Religion versus Human Comapssion

[cacian]

does religion lack compassion an therefore leads people to ignore each other at such a level that they have no compassion or understanding for each or towards each other's needs.
religion is so engrossed obsessed with god that a human forgets that there is another human being that needs more attention.
in other words does religion have human feelings??

example:
I have observed, having lived next to churches all my life, people who preach and spend hours on end in churches and yet they are quite happy to walk pass a starving human being or even an animal.
there is something quite unsettling to observe.

any comments most welcome.

[YesNo]

The example you give about someone passing a starving human or animal suggests a possible experiment. Perhaps it has already been done. First we measure how religious a person is based on some test. Then stage an actor to represent the starving person on the street who approaches the subject and says they just need a small amount of change to get a ticket for the train so they can get home and get a meal. They haven't eaten in days. See how far the subject of the experiment goes to help this person. Then see if there is any correlation between what various subjects did and how they measured on the religious test they took originally.

[cacian]

hi YesNo this is not the experiment. this is from observation from down the roads I walk pass everyday.

[mortalterror]

LONDON -- Muslims give more money to charity than people of other religions, according to a new British poll.

More than three in 10 Muslims, Catholics and Jews donated money during 2012, ICM Research found.

Followers of Islam gave an average of $567 compared to Jewish givers who donated around $412, according to the survey of just over 4,000 people in the U.K.

Christians gave considerably less. Protestants donated an average of $308, while Roman Catholics gave around $272, the poll found. Atheists averaged just $177. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...poll-says?lite

Q. We often hear that religious people give more to charity than secularists. Is this true?
A. In the year 2000, “religious” people (the 33 percent of the population who attend their houses of worship at least once per week) were 25 percentage points more likely to give charitably than “secularists” (the 27 percent who attend less than a few times per year, or have no religion). They were also 23 percentage points more likely to volunteer. When considering the average dollar amounts of money donated and time volunteered, the gap between the groups increases even further: religious people gave nearly four times more dollars per year, on average, than secularists ($2,210 versus $642). They also volunteered more than twice as often (12 times per year, versus 5.8 times).

Very little of this gap is due to personal differences between religious and secular people with respect to income, age, family, or anything else. For instance, imagine two people who are identical in income, education, age, race, and marital status. The one difference between them is that, while one goes to church every week, the other never does. Knowing this, we can predict that the churchgoer will be 21 percentage points more likely to make a charitable gift of money during the year than the nonchurchgoer, and will also be 26 points more likely to volunteer.

Q. But aren’t they just giving to religious charities and houses of worship?
A. These enormous differences are not a simple artifact of religious people giving to their churches. Religious people are more charitable with secular causes, too. For example, in 2000, religious people were 10 percentage points more likely than secularists to give money to explicitly nonreligious charities, and 21 points more likely to volunteer. The value of the average religious household’s gifts to nonreligious charities was 14 percent higher than that of the average secular household, even after correcting for income differences.

Religious people were also far more likely than secularists to give in informal, nonreligious ways. For example, in 2000, people belonging to religious congregations gave 46 percent more money to family and friends than people who did not belong. In 2002, religious people were far more likely to donate blood than secularists, to give food or money to a homeless person, and even to return change mistakenly given them by a cashier. http://www.american.com/archive/2008...tion-of-givers
1935-present Tenzin Gyatso- Dalai Llama advocates peace for Tibet
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Tenzin_Gyatso_-_Trento_2013_01.JPG/220px-Tenzin_Gyatso_-_Trento_2013_01.JPG
1931-present Archbishop Desmond Tutu- anti-apartheid activist
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Archbishop-Tutu-medium.jpg/220px-Archbishop-Tutu-medium.jpg
1929-1968 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.- Activist for peace and civil rights for blacks.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg/220px-Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg
1926-present Thích Nhất Hạnh peace activist and founder of engaged Buddhism
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Thich_Nhat_Hanh_12_%28cropped%29.jpg/220px-Thich_Nhat_Hanh_12_%28cropped%29.jpg
1910-1997 Mother Teresa built hospices, soup kitchens, and orphanages for poor people
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/MotherTeresa_094.jpg/220px-MotherTeresa_094.jpg
1869-1948 Ghandi- Started a pacifist movement to get the British out of India.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Portrait_Gandhi.jpg/200px-Portrait_Gandhi.jpg
1812-1888 Rev. Henry Richard, peace activist, abolitionist
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/HenryRichardMonumentTregaron.jpg/220px-HenryRichardMonumentTregaron.jpg
1805-1879 William Lloyd Garrison- American abolitionist
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Garrison%2C_William_Lloyd%2C_three-quarter-length%2C_seated_-_NARA_-_530489.tif/lossy-page1-200px-Garrison%2C_William_Lloyd%2C_three-quarter-length%2C_seated_-_NARA_-_530489.tif.jpg
1759–1833 William Willberforce- British abolitionist
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/William_wilberforce.jpg/220px-William_wilberforce.jpg
1181-1226 Francis of Assisi super pacifist cool dude, raise the roof!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Saint_Francis_of_Assisi_by_Jusepe_de_Ribera.jpg/250px-Saint_Francis_of_Assisi_by_Jusepe_de_Ribera.jpg

