I’m an atheist – but some of the strongest people I’ve met have been religious

[rug]

From Monrovia to Burundi I’ve seen how people have been inspired by the church to do good things



Nurses and doctors at St Joseph’s Catholic hospital in Monrovia celebrate after the announcement that Liberia is free of ebola. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA

Thursday 14 May 2015 14.30 EDT
Rose George

Being an author is great for many reasons beyond even the joy of writing books, including all the helpful, thoughtful emails that arrive from readers, even the ones telling you things you wish you’d known while writing the book.

Being asked to speak about the topics of your books is also great, and I do it as often as I can. So this week is a typical week: on Wednesday, a talk on shit and toilets for the Darling Bugs of May conference of the Infection Prevention Society. I said yes as soon as I saw the name of the conference. The following day, a consonant change and a talk on ships for the national conference of the Apostleship of the Sea, a seafarers’ welfare organisation that operates port missions and arranges ship visiting. Seafaring is a lonely life, and the priests, volunteers and nuns of the Apostleship do an amazing job.

I wrote in my book about Father Colum Kelly, the chaplain for the port of Immingham, and I called his work “a ministry of small gestures”, because, when you’ve been at sea for weeks, and a man in a dog-collar arrives and asks you what you need, and it’s a battery, that is a small thing that can do huge good.

I’m an atheist, and I don’t like evangelising, but some of the best and strongest people I’ve met around the world doing real good have been religious or involved with the church. There are two in particular. Sister Barbara Brillant, a Franciscan missionary in Monrovia, stayed through the 14 years of Liberia’s awful civil wars, and then ebola, and is still there. Maggie Barankitse in Burundi, after terrible violence between its three major ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis and Twas, set up a shelter called Maison Shalom for all children. In Maison Shalom, there are are no ethnicities: all the children, they will tell you, are Hutsitwa.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/14/atheist-monvrovia-burundi-inspired-church

[Yorktown]

1. There is no proof that religion makes people behave better

It's just that the good people among the believers attribute their goodness to their faith.

The fact they are misguided doesn't change the fact they are good people.

[rug]

5. Ask them.

[Yorktown]

13. Why?

[okasha]

23. Because they might know more about themselves than you do?

Naaahhh.....couldn't be.

[Yorktown]

25. Good reasoning. Did you ask millions of Chinese why they were waving the Little Red Book?

And do you think their answer would have been useful?

How do you get reasonable answers from people conditioned into unreasonable beliefs?

But hey, who am I to ask? You are morally superior.

[okasha]

30. Millions of Chinese waved the little red book

because doing so kept themselves and their families alive, assuming that they shared the survival instincts of other people living under brutally authoritarian regimes.. I think that would be a very useful answer.

[Promethean]

35. Kind of like the far longer history

of christian oppression right? I mean people who didn't wave the bible had nothing to fear when the inquisition was at their door.

[Yorktown]

40. The Frank Kings and the muslim armies always converted in the gentlest fashion.

As everybody knows.

Because God is good.

[Yorktown]

39. Your answer would demonstrably miss part of the point

Millions did believe in Mao and Stalin. But more incredibly, millions still do.

Polls on the subject are not available in China, but they are in Russia.

in 2011, 45 percent of Russians had a "generally positive" view of Stalin.

So, no, coercion was far from being the only reason behind the adoration of the masses.

Brainwashing works. Especially when started very young. Like religious indoctrination.

[delrem]

46. That's a US american answer.

It's symptomatic of a kind of political/nationalist dogmatic-bubble thinking.
It doesn't account for actual history.

[Yorktown]

52. Please explain why?

[delrem]

59. No. Read some *books* on China's history

for the thousands of years leading up to the long march, paying particular attention on the history immediately preceding the long march.

Don't just rely on MSM, which endlessly repeats propaganda, "we're good - they're bad" cliches.

[Yorktown]

62. I am really well informed on the Chinese civilization.

Through family, friends and reading.

[LTX]

36. Misguided, unreasonable, and incapable of giving either reasonable or useful answers.

Otherwise, good people.

[hrmjustin]

16. .

[Yorktown]

18. ;

[hrmjustin]

19. .

[Yorktown]

20. ø

[hrmjustin]

21. i don't think so.

[Yorktown]

22. So sad

[hrmjustin]

24. I think i feel a wind coming through.

Perhaps the tradewinds it is.

[Yorktown]

26. The winds are blowing too strongly for me.

Couldn't follow you.

[hrmjustin]

28. No worries.

I am watching doctor who now and I am in one of those moods.

Stuck on the Vashta Nerada thing.

[okasha]

27. Don't you admire folks who are omniscient?

(Well, not really, but we should humor them. They probably can't help that they're a bit, you know...

