Fly Vatican Airlines for a Lourdes Miracle

Last year Pope Benedict gave Catholics a special time-limited promotional offer: if they visited Lourdes during 2008, they would get a free plenary indulgence that would get them early release from Purgatory, and get them faster to heaven, after they died.

This unsubstantiated sales pitch for Lourdes is not an extreme example of primitive cultist belief. Encouraging seriously sick people to travel great distances, in the hope of a miracle cure, is very much part of mainstream Catholic practice.

Did I say that, just a few months before this special offer, the Vatican had started its own official airline, with the launch slogan ‘I’m Searching for Your Face, Lord’, and Vatican logos on the headrests and air hostess’s uniforms?

Or that the inaugural flight just happened to travel to Lourdes? Or that they now offer thirty tour packages to Catholic pilgrims, including a blockbuster $3,000 tour to Rome, Fatima, Lourdes and Spain?

The Miraculous Business of Lourdes

Lourdes is big business. About five million people travel there every year, and it has more hotels than anywhere else in France except Paris.

And all because, 150 years earlier, fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous was one of a spate of French and Spanish children who claimed to have seen the virgin mother of the Catholic god.

In Bernadette’s case, she thought she saw a small young lady, standing on a niche in a rock, wearing a white veil and blue sash, with a yellow rose on each foot, holding a set of rosary beads. Within a year, people were claiming to have been cured of illnesses at Lourdes, and in 1862 the Catholic Church officially recognized seven of these cures as being miracles.

Since then the Church has added another sixty alleged miracles to the list.

For those who believe this, the virgin mother of their god seems to have paced her interventions somewhat randomly: seven cures in 1858 alone, then none until she cured a fractured leg in 1875, a leisurely four in the next 15 years, then a feast of 27 cures in 21 years, followed by a famine of just two in 36 years, then a steady 22 cures in the next 23 years.

Since 1960, the virgin mother has cured only four people in almost half a century, and she seems to have vanished in the twenty years since 1987, her strike rate coincidentally dropping as medical science is improving.

What type of people are cured at Lourdes?

She seems to have cured mostly younger people, who are arguably more capable of being healed naturally anyway. Half were under thirty, the youngest a baby suffering from malnutrition, three-quarters were under forty, and since 1950 she has cured only one person aged over fifty.

Also of interest is the sequence in which the Church has officially recognized the 67 cures. They started with seven in 1862, added 32 more in a flurry of activity from 1907 to 1913, then seemed to forget about it for thirty years, added 24 more from 1946-1965, but just five in the last forty years.

In the same pattern as the alleged cures themselves, the Church is recognizing less of them as being miracles as medical science is improving.

Unethical behaviour exploiting vulnerable people

Just to be clear, I believe that everyone has right to believe whatever they want to believe, however absurd those beliefs may seem to others. However, when those beliefs cause people to behave in way that unfairly exploits vulnerable people, then others have a right to challenge them to justify that behavior, and to justify the underlying beliefs.

I believe that it is unethical, in the early twenty-first century, that wealthy organizations like the Catholic Church can promote commercial ventures using unsubstantiated sales pitches like these.

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Gods and the Morality of Society

It does not make any difference to the collective morality of society whether gods exist, or whether morality is absolute or relative. This is because, in each of these cases, we still as a society have to agree together what we collectively consider to be right and wrong in order to live together ethically.

To oversimplify, there are four broad possibilities:

1. There is a God or gods, and there is an absolute objective morality.
2. There is a God or gods, and morality is relative and subjective.
3. There are no gods, and there is an absolute objective morality.
4. There are no gods, and morality is relative and subjective.

If options 2 or 4 are correct, then we have to collectively agree what is right and wrong. If options 1 or 3 are correct, then we have to collectively identify what is right and wrong. Since the various religions that exist believe that their gods have given them competing definitions of what is right and wrong, then (from the point of view of society collectively) identifying together what is right and wrong is in practice identical to agreeing together what is right and wrong. So, for society as opposed to for individuals, the task is the same regardless of whether or not there are gods.

The existence of a God or gods, and the existence of absolute morality, are two distinct issues. Both could exist, and be unrelated to each other. Certainly the Christian God, as portrayed in the Bible, does not convey absolute morality. At times, this God advocates loving other people, and at times he endorses slavery and orders genocide, as well as petty injustices such as killing people for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Overall, he conveys the varied morality of Bronze Age and Iron Age tribesmen at the time those books were written, much of which most Christians today would reject as being inappropriate for our age. That is the essence of relative morality.

