RE: how do we as atheists feel about companies using customers to donate money?
June 8, 2015 at 7:03 pm
I don't have a problem with such promotions, though I generally do not contribute that way. There are plenty of established charities that I can donate to, and that is my preferred route.
I do get a bit annoyed when it is worded a certain way. The local Duane Reade stores will ask "would you like to donate to help save children?" That sounds like it's worded to make the person feel guilty for rejecting the opportunity. Better to ask "would you like to donate to the Children's Foundation (or whatever the charity is called)?" Manipulating people is what stores do, I guess, but when it's that blatant it just seems insulting.
I do get a bit annoyed when it is worded a certain way. The local Duane Reade stores will ask "would you like to donate to help save children?" That sounds like it's worded to make the person feel guilty for rejecting the opportunity. Better to ask "would you like to donate to the Children's Foundation (or whatever the charity is called)?" Manipulating people is what stores do, I guess, but when it's that blatant it just seems insulting.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