[mal4mac]

From Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman: "One afternoon at the Princeton Theological Seminary, forty students waited to give a short practice sermon on which they would be rated. Half the students had been assigned random biblical topics. The other half had been assigned the parable of the Good Samaritan... every fifteen minutes one of them left to go to another building to deliver his sermon... Their route passed directly by a doorway in which a man was slumped, groaning in evident pain. Of the forty students, twenty-four passed right by, ignoring the plaintive moans. And those who were mulling over the lessons of the Good Samaritan’s tale were no more likely to stop and help than were any of the others. For the seminarians, time mattered. Among ten who thought they were late to give their sermon, only one stopped; among another ten who thought they had plenty of time, six offered help.”

And surely there were a few who had their wits about them and realised that this was part of the test (duh!), and therefore stopped to "look good" - they are probably now Bishops :devil:.

[mal4mac]

Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, is the *compulsory* giving of a proportion of one's wealth to charity.

So are Moslems giving out of compassion, or because they are forced to do it by their religious leaders?

In any case, the proportion they give is a small fraction of what everybody in the UK pays in taxes to keep the welfare state going.

In church, the collection box gets handed round in public. So are the givers in church really more compassionate, or do they just want to "look good"? Ditto for volunteering. In any case, social workers provide the vast bulk of the support, many work for very small wages, and many are atheists.

Atheists who want to help others are likely to become social workers or politicians, and may consider charities as unhelpful, reactionary, disorganised institutions that hinder the instantiation of an efficient welfare state. (Given the failure of the multitude of charities in Victorian England to support all the needy, they have a point...)

One could easily produce a very long list of evil religious figures (paedophile priests, Buddhist monk rapists, Islamic jihadists, witch burners,...) and another list of good, secularist atheists. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

P.S. Here's a good atheist on Mother Teresa:

"She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit." - Christopher Hitchens

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html

[Mohammad Ahmad]

No, I think not that any religion in the world wherever the place is and however the nation is and whatsoever the religion type is will stop as a stumbling block against people desire to be acquainted with each other but the opposite is right that religion encourages the relationship between people everywhere.

[cacian]

to mortalterror I think here we are looking at singular people individuals rather then a group average person.
I meant everyday people who spend hours on end preaching and praying religion. they seem to have no connection with the real world/real human feeling. they come across as void of it.

[cacian]

No, I think not that any religion in the world wherever the place is and however the nation is and whatsoever the religion type is will stop as a stumbling block against people desire to be acquainted with each other but the opposite is right that religion encourages the relationship between people everywhere.

it may encourage unity but it stops there. religion does not provide a meaning to what compassion extends to.

[YesNo]

hi YesNo this is not the experiment. this is from observation from down the roads I walk pass everyday.

I know, but one would need an experiment to test the claim that theism generates a lack of compassion.

[cacian]

I know, but one would need an experiment to test the claim that theism generates a lack of compassion.

I think an experiment usually does not work because when one sets up something and expects something else it usually does not work.
anyway what type of experiment did you have in mind?
religion I find takes up a lot of time which means it leaves nothing else for the mind to wonder or think about. I feel religion is an antidote to understanding and compassion. people over obsess with gods to the point of losing sense of what a human actually is about.

[jeremiah.f]

Hi, Cacian. You seem to have a particular answer you want to hear. YesNo suggested an experiment, and you said it's not about an experiment but your impression of the people who walk to the church near you. mortalterror offered statistics that the average religious person gives more to charity than the average nonreligious person, and you again offer your own impression that people "who spend hours on end preaching and praying religion seem to have no connection with the real world/real human feeling" and "come across as void of it."

I think mortalterror's post provided pretty convincing evidence against the claim that religious people have less human sympathy. Why do you not find it compelling? What sort of answers are you looking for?