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Christian Church Promotes Gay Rights

A Christian Church in Texas has launched a public billboard campaign in support of gay rights.

The slogan is Would Jesus Discriminate? and it is run by five of the worldwide Metropolitan Community Churches. And the Rev Dr Cindi Love has published a book of the same title.

I believe that atheist and humanist groups should be working with religious groups like these to promote an ethical and secular society.

The billboards will be displayed in north Texas throughout September, and their use of scripture has already been challenged by other Texas Christians. One local baptist Pastor, Sam Dennis, while agreeing that Christians shouldn’t hate gay people, told CBS: “I’m hard pressed to find that scripture advocates that it’s alright to live in a gay lifestyle.”

Bizarrely, he felt the need to add: “Just like I’m hard pressed to find that scripture advocates that’s it’s alright to live in an adulterous relationship or as a wife abuser or as a murderer.” So that’s the collective category in which Rev Dennis places gay people in his mind: alongside adulterers, wife abusers and murderers.

The first Metropolitan Community Church was founded in 1968 in Los Angeles, as the world’s first church group with a primary, positive ministry to gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender persons. The Churches now have over 40,000 members in 22 countries.

The Would Jesus Discriminate? campaign is organised in several American States as well as in the UK and Australia. You can download campaign materials from their website.

The campaign asks Christians to consider, “What if we are wrong about the issue of gay people’s place in society and in our churches? What if we offered them full citizenship and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? How would our country improve if we simply stopped oppressing at least ten percent of our best and brightest people?”

The Metropolitan Community Churches also support initiatives like next year’s Soulforce Q Equality Ride in which young adults travel around America to illuminate the damaging consequences of discriminatory religious doctrine through non-violent resistance.

And here is a speech by Rev Candy Holmes, a lesbian clergywoman with Metropolitan Community Churches, giving testimony to a US Congress Committee in support of domestic partnership benefits and obligations.

My question is, what are the possibilities for formal campaigns on secular and equality issues, organised jointly by atheist and humanist groups and Christian groups like these? What are the advantages and disadvantages? How could such campaigns work in practice?

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Ethics of the Ten Commandments

The ten commandments of Judeo-Christianity are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are laws for regulating the conduct of one Bronze Age tribe.

When you read them in the context of the Bible stories from which they emanate, these are the underlying reasons and messages behind them:

1. Worship only the God who proved his power in Egypt.
2. Do not engrave or worship images of anything.
3. Do not swear by saying the word YHVH in vain.
4. Rest on the Sabbath or you will be stoned to death.
5. Honour your parents, because you will live longer.
6. Do not kill people, unless God arbitrarily allows you to.
7. Do not commit adultery, because men own their wives.
8. Do not steal things or people owned by your tribesmen.
9. Do not lie to or about members of your own tribe.
10. Do not desire things or people owned by your tribesmen.

These laws are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are not based on universal values of right and wrong, because they were never intended to apply to all people. They were designed to protect the stability and interests of one Bronze Age tribe, specifically because this tribe was set apart from all other people. The first four are arbitrary rules for how this tribe should worship its God. The next six regulate the tribe’s day-to-day conduct, mainly by protecting the position of its adult males, and also by treating members of the tribe differently than strangers. Most of these laws were enforced by the tribesmen stoning lawbreakers to death.

These laws demand unthinking obedience, based only on desire for amazing rewards and fear of horrific punishments meted out by this God. If you obey his laws, you will be his chosen people, and live in a land flowing with milk and honey (Lev 20:24), where a hundred of you will kill ten thousand enemies (Lev 26:3-9). But if you disobey his laws, he will bring upon you sudden terror and wasting diseases, send wild animals to kill your children, make you eat the flesh of your children, and make you so fearful that you will flee even when nobody is chasing you (Lev 26:14-39). He will punish not only you, but also your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren (Ex 20:5).

Regardless of whether you believe this to be literal truth or literary metaphor, it is no basis upon which to build an ethical moral code. This becomes even more evident when you look at the Biblical background to each of these ten laws.

