The name 'does' give a big clue. Not 'can' but 'does'. (I try to avoid sounding dogmatic but that leads me to further confuse the issue.) To deny that is splitting hairs to the point of being disingenuous, yes.

Christian Aid is not named that because of their 'pride' (although they may well feel pride) and it's intended to give aid and further the interests of Christianity. You may not care, but that doesn't change anything. Also, in the 'net negative' argument it matters because the very act of their doing good propagates the very thing that I consider has a net negative effect, it's something of a conundrum for me. I would have a problem if you could show that the majority of religiously inspired aid was provided anonymously for the sake of doing good with no intention of spreading the word (As we are instructed to in the bible), then that would be compelling evidence for the 'net positive' argument.

It seems though that everything that religions do is intended in some way to benefit the religion. It puts me in mind of viruses or parasites that cause the host to behave in a way that helps the virus to spread. Yes, I would use that analogy with organisations that I'm a fan of, I even do it myself in a work context. Google, who I hugely admire, have used a similar method to influence web design.

Ok, I'm disingenious because I'm not giving you the answer you think I should give you. Thanks for clearing that up.

It's moot, the good was done without being used as an opportunity to spread the word. I'd be happy to be in a spot where all over the world, good was being done, and not a single religious organization could actually be identified and I couldn't present any evidence. It would actually solve my problem wouldn't it.

So, neat logical twists and semantic catch 22's aside, in the real world it's easy to identify where proselytising is being done and a world where we couldn't tell if it were would be my ideal.

It's a conundrum because your view is hopelessly muddled. You are essentially double-counting negatives.

Let's imagine a hypothetical religion called Zumbism. To avoid some silly digression, let's imagine there are no other religions (so that Zumbism can't been seen as indirectly supporting the Westboro Baptist Church or w/e)

The tenets of Zumbism are:

1) There is a god.
2) Give money to the poor
3) Promote Zumbism.

Is this religion a net negative? Why?

+1

No, it's seems to be a net positive because it only exists (and apparently only has the effect of) to give money to the poor (which we assume has a net positive effect) and to create a circumstance in which that behaviour continues.

On the face of it, I like that religion.

*waiting for zumby to explain how a world-wide promotion of zumbism requires a significant institutional apparatus, including congregational facilities, zumbistic faculties, publishing houses that deal with the production of zumbism-promoting books etc. etc. etc.*

*also waiting for Zumby to explain how Zumbism is a comparison with the extant religions and the many and diverse effects that they have IRL.

If Zumbism has persecuted, suppressed, executed, tortured, caused wars poverty and suffering, supported genocide, suppressed the rights of minorities, justified endless cruelties, caused hundreds of millions of people to suffer guilt and fear..... blah blah blah. you get my point I'm sure.

I was assuming that this had crossed your mind Zumby and some more was coming.

But these aren't things that religion does, these are things that people do. The only way to prevent this from happening is to get rid of all people.

I can say this because in places where religion is completely banned these things have happened at horrific rates.

As seen in the French Revolution and most communist revolutions.

You're incredibly diluted if you think these things will lessen if and when religion is gone.

Curious if this leaves a bad taste in anyone's mouth?

Starbucks joins homeless charity initiative

Then why aren't you allowing Freteloo to have the same response to your example of an Atheist Aid organisation, and are accusing him of 'ducking and diving' and being 'disingenuous'?

I mean, from your response here it seems clear that it's the actual things being done that make something positive or negative, not the position on theism or the proselytising in itself.

Only because I hate coffee...

... And that most of this article is based on dubious social-network figures.

... And its pretty obvious that the main motivation for this is not because Starbucks suddenly cares about homeless people.

Though I would love to see the reactions of the yuppies standing in line as a homeless guy gets his free cup of joe.

Reminds me of an article I read the other day that claimed that 25% of atheists gave no money to any charity or organization, but only 1% of evangelical Christians could say the same. But this isn't the point.