As for religious people walking past the hungry on their way to church, have you found that religious people do that more often than non-religious people? My own observation is that ignoring the hungry and homeless is a cultural symptom, not a religious one. That is, we are accustomed in cities to seeing people who look homeless, we feel that it is someone else's job to help them (a church food pantry or shelter or government agency), and we believe that they will take advantage of us if we help (they'll just buy drink, or they're conning us to get our money). Our religions haven't told us that story; contemporary urban culture has. So the default setting of most city-dwellers is to be canny toward panhandlers: don't be a rube and buy the "I just need $5 of gas to get to the hospital to visit my..." story; know when to cross the street; don't make eye contact. It's a cultural myth that has replaced older cultural myths: Zeus no longer favors the man hospitable to strangers, but the canny urbanite who doesn't take **** from people.

Into that cultural myths our religions speak another story: the Good Samaritan, or the prophets' commands to treat kindly the stranger and wayfarer, or whatever. Religious people may still ignore those stories and default to the deeply ingrained Myth of the Canny Urbanite, but I don't see any connection between their religion and their disregard. If my "competing stories" theory is true, we'd expect to see religious people being slightly more charitable than non-religious people, and increasingly charitable as they are increasingly religious. This is, to my understanding, what we actually do see when we do studies on this sort of thing.

[cacian]

I am trying to relate to everyday religious people I meet and the impression they give is that they are so into their religious belief that they care of anything else.
the amount of noise made coming out of a church on a sunday morning for example is horrendous. one church I used to live next to use to be so loud it had not specific time it went one from morning till night and sometime it began at four in the morning. we had to call in the noise council manier to deal with it but it wont stop.
this is to me a sign or a lack of awareness from these church goers that there are people/neighbour around. I mean whatever happened to 'respect thy neighbour' It is included in the bible and yet this kind of ongoing loud activity seem to step on the most basic preaching of Jesus about neighbours.

so I am trying to relate to what I see on an everyday basis and so it seems that them most obviousof compassion has no bearing on many church goes I meet.
the other thing I am trying to put forward is that one needs not religion to tell one to be compassionate I am sure of that.

[free]

All religions are wrong (I don't want to offend anyone, please, this is my free thinker's opinion) because they preach the benefits of suffering and lessons to be taken from the suffering. Suffering is bad and no good lessons can be learned from it. On the other hand, they even preach that if one sins (does consciously something bad to another human being), if one confesses it at a proper religious manner, the sin would be forgiven, therefore one can do it again.

[YesNo]

All religions are wrong (I don't want to offend anyone, please, this is my free thinker's opinion) because they preach the benefits of suffering and lessons to be taken from the suffering. Suffering is bad and no good lessons can be learned from it. On the other hand, they even preach that if one sins (does consciously something bad to another human being), if one confesses it at a proper religious manner, the sin would be forgiven, therefore one can do it again.

If you put your hand in a flame, it burns and causes you pain. You suffer. So, you stop putting your hand in the flame, because you learned a good lesson from your suffering.

Usually people don't forgive each other. They might temporarily forget their grievances, but they don't forgive. Catholics have a sacrament called confession, but that just sets them right with God. They don't escape the social consequences of their actions. I don't know if the other Christian churches have such rituals. Other religions have karma that seems more difficult to avoid since they usually have a reincarnation belief that goes along with that. If you have not adequately compensated for the sin in one life, you get a chance to do so in another.

It makes more sense to be tolerant of others' beliefs and practices, since none of us are omniscient and we would not like someone else telling us what to accept as true.

[free]

If you put your hand in a flame, it burns and causes you pain. You suffer. So, you stop putting your hand in the flame, because you learned a good lesson from your suffering.



There are people who teach you not to do harm to yourself and you learn without suffering.

[Ecurb]

Suffering is bad and no good lessons can be learned from it. .

How do you even know what suffering is without suffering? Are such qualities as courage, honor, fortitude, prudence, etc. praiseworthy? They couldn't exist without suffering, could they?

Have you ever read "The Worm Oroborous" (or however you spell it)? Eliminate suffering and you eliminate romance.

[free]

How do you even know what suffering is without suffering? Are such qualities as courage, honor, fortitude, prudence, etc. praiseworthy? They couldn't exist without suffering, could they?

Have you ever read "The Worm Oroborous" (or however you spell it)? Eliminate suffering and you eliminate romance.

There are many kinds of people in this world. Ones that like to suffer and others that don't. I am one of the 'others' and I hope we are the majority in this world. Maybe I am wrong, but I think that those who enjoy in suffering are not normal. It is called masochism.

[stephofthenight]

I believe the world has gotten lost in Religion and their traditions, and has lost sight of the real salvation. It was never about being religious, attending church, a Jesus bumper sticker or any of the traditions: It was about building a relationship with the Father. When one has that relationship it is hard to walk past the needy, lack compassion or even harbor a grudge against another. I have found religion to be empty, and unfulfilling but the true relationship changes everything about you. We are called to love our neighbor, to forgive endlessly, to serve, to be hated even....I think people prefer to keep God in a box, and practice their religion and transitions because the real stuff takes effort and is not popular- just my 2 cents.