1. Worship only the God who proved his power in Egypt.

The first commandment is “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Today’s Christian churches omit the part about their God bringing them out of Egypt, but in the Bible story this claim was essential to establish the credibility of this God with the tribe of Moses. People of this era worshipped many gods, including the sun, the moon and other celestial bodies, and this claim let the Israelites know they were dealing with a very powerful God, who had already intervened in earthly affairs on their behalf.

This God had repeatedly sent terrible plagues on the Egyptians (Ex 8-10) and then killed the firstborn child of every Egyptian family (Ex 11-12), in order to convince Pharoe to let the Israelites go. Of course, after each plague, this same God had also deliberately “hardened Pharoe’s heart”, specifically to ensure that Pharoe would not let the Israelites go, in order that he could move on to sending the next plague (Ex 4-11). But, to a primitive Bronze Age tribe, their God’s power was more persuasive than his morality. As a more direct incentive to worship him, they would be stoned to death if they worshipped the sun, the moon or any other gods (Deut 17:2-5).

2. Do not engrave or worship images of anything.

The second commandment is “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water below. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” The first part of this rule is absurd: it forbids nearly all visual art. Oddly, after this God announced these laws, he instructed Moses to make two cherubim out of hammered gold for the ark of the covenant (Ex 25:18-20).

Today’s Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches omit this rule from their popular versions of the ten commandments. And Roman Catholics regularly pray before images and statues of not only Jesus, but also Mary and numerous Saints. To make up for omitting the ban on graven images, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches divide the tenth commandment, which forbids coveting, into two different rules.

3. Do not swear by saying the word YHVH in vain.

The third commandment is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The Bible most often calls him YHVH, which Christians pronounce as Yahweh or Jehovah. The punishment for breaking this rule was death by stoning (Lev 24:16). When the Israelis brought a blasphemer before Moses, God instructed everyone who had heard the blasphemy to put their hands on the blasphemer’s head, after which the entire congregation must stone him to death (Lev 24:11-14). But the same God blessed Jacob after he had specifically used the Lord’s name when lying to his father in order to steal his brother’s birthright (Gen 27:19-20).

Also, a prophet could curse other people in the name of this God, for even trivial reasons, with horrific results. When the prophet Elisha was going to Bethel, a group of little children mocked him by saying ‘Go up, thou bald head!’ Elisha cursed the children in the name of the Lord, and two bears came out of the wood and killed forty two of the children (2 Kings 2:23-24). Some Christians have argued that these children were actually young men, as if that would make it more justifiable to set wild animals on them for teasing a bald man. In reality, blasphemy laws are at best primitive superstition, and at worst ways of supressing free speech.

4. Rest on the Sabbath or you will be stoned to death.

The fourth commandment is “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” This means that neither you, your children, your servants, your cattle or any of your visitors could work on the Sabbath. The punishment for breaking this rule was death by stoning (Ex 31:15). When the Israelites found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath, they took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as God had commanded Moses (Num 15:32-36). Since prehistoric times, humans have assigned days to various gods, so it was natural for a Bronze Age tribe to do likewise. But, whatever the benefits of resting on this day, they are far outweighed by the injustice of killing people for declining to rest.

5. Honour your parents because you will live longer.

The fifth commandment is “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land that God giveth thee.” So this law is based not on respect for your parents, but on the selfish desire to live longer. But why would honouring your parents cause you to live longer? One obvious reason was that, if you were stubborn and rebellious, and you continuously refused to obey your parents, they would take you to the elders of the city, and all of the men of the city would stone you to death (Deut 21:18-21).

A more subtle reason places the emphasis on the phrase “upon the land that God giveth thee.” If the tribe’s children learn to obey their parents, the tribe will continue to obey the commandments, and in return God will allow the tribe to remain in the promised land for longer. This law does not foster loving, caring, mutually respectful family values. It commands unthinking obedience, regardless of right or wrong, under fear of being stoned to death. Should the virgin daughters of Lot have honoured their father (Gen 19:4-8) when a gang wanted to rape two of his guests, who were angels from God, and Lot offered the gang his daughters instead?

6. Do not kill people unless God arbitrarily allows you to.

The sixth commandment is “Thou shalt not kill.” But this did not apply to the man who God chose to convey this very law to the Israelites. When Moses was an adult, he saw an Egyptian hitting an Israelite. Moses checked to see if anybody was watching, then killed the Egyptian and buried his corpse in the sand (Ex 2:11-12). Moses then went into hiding, knowing that he had acted unlawfully (Ex 12:14-15). And when the Israelite God decided that he needed somebody to lead his tribe, this is who he chose (Ex 3:1-10).

