this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Churches do an immense amount of charity work and helping their communities.
So do secular charities.
https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/who-gives-most-to-charity/
I'm not even religious myself, just find it annoying that reddit atheist cool guys think that religious people are all greedy and selfish, when this opposite is actually true.
A church in the city I work for is being used as an extreme weather shelter for homeless/at risk people. I received a couple dozen phone calls from the parish when it was first announced who were pissed about homeless people using their church for shelter. Any time I tried to explain the irony of their complaint it just made them angrier.
I'm not saying this to paint a picture of all religious people, but from my experience the one's I have come across tend to not care about anyone in their community not in their circle.
Considering giving to any church 501(c)(3) themselves are considered "charitable donations" when it comes to taxes, this rings a little hollow. If you consider a church as a charity itself, and those churches are soliciting donations every week in services, of course you're going to see higher charitable giving from areas with a lot of churches/religious. That said, my gripe is not with religious based charities, it's with churches. Salvation Army can continue to do what it does, religious affiliated childrens hospitals, etc. The amount of money that is spent on congregations is just a waste and it's a shame.
~signed, an atheist (ex)reddit cool guy
Yeh I hate that reddit atheist attitude, it embarrasses the rest of us atheists/agnostics. Of course it got brought over here too.
Organized religion has done a lot of bad, but they have done some good too.