Atheist Richard Dawkins aids Haiti, touts God-free giving
Donations to faith-based aid groups are soaring and believers get a great deal of just credit for stepping up to help in Haiti. Now unbelievers want the world to know they're just as caring.
The champion of unbelief Richard Dawkins, Britain's star atheist scientist, has announced he'll personally cover the PayPal fees (up to $10,000) for donations to two non-religious relief groups -- Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross -- through a newly established site called Unbelievers Giving Aid.
While others debate if it's God or the devil that caused the quake, the atheists and skeptics here say the natural world is...
... "supremely indifferent to human affairs and sadly indifferent to human suffering. Those of us who understand this reality are sometimes accused of being indifferent to that suffering ourselves. Of course the very opposite is the truth: 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.
Regular F&R readers might recall that earlier this year we saw that unbelievers were among the fund-raising leaders at Kiva, the international Internet person-to-person micro-lending site. When I checked in July, the unbelievers were leading other special interest groups including churches, raising funds to uplift the world's poorest.