[Yorktown]

29. Well, I am the ignorant one.

I do not know which god to believe in and why.

[okasha]

32. The answer, my friend,

Is blowin' in the wind.
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

[guillaumeb]

33. perhaps the god you believe in

is yourself

[Yorktown]

34. How would I know I am god?

I have failed so far to detect any supernatural powers in me.

[guillaumeb]

37. Absence of evidence

is NOT evidence of absence.

(I never thought I would use a Donald Rumsfeld quote in this context)

[Yorktown]

38. It might be one thing I don't know that I don't know about being god

(I never thought I would answer with a Donald Rumsfeld quote in this context)

[guillaumeb]

41. When you said:

"It might be one thing I don't know that I don't know about being god"

Then you admit that you do know about being god. I suspected as much.

Plus I would expect you to deny it. (The godly aspect) Never know when the atheists might be listening.

[Yorktown]

43. Your point is self contradictory

You say I do not listen. But god is omnipotent, omniscient.

I would be unable to not listen to you, as god listens to everyone all the time.

Damn, could it be you're wrong and that I'm not god?

[guillaumeb]

31. There is no proof that atheism makes people behave better

It's just that the good people among the non-believers attribute their goodness to their lack of faith.

The fact they are misguided doesn't change the fact they are good people.

[Yorktown]

42. One of your statements is evidently untrue

the good people among the non-believers attribute their goodness to their lack of faith.

Care to find a few quotes by good atheists saying the good they do is in the name of atheism?

[guillaumeb]

44. Mine was a rewrite of number 1

[Yorktown]

45. The rewrite was trying to make a point

And the point fails as the rewrite is not justifiable.

[phil89]

58. Requiring evidence

before believing extraordinary claims Is not misguided. You don't seem to grasp the meaning of The word atheism.

[guillaumeb]

61. People differ on what is acceptable evidence.

[Humanist_Activist]

60. What atheist makes such claims? n/t

[Jim__]

2. When I click on your link, it takes me to DU's post a new thread. - n/t

[rug]

4. Fixed.

Thanks.

[Jim__]

7. Thanks.

[immoderate]

3. How nice of god to provide these plagues so people could be tested...

--imm

[rug]

6. I can imagine you debating the existence of god in the waiting room of a cancer ward.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. oh look its the "no atheists in foxholes" canard.

how quaint. how bogus.

[rug]

10. No, it's the obtuse atheist hectoring dying peple canard.

I left out, he'd probably be arguing with you while someone flashes cartoons on the wall.

[AtheistCrusader]

50. Meanwhile you'd think nothing of a catholic priest showing up

Last edited Fri May 15, 2015, 08:47 AM - Edit history (1)

To offer last rites to an atheist.

You probably wouldn't even think to call it 'hectoring'.

https://m.

[rug]

55. No, I'd have a few other words.

[immoderate]

9. I see you are not falsely modest about your powers of imagination.

--imm

[rug]

11. You can't imgine the effort it takes to contain it.

[immoderate]

12. I can only imagine...

--imm

[Yorktown]

15. Reminds me of the old joke by one of the new atheists (forgot which)

Imagine if atheists went to see people on their death beds, telling them: you see? Your God isn't saving you from death. Why don't you save yourself and convert to atheism now?

The image is quite fitting as it's the kind of blackmail practiced by atheists towards the dying.

Shamelessly practiced.

[xfundy]

48. Yeah, imagine if.

Never happens. Meanwhile, the blackmail by god-botherers continues on. Shamelessly.

Most atheists I know of don't care what anyone believes, they just object to another man's 'religion' trying to govern their lives. Simple enough to understand.

[rug]

49. Now that yo mention it, there may be enogh for draw poker.

[AtheistCrusader]

54. No room. Too many religious people trying to 'save' everyone.

Have you had occasion to visit a cancer ward like the Polyclinic? I have.

https://m.

You'd lose your fucking MIND if I did what religious people do, to folks in that sort of position.

[rug]

56. Does Sloan Kettering count?

[AtheistCrusader]

57. Looks like the same sort of place.

[cbayer]

14. Heretic!! Burn him at the stake.

[hrmjustin]

17. .

[xfundy]

47. It's great that some are inspired to do good things.

But as we're seeing now, lots and lots are inspired to do evil and hateful things.

[cbayer]

53. Sadly, lots are inspired to do evil and hateful things with

and without religion.

Fortunately, lots are inspired to do good and loving things with and without religion.

Let's let people's religious beliefs or lack of beliefs be and just honor them when they do good and push back when they do bad.

[AtheistCrusader]

51. Interesting. "some of" <> "all of".

Which has an interesting implication