Religous groups account for "31% of all donations", so that leaves a lot for other groups.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&...

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

That 31% is donations to churches (from what I'm reading). Not donations to charities organized separately from the churches.

So if there is a catholic charity which focuses on Haiti, then that would be excluded from the 31%.

1. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

i.e. "The government should replace charity, and only the millionaires and billionaires should be the ones paying for it".

I'm atheist myself, but I've definitely seen this reasoning make it easy for fellow atheists to explain away their lack of charity.

Depending on your definition, pretty much all activist organizations could fall into this. Red cross, project eden, engineers without borders, etc. Honestly I'm stumped as to what constitutes "atheist charity" vs any non profit whose goal is not "spread the word of $deity".

Black swan effect? It may just be that the charity and/or atheism isn't reported.

> that makes people help other people so much more?

I think that's reading a lot more into both motivations and actions than is possible from here; or, in other words: I think you're anecdotally on to something - my religious neighbors definitely feel more kind / charitable than my other neighbors - but science would need to be done. For example, perhaps it's not the "religious" part but the "community" part that drives participation in charity efforts. I also wonder about the role that tax exemption plays into all of this.

I can think of 2 reasons why the religious want to help others:

   1. Within many religions, the concept of charity is tied to eternal salvation
   2. Helping people is a good way to recruit numbers

Why pick on atheists? What about secular charity or otherwise irreligious charity? Many such charities/aid groups exist. Doctors Without Borders, ACLU, Unicef, Goodwill, Oxfam, Rotary International, etc.

More importantly, what about social security?

I think the US government is too conservative when it comes to relying on outside entities for help getting people up on their feet. It really should be a government's prerogative to proactively help people enter society as a productive member, earning a wage, staying healthy, spending money and paying taxes, no?

But by studies performed by religious organizations themselves (who if anything are likely to skew the numbers more positively), across the board, "Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget", and an additional 5% goes to "church run programs" (be it after school care, social or group activities).

If a secular charity - and lets go back to Charity Navigator here - Top Ten Inefficient Fundraisers (https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten) we see some of the worst charities spending 15% of their donations on "program expenses" (i.e. doing what they are being given money to do).

I'm not familiar with the monitoring of 501(c)3 groups, but I suspect if charities were to regularly spend only one per cent of their givings on what they got to enjoy tax exemption to do, they'd likely have such a status revoked.

And, if you factor in this average percentage (even the six per cent combined, which is generous, as as much fun as social and youth activities are, they're not necessarily serving a critical need), and start to question 'how much money is being spent on 'spreading the word', patting themselves on the back, competitions in Texas to see who can built the world's biggest cross just down the road from where the world's previously biggest cross was built at costs of millions, there comes more and more skepticism of just how highly you can value "giving to your church" on the scale of charitable contributions.

A study by ECCU (http://web.archive.org/web/20141019033209/https://www.eccu.o...) stated that churches use 3 percent of their budget for children’s and youth programs, and 2 percent for adult programs. Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget.

So I -do- place some skepticism on the idea of blanketing 'religious giving' as 'charitable contribution'.

It's also worth noting that in the US, there still exists a fairly strong bias against any openly atheistic people or organizations[1], so it would make sense to direct the public's attention towards what they're doing and therefore away from what they don't believe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheist...

When people say atheist charities, what they are trying to say is secular charities lacking any religious affiliation. They aren't trying to say charities that are actively "affiliated" with being atheist.

My guess is that there are simply fewer atheists.

I don't see how this follows. There are punishments for committing crimes that don't come from a vengeful god, like punishment from a legal system.

Treat others as you want to be treated. And if I was poor I'd want someone to feed me.

The best churches to me are the ones who believe that church is for the "sinners" not the in-group. This means accepting everyone and not excluding anyone.

But we also have to recognize that churches are centered around people and people are very flawed. Organizations tend to be too.

I have to say, I fall much closer to atheist than theist now but that's mostly due to doctrine not practices within the church.

Also, as a side effect of how I was raised I was on the out-group of two religions. 90% of people in both churches treated me with respect and dignity. It was up to me to see that the 10% had no power in either church or over me.

He was wanting to put together a program where students would go volunteer to help NGOs do software projects in India.

Something he was surprised by was that NGOs in India are almost all oriented around lobbying the government to do things (particularly that they'd already promised to do) and not around provisioning social services themselves.

My understanding is that in some religions, we are living today in the "afterlife" of a previous life, and subject to karma based on what we've done.

If one has bad karma that has put one in an undesirable social position, it's not a stretch that Earth is a hell for those people, and we're supposed to be the demons that make life miserable for them.

Can you name those religions for me. I view everything as deterministic and see the world as either heaven/hell. Although the idea of karma doesn't make sense when understanding determinism. Since everyone is destined to do bad or good depending on the life they're born into.

edit: whoever downvoted me, I'm asking a simple question and stating what I observe. Please let me know why you find the need to downvote for that.

It's offensive.

it's then a smaller step to use some of those organizational resources for evangelizing in the form of charitable acts.