Today's post, Can Humanism Match Religion's Output? was originally published on 27 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Anyone with a simple and obvious charitable project - responding with food and shelter to a tidal wave in Thailand, say - would be better off by far pleading with the Pope to mobilize the Catholics, rather than with Richard Dawkins to mobilize the atheists. For so long as this is true, any increase in atheism at the expense of Catholicism will be something of a hollow victory, regardless of all other benefits. Can no rationalist match the motivation that comes from the irrational fear of Hell? Or does the real story have more to do with the motivating power of physically meeting others who share your cause, and group norms of participating?

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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Your Price for Joining, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

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