The sixth commandment does not apply if you kill your slave, as long as the slave takes a day or two to die (Ex 21:20-21). Or if you stone to death a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath (Num 15:32-36). Or if you slaughter all of the adults and children of every city you attack, apart from the virgin women who you can keep for yourself (Deut 2:31-34, Num 31:12-18). Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live (Ex 22:18). Nor, indeed, a medium or a spiritist (Lev 20:27). Strangers will be killed if they approach the tabernacle (Num 18:7). There are many more examples. Ironically, on his very return from Mount Sinai with the ten comandments, Moses ordered his tribesmen to kill three thousand of their brothers, friends and neighbours (Ex 32:27-28).

In effect, the sixth commandment is really “Thou shalt not kill unless God allows you to.” But there is no ethical basis to this particular God’s arbitrary killing choices. He once drowned the entire population of the world apart from one family (Gen 7:19-23). He killed Lot’s wife for looking around (Gen 19:26). He killed Onan for not completing sexual intercourse with his dead brother’s wife (Gen 38:7-10). He killed the first-born child of every Egyptian family (Ex 12:29-30). He killed 14,000 Israelites for murmering against Moses (Num 16:41-49). He killed seventy men for looking into his Ark (1 Sam 6:19) and another man for trying to stop the Ark from falling over when an ox shook it (2 Sam 6:6-7).

As there is no ethical basis to this God’s arbitrary killing choices, there is no ethical basis behind this commandment, which is ironically enforced under the threat of being killed (Ex 21:12). It is not about universal values of right and wrong. It is about protecting the stability and interests of one tribe.

7. Do not commit adultery, because men own their wives.

The seventh commandment is “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But why is adultery wrong? Based on the Bible, adultery is a crime committed against the husband of the woman involved, but not against the wife of the man involved. Predictably, the punishment is death (Lev 20:10). A man owns his wife from the time they become engaged. If another man has sex with an engaged virgin, he has committed a crime against her future husband, and must be stoned to death. If the woman did not scream for help, she must also be stoned to death (Deut 22:23-27).

If a newlywed man alleges that his bride was not a virgin, the bride’s father must prove her virginity. If the bride’s father can bring her blood-stained bedsheets to the elders of the city, her husband will pay him a fine for slander. If her father cannot produce the blood-stained bedsheets, the bride will be stoned to death on her father’s doorstep (Deut 22:13-21). If a man suspects his wife of adultery, he must bring her to a priest, who will make her drink bitter water that will curse her. If she has been unfaithful, this will cause her to have a miscarriage. If she has been faithful, she will be able to give birth. (Num 5:11-31).

The Bible has a lot else to say about sex generally, but its laws against adultery are based on the unethical premise that a woman is the property of her husband, and are enforced under the threat of being stoned to death.

8. Do not steal things or people owned by your tribesmen.

The eighth commandment is “Thou shalt not steal.” If you steal a person and sell him, you will be put to death (Ex 21:16, Deut 24:7). If you steal livestock, you must repay the owner double what you stole. If you have already sold what you stole, you must repay the owner five times. Otherwise the owner can sell you as a slave (Ex 22:1-5). Nor may you defraud your neighbour (Lev 19:13).

The first thing to note here is that you can steal a person (Ex 21:16, Deut 24:7). This may include kidnap, but this God also allowed slavery. Israelites could buy foreign slaves, and own them for ever, and pass them on to their children as inheritances (Lev 25:44-46). They could forcibly take foreign women and children after battles (Deut 20:14, Deut 21:10-14). Israelites could also buy and sell Israelite slaves, and could own the wives and their children of these slaves, but they had to release Israelite slaves after six years (Ex 21:2-6). Men could sell their daughters as slaves (Ex 21:7). A man could have sex with a female slave without being stoned to death, even if she was engaged, because she was not free (Lev 19:20).

The second thing to note is that this law only appplied internally within the Israelite tribe. Their God encouraged them to steal the treasures, animals, women and children of enemy tribes (Deut 20:14-15). After one batttle against the Midianites, they plundered about 200kg of gold, 800,000 livestock and 32,000 virgin women. As an aside, Moses and Eleazer the priest took about one percent of all of these spoils, as an offering to God (Num 31:25-54). The Israelites also stole the land of other tribes. Their God told them to drive out all of the inhabitants, take possession of the land and settle in it, and divide it up according to their clans (Num 33:50-54, Deut 2:31-34, Deut 20:16-17). Indeed, stealing the land of other tribes was the whole point of the covenant between the Israelites and their God.

