Non-Believers Giving Aid: a religion-free way to help disaster victims

Atheists Set Up 'Religion-Free' Fund for Haiti Relief

Famed New Atheist Richard Dawkins has opened up a "religion-free" way of helping the victims of the deadly earthquake in Haiti.

Dawkins has joined 13 other groups to create the Non-Believers Giving Aid. Donors are told that when they give they are "helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans."

"We do not hide behind the notion that earthly suffering will be rewarded in a heavenly paradise, nor do we expect a heavenly reward for our generosity: the understanding that this is the only life any of us have makes the need to alleviate suffering even more urgent," the atheist and freethought groups say.

The Non-Believers Giving Aid was set up in response to the devastation from Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake that left more than three million people in need of aid. Current estimates place the death toll between 50,000 to 100,000 people.

The atheists' appeal comes amid an increasing number of ad campaigns, books and debates touting morality or goodness without God.

The New Atheists, who are more outspoken than previous humanists and non-theists and endeavor to make belief in God socially unacceptable, have widely put out writings and oral arguments making the case that one can live a good moral life and know right from wrong without God.

Creating a fund for Haiti victims is just one several ways they are demonstrating their point.

"Non-Believers Giving Aid is not a church (that’s putting it mildly) but it does provide an easy conduit for the non-religious to help those in desperate need, whilst simultaneously giving the lie to the canard that you need God to be good," the groups behind the fund maintain.

Though adamant in their argument, New Atheists have provided no objective foundation for their belief, says Chad Meister, director of philosophy at Bethel College and contributor to God is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God is Reasonable and Responsible.

"No one is arguing that atheists cannot utter ethical statements or live good, moral lives. Of course they can," Meister writes in God is Great. "Believing that something is right or wrong and justifying one's belief that something is right or wrong are two very different matters."

Atheists Love You. They Just Don't Know Why.

by Matthew Archbold Tuesday, January 19, 2010 10:00 AM Comments (53)

Richard Dawkins has started up a charity called “Non Believers Giving Aid” so atheists can give to relief efforts in Haiti in a way which promulgates their atheism. Because as I’m sure you know when Haitians receive relief they’re very interested in whether it came from a believer or a non-believer.

Dawkins, who has been saying for years that religion is the “root of all evil,” is now oddly intent on proving that atheists can be as good as Christians. Recently, atheists seem intent on proving they can be good without God.

I always get a kick out of evangelizing atheists and how they’re so desperate to prove that they’re as good (and usually better) than us religious types. Dawkins writes on the charity’s website: “When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.” While we should all applaud Mr. Dawkins’ altruistic efforts to help his fellow man I’m just not sure he’s making the point he thinks he’s making.

If Dawkins is running this charity to show up religion and helping Haitians is only a secondary consequence then we could hardly claim that what he’s doing is good by most definitions. Because if that’s true then it would seem that the greatest value of Haitians lives to Dawkins is how they make Dawkins look.

But let’s give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt because us religious types like to do that. If he’s helping people because he wants to help people then I almost hate to tell him that he’s kind of supporting some of our arguments. While Dawkins argues that he can be good without God, I think he’s actually only proving that Richard Dawkins can be good while not acknowledging God.

I have to wonder from what philosophical grounding does Dawkins’ altruism emanate? Why is other human life worth anything if there is no God? From what philosophical groundwork is he basing his good works on? Dawkins, it would seem to me, hasn’t defined his terms and is only borrowing our definition of “good.” Because without our definitions he’d have to ask the question, “What is good without God?” And that’s something I haven’t seen answered yet.

In fact, I think Dawkin’s efforts to do good is one of the best arguments for innate knowledge of right and wrong.

I almost hate to inform Mr. Dawkins that his little plot is actually helpful to believers as we believe that no matter what you espouse verbally each man has written on his soul the ability to tell right from wrong. And while Dawkins denies it, his actions indicate otherwise. There is a moral sense which you can ignore but your choosing to ignore or embrace it has no effect on its existence, much like God Himself.

But we’re glad for the help anyway. Thanks.