The atheist community at YouTube is running a 24-hour live show to raise money for an organization I very much support: Medicine sans Frontieres (“Doctors without borders”).
The live feed is here: http://www.blogtv.com/people/dprjones and I’ve pasted the schedule below (click to enlarge). Go, watch, and donate!
I’ve just listened to Barbara Forrest, and coming up are erv (Abbie Smith), Larry Krauss, P. Z. Myers, Anthony Grayling, Michael Shermer, James Randi, and many more.
Here is the schedule
http://tinyurl.com/3c6xqgs
Very good cause and one started by atheists, I think. One minor correction: The original French name of the organization is “Médecins Sans Frontières” (not “Medecine”).
If you wish to live in a world in which MSF is an anachronism, it’s your moral duty to throw some coin their way to help that dream come true.
Cheers,
b&
Something to watch on Caturday:
Does anyone have any stats on how much of the faithiest donations go to actually helping people or causes other than their bureaucracies and real estate holdings?
It seems non-religious givers get more bang for their bucks because they’re not covering pedophile priest payouts or humongo temples in San Diego or the (expensive) day to day ops of religious organizations. Six figures for the priest/rabbi/minister would go a long way to something useful.
We would have to exclude all the money that atheists spend on squid and cat porn, though.
Do churches even have to publish their financial statements? I was under the impression they do not, and therefore there is no way to know how much “bang for their buck” donors get. If so, comparing church donations to secular charities is apples and oranges. You may as well let atheists include club fees and season tickets to sporting events as charitable donations. I’m sure some small part of that money is going to charity at some point.
We would have to exclude all the money that atheists spend on squid and cat porn
That sounds like a reasonable trade-off to me.
I remember reading a statistic that said that only 5% of religious donations went to good works, the rest goes to buildings salaries and proselytising, I can’t remember where I saw it though.
Another data point: http://www.kiva.org/community
The Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious lending team on Kiva has been the #1 lending team for a few years. They have a significant lead on the #2 team, the Kiva Christians.