In the wreckage left behind by recent tornadoes, Oklahoma atheist Rhonda Dorle sought to help her neighbors salvage what they could from what the tornado left behind. She and other atheists volunteered their time, and worked side by side with others regardless of what they believed or didn’t. Unfortunately when it was revealed that they were atheists, some Christians refused to keep working with the same people they worked with all day.
Regardless of what others may think of what they do, atheists continue to support their neighbors try to put their lives together. Rhonda is a Facilitator for Recovering From Religion and helps organize Oklahoma atheist meetings. Although their efforts will never be enough to convince a few people, that atheists really are good without god, many atheists are involved in the relief efforts. It’s about empathy for fellow human beings.
Kai D. Tancredi will also be taking time out of coordinating a blood drive for FreeOK to talk to us Sunday at 12:00 PM CST on The n0nes about how the relief efforts are going. Kai recently contributed an article in The Red Dirt Report that Pastor David Brassfield’s empty accusation that no atheist group was helping disaster victims. Brassfied recently issued a sort of apology for effectively not putting more time in before basely accusing atheists. Read the apology for yourself.
We will also be joined by Adam Brown of Atheists Giving Aid. They will be talking about their organizations disaster relief efforts. Yes Virginia, there are atheists that do good things for no other reason than to help fellow human beings.
*It will be livestreamed to youtube. We have some new editing talent with Melponeme Jack Crowbar, of Brain Drizzle, to help us edit audio for a podcast for people, who have been asking for that format.
Good for Oklahoma atheists. I haven’t seen the meme that atheists don’t do good works (for whatever reason) in a while, but it’s always great to see these stories as counterpoint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLPlwE0dMso
Link to watch live and discuss.
I’m happy to do relief work alongside folks of any religion. I’m an atheist, right now sitting next to a table full of Buddhists (TzuChi), in a relief center near Oklahoma City. Tell me again, mr Christian, sir, which one of us is the bigot?
What is the point of atheists giving aid to disaster victims? They think everyone is just going to die anyway, what does it matter if it happens now or later?
Because life is generally preferable to death and not suffering is preferable to suffering. This isn’t difficult to understand.
Why do Christians give aid to disaster victims? You think they’re going to a better place when they die; why prevent that from happening?
To MarkWarm
Why do xians give aid to disaster victims? Did not your god want them to go through what they’re going through? Or is he not actually in control of everything like you people say he is?
Make a choice.
“Because life is generally preferable to death and not suffering is preferable to suffering. This isn’t difficult to understand.”
Why? If it’s all pointless anyway.
“Why do Christians give aid to disaster victims? You think they’re going to a better place when they die; why prevent that from happening?”
Some people might not be converted yet.
We’re atheists. Not nihilists. I don’t see why there needs to be some magic man in the sky for our lives to have purpose. We empathize with each other. We have love for each other. We just don’t ascribe it to magic.
Do you run a check on whether disaster victims are Christian? Do you let them die if they are? Why not?
By your standards — anyone who isn’t a Christian (or isn’t the right kind of Christian) deserves eternal torture; anyone who is the right kind of Christian has only paradise to look forward to. Why would you prevent the death of either? And even if you seek primarily to convert — will you devote your disaster-relief efforts primarily towards those who might most likely be converted? Have you done an analysis as to what post-disaster populations are most vulnerable to your conversion efforts? Because if not, you’re allowing personal convenience and the desire for visibility to compromise your claimed goal of producing conversions. Do the math to support your supposed spiritual triage or stop making the claim.
Meanwhile, for atheists, life is all there is — helping more people live longer, and reducing the suffering in life, is a matter of improving the quantity and quality of conscious existence as a whole. It might not do anything for me — but, then, I have no reason to assume that my own life is uniquely valuable, so I’m happy to act to improve the general welfare and such.
Well then, why not go to Iran and convert the Ayatolla? Think of all the souls you might convert then, a whole country of heathens. Good chance you might get killed but your death would have a divine purpose. With added bonus of you living at the feet of your god forever. He might even scratch you behind the ears. And once in a while ya’ll can go walkies to view hell and all the non believers and tut tut together. Off at it then Mr. Judgmental.
Why do you think the fact that life is finite renders it pointless? You’ve been asserting it loudly, but I can’t understand why you’d think that.
“We’re atheists. Not nihilists. I don’t see why there needs to be some magic man in the sky for our lives to have purpose. We empathize with each other. We have love for each other. We just don’t ascribe it to magic.”
But you think you’re all going to die and that’s it. Nothing survives. The sun will expand and destroy the earth and the universe will collapse in entropy. Everything is pointless for you.
“Do you run a check on whether disaster victims are Christian? Do you let them die if they are? Why not?”
Only God can judge a soul… it’s not up to us to determine. But if you don’t believe you have no chance at all.
