Maybe controversial - Religion IS bad, but.....

[Angrboda]

Believers are no more generous than atheists – at least as long as they don’t know what the recipient believes in. Finding this out increases generosity significantly, mainly because people give more to those who share their religion. This is the conclusion of a study carried out at Linköping University.

Religious people are not more generous – with one exception
(Study Link)

Of those white evangelical Protestants, we found that 60 percent believed that atheists would not allow them First Amendment rights and liberties. More specifically, we asked whether they believed atheists would prevent them from being able to “hold rallies, teach, speak freely, and run for public office.” Similarly, 58 percent believed “Democrats in Congress” would not allow them to exercise these liberties if they were in power. By contrast, 23 percent think “Republicans in Congress” would not respect their rights; those were primarily the views of a small contingent of white evangelical Democrats in the sample.

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Then respondents were asked whether their selected group should be allowed to give speeches in the community, teach in public schools, run for public office and other liberties. Americans are not particularly tolerant of groups they dislike. Only 30 percent are willing to allow their disliked group three or more such activities.

But 65 percent of atheists and 53 percent of Democrats who listed Christian fundamentalists as their least-liked group are willing to allow them to engage in three or more of these activities. That’s a much higher proportion with tolerance than the sample overall.

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However, we found that a smaller proportion of white evangelicals would behave with tolerance toward atheists than the proportion of atheists who would behave with tolerance toward them. Thirteen percent of white evangelical Protestants selected atheists as their least-liked group. Of those, 32 percent are willing to extend three or more of these rights to atheists. In fact, when we looked at all religious groups, atheists and agnostics were the most likely to extend rights to the groups they least liked.

White evangelicals fear atheists and Democrats would strip away their rights. Why?

A major demotivator for giving to charity is the presence of free riders. These are people who don’t contribute, but who benefit anyway. If you give to a heart research charity, then everyone benefits whether they contribute or not. If you give to a charity for the homeless, then unless you give an enormous sum your donation will be a vanishingly small portion of the total. So there is a temptation to be a free-rider yourself. The free-rider effect occurs because the utility of charitable giving (i.e. the benefit that accrues to the donor from giving, compared with the benefit that would accrue from keeping the money) is low.

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For altruistic atheists, however,the free-rider effect is much more pertinent. One secular way to get around the free-rider effect is to make giving from rich to poor compulsory, rather than voluntary. In other words, they might prefer that wealth is redistributed via taxation and the welfare state, rather than by voluntary donations. For the religious, this would actually decrease utility because taxation would reduce their surplus cash and so reduce the potential for them to give to charity and reap supernatural rewards.

But is there any evidence that this is true? Well, if it was then you might expect that countries with a high proportion of atheists would have a larger welfare state. And indeed that is exactly what you see. Gill and Lundsgaarde have analysed a cross-section of countries, and found that those countries with more atheists also have higher state welfare spending.

Atheists are generous, they just don’t give to charity

Rebuttal to "Religious people give more to charity?"

I'm trying to make shore my argument for why I believe that religious people potentially giving more to charity isn't the winning talking point that religious people think it is. So far, here's what I've got, though I'd love some more info,

1. In studies that have showed that religious people give more, they've tended to include churches as charities. They've also tended to include groups like the Salvation Army, who I know are extremely discriminatory in who they are actually willing to help.
   
2. A recent Gallup poll found that Protestant Christians and Atheists gave to secular charities at nearly the exact same rate.
   
3. Even if we grant that religious people, on the whole, give more-they probably do so because of the community ties inherent to religion—not because of the religious tenants themselves. If you could replicate those ties in atheism, you could achieve the same effect.
   
4. One study found that atheists/secular folx give more compassionately when they do give. They're motivated more by actual compassion, rather than moral obligation.
   
5. Churches lose/abuse donations not infrequently.
   
6. In America, the whole reason that we have to lean so heavily on charity to begin with is because we've absolutely gutted the welfare state and any legitimate protection for the poor. It tends to be Republicans, who tend to be religious, who vote for policies that further gut said welfare state and make things harder for the poor. In other words, why should I thank them for fixing a problem they help cause?
   

(r/atheism)