This law is not about universal values of right and wrong. It is about protecting the stability and interests of one tribe.

9. Do not lie to or about members of your own tribe.

The ninth commandment is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” You must not defraud your neighbour, or pervert justice by not judging your neighbour fairly, or spread slander among your people (Lev 19:13-16). The punishment was a fine (Deut 22:17-19) or giving a ram to a priest, who will eat it to make atonement for your sin (Lev 7:1-7).

But the ban on lying applied only to “your neighbour” or “your people” (Lev 19:16) or “your brother” (Deut 19:18). It did not apply to strangers or foreigners. And, while the Israelite God said that strangers should be given justice (Deut 27:19), he also instructed his tribe to dispense different standards of justice to strangers. Israelites could own foreign slaves for ever, but had to release Israelite slaves after six years (Lev 25:44-46, Ex 21:7). Israelites could charge interest on loans to strangers, but not to their brothers (Deut 23:20). Their neighbour or brother could sometimes keep property they had lent to them, but a foreigner still owed it (Deut 15:1-3). More seriously, strangers would be killed if they approached the tabernacle (Num 18:7).

Actually, the Biblical God allowed, rewarded and even instructed lying. All three Biblical Patriarchs told lies. The prophet Abraham repeatedly lied that his wife Sarah was his sister, in order to give her to the Pharoe and save his own life (Gen 12:11-13). His son Isaac lied that his wife Rebekah was his sister (Gen 26:6-11). Isaac’s son Jacob lied to his father to steal his brother’s birthright (Gen 27:19-20). God rewarded midwives for lying about the birth of male children (Ex 1:15-21). God told Moses to lie to the Pharoe that his tribe only wanted to leave Egypt for three days (Ex 3:18). God saved the life of Rahab for lying about Israelite spies (Josh 2, Heb 11:31). God caused four hundred prophets to lie to the King of Israel (1 Kings 22:6, :22-23). Jehu lied to the prophets of Baal to lure them into being killed (2 Kings 10:18-28).

Again, this law is not about universal values of right and wrong. It is about protecting the stability and interests of one tribe.

10. Do not desire things or people owned by your tribesmen.

The tenth commandment is “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” In the Deuteronomy version, the order of house and wife is reversed, and the neighbour’s field is also included.

In this case, it is irrelevant that the rule is restricted to property owned by members of your own tribe, and it is irrelevant that wives and servants are considered to be the property of their husbands and masters, simply because this is an absurd rule that would be impossible to keep even if you wanted to. It seeks to regulate what you think, not what you say or do, and no law can enforce what you think. Furthermore, if people did not covet things owned by other people, nobody would ever purchase anything from anybody else.

As an aside, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches divide this commandment into two, to make up for the fact that they omit the second commandment that forbids making graven images. But there is only one sentence in the tenth commandment, and there is no justifiable reason to divide it in two.

The Other Ten Commandments

Ironically, despite their centrality to Judeo-Christianity, these are not even the same set of laws that the Bible describes as the ten commandments. In the Book of Exodus, God wrote the ten commandments on two tablets of stone and gave them to Moses, who broke them (Ex 32:15-19).

God then recalled Moses to give him the same rules again (Ex 34:1-4). And these are the rules that God told Moses: the Israelites must observe the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of weeks, sacrifice firstborn male animals except donkeys, and give the first fruits of each harvest to God. They must not worship other gods, make treaties or intermarry with other tribes, cast idols, work on the seventh day, mix blood sacrifices with leavened bread, let fat sacrifices remain overnight, or cook a baby goat in its mother’s milk (Ex 34:5-26). God then told Moses to write down these words, and Moses wrote on two new stone tablets “the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” (Ex 34:27-28).

Today’s ten commandments actually appear elsewhere in the Book of Exodus (20:1-17). The Bible does not call them the ten commandments; indeed, there are at least twelve of them, if not more. And they are not written on tablets of stone; instead, in a different incident, God speaks them directly from Mount Sinai. It seems likely that later Christian leaders chose to downplay the ritual laws, and to instead brand the other set of laws as being “the ten commandments.”

