On the chance that you’re like me and don’t really want to hand your money over to a religious organization and trust that the charity work you think you’re paying for won’t be redirected into missionary work, here is a link to a list of secular and atheist charities.
I’m not at all sure if anyone assumes atheists are the functional equivalent of Scrooge at this time of year—assuming anyone thinks about it at all—but it’s nice to be able to point out that, in fact, we’re not. If you think about it for a minute, atheists ought to be more likely to support charitable work, since we believe that people are all we’ve got. God, in my view, isn’t going to make anything better for anyone—it will be the hard working and generous guy or gal over there who shell out to help out. It’s always burned me a bit when I hear individual generosity re-attributed to a deity who, in my view, had nothing to do with the generosity and, if real, has a lot to answer for over the need for charity.
So if anyone is looking for a non-religious venue for giving, there’s a list.
Or you can just find someone who’s having a hard time this year and help them out directly.
Merry Christmas.
(And no, that is not hypocritical—Christmas has been a functionally secular holiday for a very, very long time now and I don’t feel at all hesitant to use the name. Even if Jesus wasn’t real, a lot of what is attributed to the character is pretty worthwhile.)
What about the Foundation Beyond Belief? They’re asking for a major blogging push on 01/01/10:
http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/?p=3468