[mona amon]

does religion lack compassion an therefore leads people to ignore each other at such a level that they have no compassion or understanding for each or towards each other's needs.
religion is so engrossed obsessed with god that a human forgets that there is another human being that needs more attention.
in other words does religion have human feelings??

example:
I have observed, having lived next to churches all my life, people who preach and spend hours on end in churches and yet they are quite happy to walk pass a starving human being or even an animal.
there is something quite unsettling to observe.

any comments most welcome.

I do not think religious people are on the whole any more or any less compassionate than the non-religious, and yet they ought to be more, because almost every major religion preaches that the true way to God is through brotherly love, like Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase). So Cacian, I think what offends you about it is the hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, affected piety, cant, humbug, pretence, empty talk and other synonymously annoying things rather than the actual lack of compassion, which I feel will be the same for non church-goers and atheists.

[mal4mac]

I think cacian is spot on, and you're letting religion off the hook, mona.

Matthew 22:38: "The love of God is the first and great commandment..." This gives Christians the excuse to run away to the desert or join an enclosed order, where they do nothing for anybody. The "people who preach and spend hours on end in churches" also play this game.

India, as well, is full of holy men seeking transcendence, i.e., trying to combine with Brahma, while poverty is at Dickensian levels. The Indian politicians & space engineers can then say, "Well the gurus are trying to be space heads, not saving the starving, we're just following their lead..."

[mortalterror]

I think cacian is spot on, and you're letting religion off the hook, mona.

Matthew 22:38: "The love of God is the first and great commandment..." This gives Christians the excuse to run away to the desert or join an enclosed order, where they do nothing for anybody. The "people who preach and spend hours on end in churches" also play this game.

India, as well, is full of holy men seeking transcendence, i.e., trying to combine with Brahma, while poverty is at Dickensian levels. The Indian politicians & space engineers can then say, "Well the gurus are trying to be space heads, not saving the starving, we're just following their lead..."

Nah, Cacian is just a hater. He's picked religion as his target but it might just as well be Republicans or black people. Haters are always mad at someone or something.

[mona amon]

Matthew 22:38: "The love of God is the first and great commandment..." This gives Christians the excuse to run away to the desert or join an enclosed order, where they do nothing for anybody. The "people who preach and spend hours on end in churches" also play this game.

Ha, I'm thoroughly familiar with this quote (Jesus's summary of the Law) since we repeat it in church every Sunday, except for every first Sunday of the month when we repeat the full ox and *** version of the 10 commandments. :D I'm afraid you've left out the most important part of the quote, which most emphatically and certainly deals with brotherly love. Here is the full passage -


Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” - Matthew 22: 34-40 (New International Version)

[YesNo]

There are people who teach you not to do harm to yourself and you learn without suffering.

The movie Philomena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomena_(film)) addresses the issue of suffering and religion well.

Philomena gave up her child to Catholic nuns in Ireland when she was a teenager after getting pregnant and being abandoned by others who should have helped her, but she loved the child and ultimately tried to find out what happened to him. She finds out, but along the way one sees a lot of ugly self-righteousness from both religious and non-religious sources. The self-righteousness generates various forms of punishment that are intended to cause suffering, but it also buries the self-righteous persons in suffering as well.

Learning how not to harm oneself by not getting self-righteous, by not punishing others, is not something easy to teach another person especially when they are angry. So they suffer. Some of them even learn to forgive.

[Ecurb]

Suffering is bad and no good lessons can be learned from it. ....There are many kinds of people in this world. Ones that like to suffer and others that don't. I am one of the 'others' and I hope we are the majority in this world. Maybe I am wrong, but I think that those who enjoy in suffering are not normal. It is called masochism.

First, some religions do not preach the benefits of suffering. Think of Hinduism and Buddhism, in which enlightenment involves removing oneself from the circles of the world and thus from the suffering that inevitably moves in those circles. Those of us who embrace the world must embrace suffering. If we love passionately, we must suffer passionately. We are all mortal and all love affairs end badly (through death, if not some other reason).

The Greeks thought that the Gods could not be heroic, because they were immortal, and heroism involves risk. Passionate involvement with the world involves suffering. How could it not, given the human condition? Either we can eliminate passionate involvement with the world (like Hinduism and Buddhism, although this is doubtless a vast over-simplification), or we can embrace passionate involvement with the world, and with it the inevitability of suffering.

[cacian]

Nah, Cacian is just a hater. He's picked religion as his target but it might just as well be Republicans or black people. Haters are always mad at someone or something.