In a later story, when Moses is recalling these events, he misremembers the exact words of these laws and mistakenly says that God wrote them onto stone tablets (Deut 5:6-22). This later story contradicts the Book of Exodus, unless the tablets had twenty laws on them. It seems more likely that the writer of Deuteronomy made mistakes or alterations when transcribing, perhaps several centuries later, the Exodus story.

Summary

Whether or not the Bible stories are true, the ten commandments of Judeo-Christianity are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are not based on universal values of right and wrong, because they were never intended to apply to all people. They were designed to protect the stability and interests of one Bronze Age tribe, specifically because this tribe was set apart from all other people.

They did this mainly by regulating how the tribe worshipped its God, by protecting the position of the tribe’s adult males, and by treating members of the tribe differently than strangers. They demanded unthinking obedience, based on desire for amazing rewards and fear of horrific punishments meted out by this God, and enforced by threats of being stoned to death by other members of the tribe.

This is no basis upon which to build an ethical moral code.

Sources

• The Bible
• Skeptic’s Annotated Bible
• The Ten Commandments by Joseph Lewis, 1946
• Godless by Dan Barker, 2008
• Lies by Prophets by Yael Shemesh

Photo: The Ten Commandments by DrGBB (cc)

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Charitable Atheists

Irish people with no religion are slightly more likely to do charitable work than the average citizen, and Irish Catholics are slightly less likely to do so. David Quinn (Irish Independent, 5 December) argues the opposite, but he has misunderstood the census figures. Irish Protestants are the most likely to do charity work.

The charitable impulse is universal. David Quinn argues that it is religious, citing the large Red Cross presence after Hurricane Katrina. But the Red Cross is not a religious charity. Its symbol is based on the Swiss flag, as it was founded in Geneva.

The large Red Cross presence in New Orleans actually disproves the point Quinn was trying to make.

Ireland has over seven thousand listed charities, many of them secular. Bob Geldof, an Irish atheist, founded Live Aid. And internationally, the two largest charitable donors in world history are the atheist or agnostic billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

Census Figures

The latest census shows that 5.7% of Irish adults help or volunteer for social or charitable work. Nonreligious people are just above this average, and Catholics are just below it. Up to 8% of Protestants do charity work, and the figure for other stated religions is slightly higher.

David Quinn mistakenly argues that one in ten Irish Catholics do charity work, compared to only 6% of nonreligious people. He gets these totals by adding in people who help religious groups and churches. But you cannot do this, for two reasons.

Firstly, any Catholics who do charity work, and who also help with their church, are included in both sets of figures. Quinn is counting each of them twice, as if they were two people.

Secondly, he defines his wrongly inflated total as “charity work”. But the census already gives us an accurate total for this. You can’t just add in under “charity work” thousands of extra people who did not say that they do charity work.

Secular Charities

More importantly, charity does not depend on religion. It depends on people caring about each other as fellow sentient beings. It depends on people wanting to end suffering and replace it with happiness, regardless of their beliefs about supernatural gods.

Religion is structured, and atheism isn’t. So a lot more charity work is done under the name of religion. But there are many secular charities. Ireland has an A to Z of over seven thousand charities, ranging from the All-Ireland Air Ambulance and Alzheimer Society to Zest 4 Kids and the Zoological Society.

Many excellent charities exist to fill human needs for humanitarian reasons. Oxfam and Concern tackle poverty and injustice. UNICEF works to protect and help children. Amnesty tackles abuses of human rights. The Lifeboat Association saves lives at sea.

Charitable Atheists

Atheists have founded many charities. Bob Geldof founded Live Aid. Screenwriter Richard Curtis founded Comic Relief and Make Poverty History.

Nonreligious people have been major philanthropists. Paul Newman donated $250 million to charity. Between them, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have donated an incredible $80 billion – which is twenty times the budget of the International Red Cross.

Atheists can also donate to religious causes. Last year an atheist businessman gave over $20 million for Catholic school scholarships in inner city New York.

In an ancient Hasidic fable, a rabbi is asked if it is ever right to act as if god did not exist. His answer: “Yes. When you are asked to give to charity, give as if there were no god to help the object of the charity.”

That’s exactly what atheists do.

Photo: Bob Geldof and Bill Gates at Live 8 – IT Jungle 

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