Atheists more generous than religious when helping others: study

I don't find atheists to be particularly "compassionate" at all. To claim their atheism makes them more compassionate, anyway, is a crock of crap. Hard core militant atheists are about as intolerant and inflexible as they come, as a matter of fact. Anyone citing this wishful thinking as a study is fooling themself, but no one elese.

 

Marine, the guys says that the only reason that the Conservatives are more generous is because of the religious portion of them which is far higher than the Democrats, BUT they do not give more that the Democrats, its just there are more religious Conservatives than religious Democrats...

 

I'm going to call this utter flame bait. I've seen people of all walks of life and all types of backgrounds do some pretty amazing things, but it's intolerant crap like this that makes me sad to call you a fellow American. You are taking an opinion and trying to make it look like fact.

Even this whole thread from the OP on down is misleading.

We should be encouraging everyone regardless of religion or lack thereof to be generous and how important it is to help your fellow man, from volunteering time to donating money.

This whole thread is nothing more than e-peen waving to see who can try and make the biggest noise on who they think is the most charitable when if you spent half the time looking up obscure articles to try and defend your own political positions and instead spent that time helping someone in your neighborhood the world would be a far better place.

Hell, this thread is indicative of the whole problem in America as it is. Too divisive.

 

It appears to me that this study suggests atheists give as a result of compassion or sympathy whereas the generousity of religious people is more driven by duty or doctrine or reputational concerns. I don't see anything indicating that atheists tend to help others more. And as other posters have noted, previous studies that addressed the amount of charity (not just the motivations) have found that religious people (and conservatives, primarliy due to high correlation between conservatism and religion) give more. Furthermore, religious/conservative people tend to give more to churches while non-religious/liberals tend to give more to universities, museums, symphonies, etc.

The OP seems to be misinformed at best.

 

One thing that is a fact, conservatives give two to one over liberals. What a bunch of stingy POS.

 

Yeah, those darn generous conservatives, how dare they give more! No, it is a fact that conservatives, rich, poor, or religious out give liberals by a wide margin, no matter how much bull(*)(*)(*)(*) you try an throw at it.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730&page=1#.T6rL-OhDy8A

 

Yeah, its only a coincidence that a Conservatives 6 and 7 figure figure "charitable" donations were to the SAME college that THEN admitted his C- GPA alcoholic and druggie kid over qualitative minorities.

That the $50 million given by ONE guy to Romney's Hate campaign is "charitable".



Mormon "Housing projects"


Christian and Catholic "Housing projects", with Church officials getting $130,000 tax free "housing allowances".

 

THREAD DEBUNKED:


"It doesn't necessarily tap into a difference between religious people and non-religious people with regards to how much compassion they feel. Rather it points out the fact that when you try to prompt people with compassion...in the moment...they're more likely to behave in a pro-social or generous or cooperative way. On average, the religious people were overall more cooperative than the people who were non-religious. It's just that when you try to prompt the feeling or the idea or thoughts about compassion, this was more moving or more influential to the behavior to the people who were less religious."
Still confused? What she's saying here is that religious people are kind and giving, but that they aren't as swayed by in-the-moment pleas and occurrences that are fueled -- or centered upon -- compassion. Simon-Thomas continues:
"It just seems like if people feel that they are religious on a day-to-day basis, their compassion seems to be a little bit more -- sort of ingrained all the time rather than something that comes on in a specific moment. So when we try to invoke compassion in a specific moment, they're not as moved by it...they're cooperative, they're generous regardless of whether we have tried to tap into compassion -- whereas people who are low on religion seem to be much more influenced by a moment of compassion being brought on."

 

it's as valid as the republicans are more charitable then dems threads....

 

​

Not really. The study you're talking about showed that Repubs are more charitable than Dems. There is no way around that.

This study, however, doesn't show that atheists are more generous. It shows that in spur of the moment situations atheists tend to act on emotion. Nothing more.

 

And it also shows just how eager the left is to find some goofy-ass study to make their goofy-ass point. They fail to realize (or just plain ignore) the fact that there is no opinion so ridiculous that some lame study can't be dug up from somewhere to justify it.

.

 

I'm curious why that fact bothers you so? Being stingy is a trait that liberals have long enjoyed, they have always had that, "it's all about me" attitude.

 

It is interesting, but this actually supports the idea that liberals may be more selfish than conservatives.

Conservatives give regardless of appeals to compassion - they tend to give because it is the right thing to do.

Liberals give when someone appeals to compassion - or put differently, they give when they see something that makes them feel bad in hope that giving will help them feel better. Giving because of an appeal to compassion is just an attempt to avoid feeling bad - a selfish, not a selfless motive.

 

Religious people usually only help their own. Atheist's tend to help whoever.

 

Yes, atheists are so compassionate they want to tear down every bit of visual forms of religion and murder babies....yep that's compassion for ya.

 

Really? Got anything to back that statement up?

 

First off, I don't think that a Berkley study by someone who sounded like she had her mind made up before asking the questions....and then set out to prove what she already believed was correct:

The Berkeley study’s lead author, Laura Saslow, said she was inspired to look into how generous people can be based on religion after hearing how a nonreligious friend wanted to donate to earthquake relief in Haiti, where a woman was being pulled from the rubble.

“I was interested to find that this experience — an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers — was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” Saslow said in a statement.

I think that generous people can be found in both religious and non-religious backgrounds. I know both religious and non-religious people and I know them all to be generous. And I think even most atheists would not disagree with the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments is pretty much all someone needs to know.

I would be interested to see the questions asked and the details of the study. Like how she determined if someone was religious or not?

 

Not true. Churches most often donate to local people in need..... and they don't specify they must be religious before doing so.

 

Well, actually, Dems generally want to give a lot of money away. It's just that they want to give someone else's money away; not their own.

 

Life experience.

 

They're certainly a lot more generous with other people's money. That seems to be the extent of it, though. Most of them aren't going to pull over on the side of the road and help a stranger change a flat tire. On the whole, Christians who are actively involved in their church are a lot more generous with their time and money. I'm not talking about the people who just call themselves Christian but don't really live the lifestyle. I'm talking about the people who are really involved in it. They're some of the most wonderful people I've ever met. They would even help an atheist. Even a mean and nasty atheist. They have a ton of patience with people that I don't have.

 

As an atheist my favorite story is about Jesus defending the "whore", but we all know that is not true and has no biblical roots. However, that story always appealed to my morality.

 

Yeah, it figures, more bloviating from you.

 

Exactly true JP5, my favorite quote of the day:

"Apparently, I'm supposed to be more outraged
by what Mitt Romney does with his money than
by what Barack Obama does with mine."

 

Your study examines what people actually give to charities. The other posters survey asked them how generous they were.
Reminds me of studies on the well being of children. Studies showing children raised by their married mother and father examine objective standards such as poverty, juvenile delinquincy, drug and alchohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, HS dropouts and criminal conviction as an adult to show children tend to do better when raised by their biological parents. These studies claiming to show children raised by homosexual parents conduct surveys, aking parents how great of a parent they are. No surprise the gays rate themselves very highly.