I am not a hater far from it. I am a she by the way.
I am not picking I am sifting. if someone says they are godly they are better show it. otherwise it is double standards and a lot of hot air.

[Paulclem]

First, some religions do not preach the benefits of suffering. Think of Hinduism and Buddhism, in which enlightenment involves removing oneself from the circles of the world and thus from the suffering that inevitably moves in those circles. Those of us who embrace the world must embrace suffering. If we love passionately, we must suffer passionately. We are all mortal and all love affairs end badly (through death, if not some other reason).

The Greeks thought that the Gods could not be heroic, because they were immortal, and heroism involves risk. Passionate involvement with the world involves suffering. How could it not, given the human condition? Either we can eliminate passionate involvement with the world (like Hinduism and Buddhism, although this is doubtless a vast over-simplification), or we can embrace passionate involvement with the world, and with it the inevitability of suffering.

Yes it is. The goal in Buddhism is to end suffering and achieve a lasting happiness through Enlightenment. This is the goal though. It is recognised that without suffering there can be no motivation to wish to escape from it. Thus the Gods in the God realm, are less fortunate in that they experience protracted leisure and happiness and make no effort. Humans, on the other hand, experience plenty and are thus able to motivate themselves to develop wisdom.

[Paulclem]

All religions are wrong (I don't want to offend anyone, please, this is my free thinker's opinion) because they preach the benefits of suffering and lessons to be taken from the suffering. Suffering is bad and no good lessons can be learned from it. On the other hand, they even preach that if one sins (does consciously something bad to another human being), if one confesses it at a proper religious manner, the sin would be forgiven, therefore one can do it again.

I think there's a confusion about suffering. It is a fact of life in all it's physical, mental and environmental aspects. Unfortunately it is an inevitable condition of human life and religions attempt to guide people through their suffering according to the teachings associated.
There is also an inevitable lumping of all religions together by the OP and other posters when there are significant differences in attitudes to suffering, compassion etc

[MANICHAEAN]

I can only address this topic on a personal basis, which incidentally I consider the most appropriate.

Have you ever seen someone really in need of help on the streets? (and I'm not talking of professional beggers.)
Have you out of free choice gone up and endeavoured to help?
Have you done it with no one around?

You will find, (unless you are incredibly insensitive), that you come away extremely emotional as having done something pure, not for yourself, but for what Mother Terese used to call " Christ Himself in a wretched disguise." Is it a test, as by definition its all about free will? I don't know and really don't care.

Without wishing to be canonised let me give an example. One Canadian winter in Fort McMurry, Alberta, I saw from my rear window a man climb into one of those large refuse containers for shelter. The temperature was down about minus twenty and he looked like one of the drifters/drug users that one saw so much of on the fringes of the town. I found it impossible to ignore and subsequently took out a large
flask of hot soup. But the questions will still prick the conscience regards to should I have done more?

[cacian]

I do not think religious people are on the whole any more or any less compassionate than the non-religious, and yet they ought to be more, because almost every major religion preaches that the true way to God is through brotherly love, like Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase). So Cacian, I think what offends you about it is the hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, affected piety, cant, humbug, pretence, empty talk and other synonymously annoying things rather than the actual lack of compassion, which I feel will be the same for non church-goers and atheists.

that is exactly it. someone who aspires to be like god must replicate what god preaches more then anyone else who knows no better and so evidently the hypocrisy of rather the lack of practice of what one preaches is rather more obvious to me.

[cacian]

I can only address this topic on a personal basis, which incidentally I consider the most appropriate.

Have you ever seen someone really in need of help on the streets? (and I'm not talking of professional beggers.)
Have you out of free choice gone up and endeavoured to help?
Have you done it with no one around?

You will find, (unless you are incredibly insensitive), that you come away extremely emotional as having done something pure, not for yourself, but for what Mother Terese used to call " Christ Himself in a wretched disguise." Is it a test, as by definition its all about free will? I don't know and really don't care.

Without wishing to be canonised let me give an example. One Canadian winter in Fort McMurry, Alberta, I saw from my rear window a man climb into one of those large refuse containers for shelter. The temperature was down about minus twenty and he looked like one of the drifters/drug users that one saw so much of on the fringes of the town. I found it impossible to ignore and subsequently took out a large
flask of hot soup. But the questions will still prick the conscience regards to should I have done more?

interesting post MANICHEAN. the point is that one needs not to see to know that there are people with no food on their paltes or animals who stray who don't eat.
there many religions today thousands of followers of these religions and yet the suffering of many other humans beings including animals still goes on. there seem to be no correlation between compassion /helping those in need and religion.
this leads me to wonder about what the role is of a religious person? there is a lot preaching and exercising of these religions but nothing practical comes out of it. it seems that religion ends at the church or at the mosque . practical religion is non existant.

