True, the Catholic Church also goes around opposing the use of condoms in AIDS-ravaged Africa. True, they waste huge amounts of the money they raise on all that religious stuff. Indulging in unclear thinking is not harmless, prayer comes with a price.
To refrain from doing damaging things, is a true victory for a rationalist...
Unless it is your only victory, in which case it seems a little empty.
I wouldn't feel empty about losing all of the money that went to Mother Teresa's order if it meant that residents of the Calcutta slums could have access to family planning. Fewer resources. Much better outcomes.
And so 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.
The original post predates things like Nonbelievers Giving Aid.
I'm having trouble convincing myself of a good measure of "charitableness," particularly with self-reporting. Are donations to the church counted? If so, what fraction goes to the maintenance of that church as opposed to obvious things? That's like paying club dues.
How much of its earnings does the Catholic Church spend on all that useless religious stuff instead of actually helping people? More than 50%, I would venture.
It seems - as the finances here aren't at all public - that most (spent) Catholic Church money goes to hospitals and schools. (With "Catholic" hospitals, the financial contribution of the Church is relatively small.) And the amount of Church money coming from donations is relatively smaller still: they get their money from investment.
It is easier for a community to make big charitable contributions when it has its own bank and lots of time.
If we look at charitableness by country - this can be looked up, but I don't agree with any particular methodology - there's no big obvious correlation with religiosity. Within the United States, there is a correlation. In other, more secular first world countries, I'd be surprised if the correlation was significant.
But I know a much better correlate off the top of my head: income level. If you want to be more charitable, try making 15k a year. Or try being Jewish - a relatively large fraction of whom are secular. I have a hunch that being a minority group would help rationalists be more charitable, were we not so new and so atomized.
Edit: An afterthought. When it comes to doing obviously good things, the best proven institution is the secular state. I'd argue this for the social democratic sort in particular.
Edit 2: A second afterthought. Obvious good things may need some spelling out. There is a difference between maintaining the poor and fighting poverty. On what side of this distinction are Christian charities most concentrated?
There is this story that I thought of when I originally read this. it can be found here. Like me, most of you who go through the link and read the speech will find obviously sub-optimal thinking. You will think "If it were an option of following this principle or not, I could not follow it. Even if I have no other principle to replace it with, I could not, in good conscience, accept this idea." This is were your rationality will destroy any group you try to create. If you cannot allow any sub-optimal parts in the organizations you participate in, then you will never participate in an organization of humans. The example I picked comes from a religious and irrational organization like Eliezer described, but it actually works, unlike co-ops of large groups of rationalists who refuse to accept sub-optimal planning in any form. So in this instance, Religion has a better policy than rationalists and, until you find an empirically proven policy that does better, you would do better to adopt it.
What about the policy of making an effort on your own and opting out of groups of either variety?
Every aid effective offered by religious groups is a secular aid. Medicine, food, soldiers, disaster relief, all of it and every bit of it. The aid that they alone can offer, prayer, is worthless. Religious aid is always and only is a co-option of secular aid or it is worthless prayer. Religion also is opposed to every secular moral advance until they are for it. Religious believers can't yell loud enough or often enough about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi being a leader of civil rights and a religious leader. That can do so only by ignoring the thousands of years of pro-slavery and pro-caste system background these religions come from. They perverted their faith, they didn't prefect it.
So, sure, help where help is most effective or meets your needs best. Religion will always let you do the work then take the credit so it's okay to not fight them openly at every turn.
I'm not sure what you mean about religious groups' aid being secular. It seems like you are saying medicine and food are "secular" things, while prayer is a "religious" thing. Sure you can't pray money into existence, so it's sort of a "secular thing", but the useful question is really who is giving the thing, not how it came to be.
The issue at hand is what organization is at the source of the charitable donations - a secular organization or a religious one. That's a question that is worth asking. Whether or not the aid they are giving has been originally created by a god, magic or science isn't really important for this question.
I didn't downvote you, but I suspect whoever did shared this reasoning.
It seems like you are saying medicine and food are "secular" things, while prayer is a "religious" thing.
Yes, that is what I am saying.
The issue at hand is what organization is at the source of the charitable donations - a secular organization or a religious one. That's a question that is worth asking. Whether or not the aid they are giving has been originally created by a god, magic or science isn't really important for this question.
First, you say both that the source or origin does matter and that the source or origin does not matter. Which is it?
Second, as I said in my original post, "help where help is most effective or meets your needs best."
Thank you for your reply. If I have erred, please help me correct my argument.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The "source or origin" meaning the group doing the donating does matter, but the physical creation of the thing is irrelevant. A Dollar isn't a "secular thing" or a "religious thing" - it's just a thing.
Things-which-can-be-donated cannot be secular or religious, but people and organizations can, the way I see it.
I'm not sure that I am the right authority to be correcting anyone's argument - the above comments are just my, an amateur rationalist's, personal response to your argument.
I'm not sure that I am the right authority to be correcting anyone's argument - the above comments are just my, an amateur rationalist's, personal response to your argument.
Fortunately there are no authoritative sources of knowledge and all claims may be challenged. I've had fingers wagged my way here for quoting Karl Popper, so instead I'll suggest a few links 1 2 3 4 5 from my blog.
I don't have time at the moment so I'll have to check those out later.
At a very quick skim I saw:
"Tradition is – apart from inborn knowledge – by far the most important source of our knowledge."
Which I must say irks me real badly, but I'll try to keep an open mind.
At the risk of inviting bias, may I ask what the justification for the finger-wagging was? I am unfamiliar with Popper (which is sort of nice, actually. blank slate)
That can do so only by ignoring the thousands of years of pro-slavery and pro-caste system background these religions come from.
I'm not sure about caste but for much of those thousands of years there was a lot of religious opposition to slavery, even if they sometimes wound up compromising with temporal interests. Purely secular institutions don't have a thousand year history, but during the short period of time they have been around, their hands aren't exactly clean on these sorts of things.
Today's post, Can Humanism Match Religion's Output? was originally published on 27 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
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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