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

[Sandman]

@[b]arewethereyet[/b]
Ahh got me. Instead of mentioning Atheist alone I used Atheists and Secular.
When i mentioned Seculars doing chariy in many other of my posts.

Violation of the rules of logic. Shucks.

My wordy dissertations were an attempt to be clear. But you got me - for not being clear.

I smell? Ha ha ha ha ha ha... that was good.

Ahh, so when you hear someone say America is a secular society you think they are saying it is nonreligious.
And non religious is the same as Atheist, So they are saying America is Atheist.

Ahh do you think America is Atheist? The many American Christians don't count.

Or does this really bother you when they say it is Atheist and it isn't.

Do you bring it up to them, when they say America is secular?

Atheist is a specific term, for the godless. While Atheists may or may not be happy with say society destroying religion.
Secularism is inclusive. It promotes a society dominated by godless values but inclusive of various religions.

I find the terms secular and secularism to somehow be used loosely in conversation. It can be used to mean all godless, in some conversations,
and unfortunately I sometimes fall into that trap too.

[arewethereyet]

Please do shut the fuck up.

[Sandman]

No. I have to say thank you for the conversation. As bad as it might have went.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Damn. Another one who doesn't read my posts.

How childish are you that you confuse disagreement with not reading?

[Mister Agenda]

For what its worth, kinda wish Atheists did charity better than them.

You mean take credit for how much atheists do in donations and volunteering? That IS hard to track, since it's really the only reason to have a specifically atheist charity. Polls show believers give more, but I think purely religious giving should be subtracted from that. If I pay dues to belong to a social club, that's not charity and that's what a lot of going to church is, IMHO.

[Thumpalumpacus]

@[/url][b][url=https://atheistforums.org/user-756.html]Thumpalumpacus[/b]

Just google it. Its the AI summary. The AI sumarizes a bunch of docs from around the web.

Don't trust AI? It's not perfect but seems to do the job right 99% of the time. Too tired for deep deep research.



Hoary Tropes. Well....
Sorry I'm not innovative enough for you.
I've written a bunch of stuff. Surely it can't be all tropes.
Thought I was just using common sense. Guess an old arguement can't just be an arguement if its a trope.

I thought when I said if Atheists etc. want to do away with the church, yeah, but they should consider how the multibillion $ church  charities would need to be replaced,
that no one would have heard that one before but ehh, I guess you had it figured.

You're just a little too vague for me. If it isn't too tiring perhaps some trope examples.

Selfish atheists, for starters.

Also, I don't trust AI. Stop being coy and tell me the name of the website you got your data from. Or you can PM me the link.

Here's an example of AI making a video presentation on the B-29 bomber of WWII era. It'll be plain why I don't trust or use AI:





Finally, would you please learn how to use the quote function?

[Mister Agenda]

Hey didn't say religion - or the government was good.

Still like America tho.

Lost my job for awhile. Forced to accept charity from a church/government food bank.

Didn't like it at all. No Atheists to help me out then.

You say their charities fail. But I got the food when I needed it.

Life's never perfect.

You said yourself they didn't have the cash etc. on their own so they went to the gov't.

The charity then worked for me so how can I consider them as failing?

Reality can be ugly, not what you want, when you are forced to swallow your pride.

Sorry you were on rough times, and I don't have an issue with the charity that churches do. It's one of the few things I like about them. If I were in that spot myself, I wouldn't be too proud to get help from a church. I'm nominally a member of the local Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

Personally, after mooching off my friends and relatives and secular charities, I would first turn to the UUs and after them I'd try the United Church of Christ. I'd have to be really, really hard up to go to fundamentalists for help.

[Mister Agenda]

@Thumpalumpacus


Charitably lazy? I admitted seculars do plenty of charity if you read my posts. I say in my experience the christians did more. For example:


Quote: "You just seem uninformed because there are many secular charity organizations that help people and win Nobel prizes like UNICEF,

           Doctors without Borders, World Food Program, Humanists International, Save the Children, Children International, Oxfam, Amnesty

           International, Kiva, etc."

Quote: "True also, however still not convinced there are more of them."


Evidence? I'm new here. I can't post links.

But a quick google search shows:

According to a 2022 Survey 63 percent of all food banks were religious.

Approximately 81% of Americans believe in God, so 63% of food banks being religious doesn't seem like a high proportion to me, given that. Could it be much of the difference in charitable giving can be accounted for by numbers and counting the churches themselves as objects of charity?

[Mister Agenda]

@[/url][b][url=https://atheistforums.org/user-756.html]Thumpalumpacus[/b]

Just google it. Its the AI summary. The AI sumarizes a bunch of docs from around the web.

Don't trust AI? It's not perfect but seems to do the job right 99% of the time. Too tired for deep deep research.

A recent BBC study found that over 51% of AI-generated news summaries contained significant errors, highlighting the need for human oversight.

OTH, that was the AI summary, so grain of salt.

[Paleophyte]

For what its worth, kinda wish Atheists did charity better than them.

We are.

When you break down who is contributing to what, it turns out that most religious donations are made to religious charities. Believers are actually less supportive of secular charities than non-believers. It's in-group behavior at its finest, charities for those most like us.