I’m happy to announce that they’re expanding! Now, there’s a Dallas/Ft. Worth chapter.

Their first event is June 3^rd at 9:00a and it’d be great to have a large group assembled to help those less fortunate.

If you’re not in the DFW area but would like to help out somehow, you can always contribute a little something so they can purchase the goods they need for the giveaways.

Maher quickly called her out on it:

His argument in a nutshell: It’s not “charity” because the Mormon church doesn’t need the money. (“Name one poor Mormon!”)

On his show Friday night, he elaborated on the distinction:

His argument is the same as before: Giving money to organizations that aren’t helping people who truly need it shouldn’t be considered charity, whether it’s the Mormon Church, large symphony orchestras, or colleges with already-huge endowments.

As far as I can tell, whenever there conclude polls that say Christians/Mormons/whomever give more money to charity, they don’t separate out giving to their own church. In 2010, 35% of charitable giving could be filed under “Religion”… compare that to the relatively paltry 8% given to “Public/Societal Benefit.” Meanwhile, check out this article about atheists giving to causes that don’t directly benefit themselves. That’s charity.

So what would the numbers look like if you removed Christian tithing (or at least whatever proportion of it directly benefitted their own church)? While we’re at it, go ahead and remove any money atheists give to atheist organizations. Then, who would be considered “more generous”? Not that it’s a contest, but I can’t find any studies that separate giving to one’s own group and giving to causes that help other people. I’d love to know if the percentages still hold up in that case.

(Thanks to @WCK604 for the link!)

Here’s one way.

The Humanists of Florida Association has set up a collection to help Teresa MacBain, who was featured in this NPR story.

Mark Palmer, the Executive Director of that group tells me (via email):

A few generous members of the HFA have agreed to pay (and have begun paying) about $4,000 but we are seeking additional donations. So, I created a chip-in with a $20,000 goal to get an Ex-Clergy fund established to help Teresa. If we raise more than $20K, the rest will help future Florida nonbelieving preachers who are trapped on the pulpit. All funds collected will go to Teresa up to a total of $20,000, but this chip-in is not the only route we are seeking donations. Any additional funds donated for this purpose will go to support other ministers who are making their way out. The HFA is a 501(c)(3) under the American Humanist Association.

It’s one way to help ex-pastors transition out of the pulpit and into a better place.

Now, Think Atheist has joined the effort and they plan on hosting a marathon broadcast online to raise money later this year. They *really* want to share atheists’ experiences dealing with cancer (directly or indirectly). Can you help them out by sharing your stories?

Write about your experience with cancer and how it has impacted your life, and the life of friends and loved ones. Do you know someone fighting now? Are you, or is someone close to you a survivor? Have you lost someone? We want to hear about it! We’d like the submission to be approximately a page in length, but we recognize that sometimes a story has to be told and we’d rather have the story to tell than not have it because of a limit on length.

You can send your stories to Nelson@ThinkAtheistRadio.com.

By the way, the Chicago team is slowly building up in case you’re looking for a group to support or join

But philanthropist Todd Stiefel — whose contributions allowed both the Reason Rally and Rock Beyond Belief to take place — spoke with Billy Hallowell of The Blaze. To my surprise, it’s a pretty positive profile of the guy…:

Stiefel, who has given millions toward atheist causes and who considers himself to be Republican-leaning, is a “George Soros” of sorts for the secular community. In addition to allocating funds for numerous freethinking organizations, the Reason Rally and the Rock Beyond Belief, Stiefel is serving on advisory boards and providing non-fiscal advice to movement leaders. Through The Stiefel Freethought Foundation (SFF), the 37-year-old businessman is serving as an atheist philanthropist extraordinaire (he’s devoted $3.5 million to related causes).

…

Despite his respectful tone, Stiefel has plenty of criticisms for religion. In particular he railed against teaching children intolerance and encouraging them, in the name of Christianity, “to despise homosexuals.” Additionally, he said that telling kids that they will burn in hell for all eternity is “scary” and that it is an unpleasant portion of the religious experience.

“You want to give a kid nightmares, tell them they’re going to burn over an infinite level of years,” he said.

But despite these statements, throughout our interview, Stiefel emphasized the difference he sees between targeting religion and hammering its adherents.

“There’s an enormous difference between criticizing religion and religious people.”

But wait, said The Blaze. Didn’t you see our previous hit piece in which we went after Tim Minchin for his profanity-laced song at the Reason Rally? Weren’t *families* there?! And children with their virgin ears?!

“There were some things said at the rally that I disagreed with — sure,” he said. “My kids were at the event and there were points where their ears were covered. Because of the language — not because of the things that were said…some of the language probably should have been better for nighttime.”

But when it comes to censoring the content, Stiefel explained that he would never advocate such a thing.

“I think people need to understand this very specific point. Ideas are not sacred. They don’t need to be respected. People need to be respected. So we do criticize ideas…[and] institutions, including religious institutions,” the freethinking leader said. “Those are not critiques on religious people. And we believe extremely strongly that all ideas need to be open to question and we need to learn from history and mistakes and grow and improve.”

The Blaze must have been thrown off. C’mon, they implored. Say something nasty about us!

“Christians and atheists have vastly more in common with their values than they realize… The audience of The Blaze probably has the vast majority of their values in line with what most atheists believe,” he said. “We believe in love. We believe in freedom. We believe in truth. We believe in integrity and living moral, ethical lives…in creating happiness and decreasing suffering.”

Then Hallowell left. And wrote a piece about an atheist activist that’s fairly generous toward someone who disagrees with just about everything Glenn Beck stands for.

Nicely done, Todd!

…

Side note: Todd also did an interview recently at Pam’s House Blend regarding how he wants to defeat Amendment One (an anti-gay-marriage amendment) in North Carolina.

Interns assist the Foundation with membership development, researching and selecting featured charities, donor management, outreach, communications (including blog and social media), program design, and creative organizational development.

I may be biased but this is an excellent organization and we’d love to have some help. While it is a volunteer position, you can work from home! More information is right here. The deadline is May 1^st, so apply soon!

If you’d like to donate a little something to help them continue events like this in the future, you can do that here.

And I’m thrilled to report AHH will soon be opening up a chapter in Dallas! So more people will be helped thanks to atheist generosity

Meanwhile, Team Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious is still #1 on the all-time rankings list, having loaned out a total of $6,832,950.

Atheist members donated over $40,000 to five different organizations (as well as the FBB itself) during the first three months of the year:

Our members also supported the work of the Foundation itself through a voluntary distribution totaling $4,485 for the quarter. We are grateful for this generous support. Donors also contributed $220 in the final weeks of our Humanist Crisis Response drive for famine relief in the Horn of Africa, bringing total donations to organizations working in the famine area to just over $13,500.

That’s incredible work. And because we’re now giving to five charities instead of ten, it means each group receives (essentially) twice as much funding as before. The impact atheists are making on these organizations is huge. As it stands, we’ve raised over $273,000 for charity altogether.

If you’d like to become a member of Foundation Beyond Belief, you can always do that here.

They got a pretty decent speaker, too: James Randi:

Randi is giving a talk called “Faith Healers: Fake Healers.”

The event is free (but donations are appreciated), and it takes place on Tuesday, April 17^th at 7:00p in Bailey Hall. Come. Donate. Learn!

(Thanks to Elizabeth for the link!)