losing sight of the larger argument presented by the original article you linked, right?

You're fine to question this. I never claimed that they were the same thing and I certainly never claimed that there's a dollar for dollar correspondence. Are you sure you're reading the same thread?

Sure. I never said otherwise.

What are you arguing about, exactly? And how does this relate back to anything?

Maybe you have a different sense of what a "charity" is and what it means to be a "de facto charity" that how the term is used legally and colloquially by much of the population. It is true that churches and many other organizations have other business that they do besides humanitarian work. This does not negate that they do humanitarian work.

Also, do only atheists donate to Amnesty International? Why bother drawing that particular distinction?

I'm claiming that the data shows that religious people donate more to charities than non-religious people. The data in the article you originally linked shows this, as does the data that I provided from another source.

What are you claiming? Or are you still in a position where you've made no claims?

...

You're the one who introduced the link that made a very clear definition about what was being measured. And now you're the one who is saying that the "context being discussed ITT" isn't that definition anymore. Your position is pretty confused at this point.

I'm just quoting this for zumby's benefit.

The data is pretty clear that religious people give more than non-religious people. If you (zumby) want to cut out a particular sub-category of donations and make some sort of argument, that's fine. But you're the one who needs to define what you're measuring and then produce data to make the case. Until then you're pretty much just babbling in a mindless defense of atheistic giving.

imo

Religion : evil :: The Dark Knight Rises : Aurora shooting

Can anyone provide a study?