[mortalterror]

The more important religion is to a person, the more likely that person is to give to a charity of any kind, according to new research released today.

Among Americans who claim a religious affiliation, the study said, 65 percent give to charity. Among those who do not identify a religious creed, 56 percent make charitable gifts.

About 75 percent of people who frequently attend religious services gave to congregations, and 60 percent gave to religious charities or nonreligious ones. By comparison, fewer than half of people who said they didn’t attend faith services regularly supported any charity, even a secular one.
http://philanthropy.com/article/Religious-Americans-Give-More/143273/

http://media.bonnint.net/dn/0/10/1040.jpg
The picture isn't so evenly split among givers, however. The data show the more religious someone says they are the more they give to all types of organizations, from their congregation (to which they donate the most) to non-religious organizations.

While it's no surprise 58 percent of people who consider themselves religious and spiritual give to their local congregation, 56 percent of that same group contribute to non-religious charities compared with 51 percent of those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious and 42 percent of those who say they are neither spiritual or religious.

http://national.deseretnews.com/article/825/Is-religious-affiliation-the-driving-factor-in-charitable-giving.html

BOSTON — States with the least religious residents are also the stingiest about giving money to charity, a new study on the generosity of Americans suggests.

The study, released Monday by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, found that residents in states where religious participation is higher than the rest of the nation, particularly in the South, gave the greatest percentage of their discretionary income to charity.

The Northeast, with lower religious participation, was the least generous to charities, with the six New England states filling the last six slots among the 50 states. Churches are among the organizations counted as charities by the study, and some states in the Northeast rank in the top 10 when religious giving is not counted.

The most generous state was Utah, where residents gave 10.6 percent of their discretionary income to charity. Next were Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina. The least generous was New Hampshire, at 2.5 percent, followed by Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
...
The study found that in the Northeast region, including New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, people gave 4.1 percent of their discretionary income to charity. The percentage was 5.2 percent in the Southern states, a region from Texas east to Delaware and Florida, and including most of the so-called Bible Belt.

The Bible mandates a 10 percent annual donation, or tithe, to the church, and the donation is commonly preached as a way to thank God, care for others and show faith in God's provision. But it has a greater emphasis in some faiths.

In Mormon teachings, for instance, Latter Day Saints are required to pay a 10 percent tithe to remain church members in good standing, which helps explain the high giving rate in heavily-Mormon Utah.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/20/study-less-religious-stat_n_1810425.html

LDS Humanitarian Services is a branch of the Welfare Services department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The organization’s stated mission is to relieve suffering, to foster self-reliance for people of all nationalities and religions, and to provide opportunities for service.[1]
...
The LDS Church considers humanitarian work to be an essential part of its mission to bless all humanity in emulation of Jesus Christ “who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed” (Acts 10:38)...During the Great Depression the LDS Church organized a welfare program, now administered the church's Welfare Services department, to help provide for the needs of its members.

As the program has grown, the church's welfare efforts have expanded to help people around the world regardless of religion, race, or nationality. LDS Humanitarian Services was created to coordinate these efforts in partnership with government and other nonprofit agencies around the world. Key humanitarian initiatives include clean water, vision treatment, wheelchair provision, neonatal resuscitation, and disaster relief. Other initiatives include immunizations, family enrichment programs, and family food production. In 2008, LDS Humanitarian Services provided aid to 3.3 million people in 122 countries, and since 1985 help has been given to 23 million people in 163 nations. All of these initiatives, as well as support and advice on personal and community preparation for disasters can be found on the LDS Church’s Provident Living website.

The funding for LDS Humanitarian Services comes from philanthropic support of the church’s members and other donors. Donations to the Humanitarian Fund are collected through local bishops and through LDS Philanthropies.
...
In 2008, the LDS Church responded to 124 disasters in 48 countries.[2]
...
The church welfare program owns farms, ranches, canneries, and other food producing facilities to provide temporary food relief for families and individuals.
...
All of these initiatives require manpower and while there are some full-time employees in administrative and clerical functions, there are also thousands of volunteer humanitarian missionaries. In emergency situations, local members and full-time missionaries who would normally devote their time to proselyting will participate in relief efforts, but in many of these more permanent initiatives the LDS Church uses senior-aged missionary couples.

These couples are retired church members who devote six months to two years of their time to go anywhere in the world, typically at their own expense, to participate in these projects. Because of this volunteer force, the church is able to use 100 percent of money and goods donated in helping those in need.
....
From 1985 - 2009, $327.6 million in cash and $884.6 million in commodities of aid was given throughout 178 countries.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDS_Humanitarian_Services

[Paulclem]

Although charity might be an indicator of a compassionate mind, it is not the same. Charity is easy if you have a comfortable life and could mask the true feelings of an individual.

