Reply #64: Okay, there are lots of secular institutions that do the sorts of things [View All]

[vixengrl]

also being done by religious institutions, and there are hospitals, churches etc. that are run by religious organizations of all kinds.

My "bath" analogy pertains more to outlook than institutions, so what you've kind of given me is the example that supports my point: human beings think helping people in an emergency is good. They tend to think educating their children is good (except radical Islamists who don't want little girls in school, and creationists who want their kids to learn bullshit). They believe in tending to the sick and dying. There are atheist doctors--do you think they don't believe in restoring people's health and saving lives? Atheist teachers. Atheist aid workers and diplomats. The answer is we're human and have empathy. We can anticipate that bad things could happen to us, too, that society works better with educated people in it, etc.

So I don't think that a person who believes in feeding the poor needs religion to do that. I don't think that no one would even bother if no one was religious. We'd be motivated to rectify the problem because we could feel for the starving. Do we need to be told that it's wrong, or do we just kind of know?