Nice red herring. The sun will expand and destroy the planet, and that’s inevitable regardless of your religious beliefs. We don’t know the fate of the universe, and it’s strange you bring up the outdated “heat death” scenario. This has absolutely no bearing on what we find meaningful.
You’re getting into offensive territory here. It’s rather egotistical to claim that people who don’t believe as you do must find life meaningless. I might go so far as to say that if believing in God is the ONLY thing that gives your life purpose (i.e. you’d personally find life pointless if you didn’t believe in God), then that’s your problem and you’re projecting it onto us.
In other words, I find meaning in my life without believing in a deity, and you are in no position whatsoever to dictate my values to me.
Why watch a movie if it’s just going to end in two hours?
If you dropped dead at the end of the movie then that might be an apt analogy.
That wouldn’t be an analogy at all.
I could ask some very grisly questions about why you find this life meaningful if the next life is supposed to be so much better, but it’s a rather sensitive topic and this is not my blog.
@MarkWarm
The (local) universe is going to end in heat death. What does this have to do with what we should do, and what we should value? I’m not seeing the connection here. I am going to die, but I am still going to enjoy my life and be a decent human being to others. Your post is a giant non-sequitir.
Please read more about Hume’s is-ought problem to understand the fallacy which you invoke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
So, what is The Point of God’s Universe that changes these facts in any way?
And what do you imagine the answer to your question is, since you don’t accept the given answers. It’s like you are denying, contrary to the facts that are the basis for your own question, that atheists give aid, or that those giving aid are somehow not really atheists.
I suspect that your premises about what sort of human being you become by believing, or not, in the correct god, are incorrect.
Markwarm- “Everything is pointless for you.”
No it isn’t, stop lying, it isn’t honorable.
“Nice red herring. The sun will expand and destroy the planet, and that’s inevitable regardless of your religious beliefs.”
Not if Jesus returns first.
He’s two thousand years too late. Remember: Matthew 16:27-28 and no, he was not referring to the “transfiguration” that took place right afterwards….since:
–those verses refer to “the son of man coming” as opposed to “the son of man already being here and just going up a mountain”
–no angels as he said would happen when the kingdom were to come.
The transfiguration was an entirely different event. Christ is far, far too late. All those who were alive at the time he made that “promise” to in Matthew are long dead.
Jesus: Interfering with stellar evolution for fun and profit, apparently.
If religion equaled morality and ethical behavior then, the middle east would be like Disneyland……the happiest place on earth, instead of the never ending horror story it is.
MarkWarm, does your deity need a deity to give his/her existence meaning? How horrible a fate it must be for a deity to never be able to cease to exist, even if it wanted to. Once you’ve got knowledge and eternal life, why do you need a deity either? Or, does the possibility exist that your deity can still become displeased with you after death and ….what?
Oh, and Jesus did return, just ask the Mormons.
MarkWarm.
You obviously know nothing about atheists that you haven’t learned from a pastor or some such.
Here’s a pro tip: when considering the point of view of someone you do not understand, and especially if you don’t like them (or at least think you probably won’t like them), study what THEY have to say about THEMSELVES. Don’t get your information about them, their motives, their behaviors, from people who dislike them. Go to the people themselves. I, for instance, routinely watch fundamentalist preachers preaching. I read blogs of right wing conservatives. I do NOT get all my information about them from left-wing blogs and atheists.
You should try this. You may find that atheists aren’t quite what you think we are. And trying to talk with us will go much better if you stop telling us what we believe. That is a little annoying. And it makes you sound like an idiot.
Obviously you are simply deluding yourselves to think that your lives have any meaning.
Troll harder.
Heh heh heh heh heh. Seriously? Being some divine egotistical-monster’s little worship-me toy gives your life meaning?
The arbitrary, self-defined meaning that we give our own lives is far more meaningful than the Christian concept. What kind of servile cur created that particular mythology, which is so heavily based upon self-abasement?
No evidence of any god that i know of. Science that people work on makes sense of world. Divine intervention is ridiculous and doesn’t make sense. To heck with waiting for a god that requires all the adoration for a promise of a reward after we are dead. Science is my religion. Buddhism is my philosophy.
Uhhhhhh, science is your religion? If that’s how you approach science, you’re doing it wrong. That makes it sound like you’re one of those transcendental meditation nuts or something similar to them. Rephrase please.
On Ken Ham’s facebook post he’s got a quote by some lady named Lacey Seeley who claims to have never seen any atheists help out.
Yeah, and to top it off, look at all the self-righteous remarks there.
Troll alert, aisles 4, 5, 6, 7 and 12!
And now we have Joe Klein in Newsweek also unable to detect atheists helping in OK.
Must be those special see-no-evil glasses they give Christians.
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