Compassionate acts are not necessarily the obvious ones. This giving to the homeless is a case where it might be charitable to give but could actually be more damaging. You might be sustaining someone living on the streets who could and should, for their long term well being, go to a refuge or a charitable institution. I think being truly compassionate indicates a degree of wisdom that sees beyond what people say, or think they want, to what they actually need.

On that basis the outward appearance of a lack of compassion may actually be compassionate. Cacian's original example might be a case where the beggar is a drug addict waiting for money to buy. That's speculation, but then so is Cacian's as she really has no idea what the motivation of any person might be.

[virtuoso]

Compassion is, essentially, a humanistic brand. We have an affinity for our fellow human being, so we care about their needs and wants. In the Bible, it preaches selfless love without an ulterior motive. For instance, "Love thy neighbor as thyself". We instinctively love our own bodies and bodily desires more than anything else in this world, so that loving others in a commensurate fashion is extremely challenging. Jesus told the rich, young ruler to sell all that he had, and to follow him blindly. This bespeaks of an unconditional, devoted love. In another passage, we are told to give out of the abundance of our hearts. Love and compassion are not measured in degree, but by the sacrificial nature of the giver. Remember that the poor woman gave Jesus all that she had, while the tight-tithing, rich pharisees looked on with disdain. The pharisees gave more than the poor woman in terms of monetary value, but a lot less by the percentage of the goods, wealth that they had.

[mal4mac]

So why do Bishops walk by the poor on the way to worship God? Why do Christian hermits run off to live in the desert? Could it be that the fictional character of Jesus sets an impossible standard? We are just animals that have evolved to look out for our own survival first, and second for the survival of our nearest and dearest. Through the application of a small amount of reason we can all, Christians and atheists, see that the distant and not-so-immediately-dear-to-us are 'human beings like us' and thereby be motivated to set up political systems to try and help the needy. You don't need a belief in God to do this! You need to appeal to people's enlightened self interest. Tell the Bishop he's going to get fired if he walks past a starving person again and he'll soon be feeding the poor!

[mona amon]

Compassion is, essentially, a humanistic brand. We have an affinity for our fellow human being, so we care about their needs and wants. In the Bible, it preaches selfless love without an ulterior motive. For instance, "Love thy neighbor as thyself". We instinctively love our own bodies and bodily desires more than anything else in this world, so that loving others in a commensurate fashion is extremely challenging. Jesus told the rich, young ruler to sell all that he had, and to follow him blindly. This bespeaks of an unconditional, devoted love. In another passage, we are told to give out of the abundance of our hearts. Love and compassion are not measured in degree, but by the sacrificial nature of the giver. Remember that the poor woman gave Jesus all that she had, while the tight-tithing, rich pharisees looked on with disdain. The pharisees gave more than the poor woman in terms of monetary value, but a lot less by the percentage of the goods, wealth that they had.

Nitpick -

The poor woman did not give Jesus the money, but put it into the temple treasury.


41Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

43Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Mark 12: 41-44 (New International Version)

As for the rich young man, I feel (and I could be wrong) that it was more about commitment than money or compassion -


17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[d]”

20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. MARK 10: 17-22 (New International Version)

[mal4mac]

Among Americans who claim a religious affiliation, the study said, 65 percent give to charity. Among those who do not identify a religious creed, 56 percent make charitable gifts.

That isn't a great difference, and might be accounted for by left leaning atheists tending to believe less in charity and more in taxes.

[YesNo]

So why do Bishops walk by the poor on the way to worship God? Why do Christian hermits run off to live in the desert? Could it be that the fictional character of Jesus sets an impossible standard? We are just animals that have evolved to look out for our own survival first, and second for the survival of our nearest and dearest. Through the application of a small amount of reason we can all, Christians and atheists, see that the distant and not-so-immediately-dear-to-us are 'human beings like us' and thereby be motivated to set up political systems to try and help the needy. You don't need a belief in God to do this! You need to appeal to people's enlightened self interest. Tell the Bishop he's going to get fired if he walks past a starving person again and he'll soon be feeding the poor!

It is hard to say why we do things. We are not totally determined. We have enough free will to make a choice. If we don't have this basic free will, there is no point in having this discussion about what we should be doing.

Whenever I think of atheism the scene of an execution in The Killing Fields comes to mind where a young woman puts a plastic bag over the head of her victim who was just someone whom the atheistic Khmer Rouge felt needed to be purged from their political community. Was that compassionate? They were getting rid of the garbage, as they saw it, to make a better, enlightened society.