Someone made a funny remark in the comments section about how the study seemed to indicate that "atheists spend their money on anti-christmas billboard campaigns, while christians are feeding the starving in Africa." !!!

Of course it was the point, and this is why you mentioned it.

How is that funny?

I don't think it's 'self-evidently wrong for an organisation to promote a particular worldview', I'm questioning that religious charities are solely doing good for the sake of doing good. Fret moved from 'how do you know they're doing that' to 'I don't care if they're doing that'. Well, I do, because of how I feel about religions.

So given that you have an organization that you think have an unacceptable agenda, it seems to come down to how we feel about the organization in question. At least we've moved on from 'that's not what's happening'.

Because he's claiming that it isn't part of the agenda or that there's nothing in a name.

I'm not a fan of proselytizing in any form especially when it's masked in the guise of 'doing good', like the Starbucks example I linked, that was simply a marketing exercise.

Since I view religions negatively, I'm against their proselytizing, I dislike the way they disguise it or claim the moral high ground whilst doing it, and I find it naive for anyone to imagine that it's not part of the religious agenda when they're 'doing good'.

Sorry, that stat is a bit meaningless unless we know what percentage of Christians are evangelical and can compare that to the percentage of non-christians who are atheist.

In any case, the point of this thread is not whether or not religions 'do good' but their reasons for doing it (that include proselytizing) and the effect that the propagation of religious beliefs, through 'doing good', has overall.

You could only find that funny if you were prepared to ignore gaping holes in the logic of the implications, and were a teeny bit biased.

Yes, but all I've seen is noise and baseless assertions so far. Someone comes in here with numbers that indicate that atheists mainly give to only support their leftist political causes and anti-christian organizations. This speaks directly to your point and rebuts it soundly.

I'm always amazed, honestly, how people's basic intuitions can be so wrong. If your intuitions lead you to believe things that are not only not true, but the opposite of what is true, then you should probably re-evaluate your whole belief system from the bottom up.

and:
/thread

http://secularhumanism.org/index.php...erous_atheists

I agree. I have one too: 'There are none so blind as those that will not see.'

If you don't think that religions propagate themselves, and that one of the opportunities to do that is the doing of 'good', then I think that you're being quite naive. Perhaps you're not aware of all the other 'marketing' type activity that influences your decisions on a daily basis either.

Yeah. "People lie" is a great defense when faced with a conclusion that they don't like.

Meanwhile, their whole political-social paradigm is founded on and rooted in this body of studies and pseudo-knowledge.

Edit: furthermore, it seems after reading that article that he has chosen to ignore decades worth of studies that indicate that religious people are more charitable, all based on one fact-- that non-religious doctors were found to donate more unpaid time to charitable hospitals.

So, he found the one-off, and ran with it...towards the other side of the universe.

We are certainly adding to the 'baseless assertions aren't we? I was curious to see the sources the data came from. Apparently it's one guy's (Dr. Alex McFarland's) opinion. Who's that, you ask? Oh, well I'm convinced.

Why not include a link to the article you pulled this from? http://www.christianpost.com/news/at...out-god-65929/
Surely this site isn't biased.

^ Completely unsupported statement of one guy's opinion.

Facts and data, how do they work?

You need to read.

You cite them. That's how they work.

I didn't realize that this study represented "one man's opinion." Did you purposefully leave that out?

Yes, he wrote a very long article of disconnected evidences, all of minor import. I'm not sure what that "game" is really supposed to represent. You keep citing games, and I'll stick to the facts.

For all we know, this game may only demonstrate how charitable people are in a given setting, or given a controlled situation, or a certain game-environment, or how people equally handle cash and assets that are freely given to them, or given an endless multitude of environmental factors and variables that are at any one time imposing on the subconscious. No thanks. I'll stick to facts.

In fact, that whole article can be summed up like this: 'take a whole handful of crap, throw it up against the wall, and hope that some of it sticks.'

I especially love the part where he casts doubt on studies in general, and then cites from them!