Now one might object: we shouldn't compare the Khmer Rouge atheists with white, "scientific", "rational", western atheists. But why not? Could it be a racial difference? They were Asian and we are white westerners. Could it be that they were less rational than we are? How so? Could it be that our self-righteousness is safer than theirs? I doubt it.

The one thing that religious people have on their side that atheists don't is religion. This will tend to ground their actions in a "love they neighbor" perspective that they can afford to practice because their beliefs show them a reality outside their materialistic self-interest. That doesn't mean that they always practice their beliefs. Some religious people are as callous as anyone else. Religion is, however, something they have on their side. They haven't blocked it out of their worldview as something impossible against which they take self-righteous stands. It is still there to knock some sense into them, or us as the case may be.

[mal4mac]

Whenever I think of atheism the scene of an execution in The Killing Fields comes to mind where a young woman puts a plastic bag over the head of her victim who was just someone whom the atheistic Khmer Rouge felt needed to be purged from their political community.


Using the Khmer Rouge to represent atheism is like using the Witchfinder General to represent Christianity.

[Ecurb]

In general, I think it's a mistake to conflate religiosity with a "belief system". I'll grant that the conflation is understandable in Protestant regions, because Protestant Christians emphasize "belief" so much. However, other religions do not. The five pillars of Islam don't mention belief at all (although one pillar is "declaring" there is no God but God, and Mohammed is his messenger). One of the pillars (of course) is charitable giving. Similarly, Buddhism and Hindusim seem more concerned with practice than belief.

From an anthropological perspective, we cannot identify what someone else "believes". We can identify only statements (like the Muslim's "declaration"). So it's hardly surprising that religious groups (like Islam or Mormons) that demand charitable giving as a "pillar" of membership give more to charity than non-religious people (or, probably, than religious people who belong to churches that make no such demands). We need not see this as demonstrating that Christianity makes people kinder, or more empathetic (although perhaps it does). The simpler explanation is simply that chruch goers are regularly asked to give, and/or are expected to give as a condition of membership.

I'm not trying to expose any hypocrisy -- it's a good thing that churches demand charitable giving, just as it's a good thing that nations tax their citizens to help the indigent. However, it's unclear whether we can draw any conclusions about the kindness of the churchgoers (compared to the kindness of atheists) beyond the (seemingly documented) fact that they give more money to charity.

[Paulclem]

Are people naturally charitable or compassionate or not? If you say a person is one or the other then you are making a statement about our human natures - that they are fixed. I don't think that is true, and I think this is known by the various religions. Humans can change from giving because of an obligation set through that religion to giving through habit to giving because this is the right thing to do. At whatever stage it is a positive act, but clearly from a personal religious motivation, giving because it is the right thing to do is the best motivation.

I think we are hung up on motivation, and what might be seen as compulsion initially is actually a stage on the journey to becoming compassionate. It is a very powerful quality, and if you have ever witnessed compassionate acts, then you will recognise what a great quality it is and how difficult it might be to become such a compassionate selfless being.

[YesNo]

Using the Khmer Rouge to represent atheism is like using the Witchfinder General to represent Christianity.

Good point.

When I think of Catholics I think of Saint Thomas More burning translators of the Christian bible at the stake. When I think of Protestants I think of George W Bush making up WMDs. When I think of Muslims, I think of the twin towers. When I think of Hindus there's that scene in Slumdog Millionaire where the mother of those children gets killed. When I think of Buddhists I think of them setting themselves on fire. When I think of Jews, well, I can't think of anything at the moment, but I'm sure I could come up with something. When I'm calm and think about the times when I'm self-righteous, I think I'm as much of an a-hole as the next guy.

I agree with Ecurb that "belief" is not principally what characterizes religion as much as a practice and a positive attitude toward reality. Belief is too close to an assumption in a rational argument. Paulclem's point that compassion is something we get better at as we practice it makes sense. It is not part of our "nature". The whole nature-nurture dualism strikes me as too deterministic. Our brains are plastic enough that we can change them which is evidence enough for me that matter is no match for mind.

Religious people have an advantage over atheists because they are open to a religious perspective provided that perspective gives them a positive attitude toward reality beyond rational self-interest. The atheist might claim that this positive attitude is a fantasy. If it is a fantasy, for their mental health it is better than the alternative. But how does one really know that it is a fantasy?

[mal4mac]

When I think of Jews, well, I can't think of anything at the moment...

Shooting peace protesters in Palestine?

I'm having trouble thinking of something for Quakers... got one... Cadbury's pushing chocolate on school children and rotting their teeth. Heck, Quakers have been the cause of most of my pain!

Taoists?

[YesNo]

OK, Jews are covered. I forget entirely about Taoists. They must have done something wrong.