Now you must donate to my DonorsChoose challenge. For the honor of the godless.
One of those pathetic appeasers has made this an issue of the charity of atheists, has accused us of being “cheap bastards”, and claims that his weak-kneed, wobbly camp of wooly-headed apologists for delusion are more generous than we are, and more interested in promoting science education. We know he’s wrong, of course, but hey, when they let theologians use them for a doormat, it’s understandable that they might be burdened with lots of foolish ideas.
I gave them a 10 day head start. Now this means we have to fire up and give him a good kick in the ass as we pass him by.
Let’s donate now. Every penny sent to these teachers is now a symbol of the moral superiority of freethinkers.
By the way, you can also win prizes, like an iPod and Seed subscriptions for your donations. But we don’t care. We’re going to donate simply because we’re good people.
Well done PZ, now that’s framing ;)
And what, pray tell, are your sources for this bold claim?
Martin
I just donated. A small sum is all I can afford as a graduate student. But as the linked poster proclaims, all it takes is 1 in 10 visitors to donate $10.00.
When a christian gives to charity because he’s a christian, He’s doing nothing more than trying to pay his way into heaven (Obviously, if he does it because he cares about the fate of others, thats an entirely humanistic or secular motive, often high-jacked by religion)
In other words, he’s expecting something in return. So no, Theists have not “given” hunderds of times.
(Good luck with this cat-herding experiment, PZ.)
I donated to the Bill Nye videos. Now that Disney owns them, they cost an outrageous fortune. (I had looked at buying some of my own at one time) It really frosts me that Disney offers “classroom edition” DVDS that cost $50 for a half hour show. If you’d rather buy the VHS, it’s only $40 per.
BTW, they have a “special offer” where you can buy all of the Bill Nye DVDs for a mere $3K. (Only $2K on VHS.)
Here’s the Bill Nye store link:
Disney Educational Productions
A PayPal option would have been neat for international donors. I don’t want to register on a zillion sites …
The scientific calculators for the 8th graders are covered… now the kids can work the math along with us as we disprove Walt Brown’s hydroplate theory on IIDB.
The important part excerpted from a comment I wrote on another blog:
“Now, if you’d bother to look at the Donors Choose site, you’d see, for example, a project to help a class of kids with disabilities, where there is so little money (90% poverty rate) that they can’t even afford to buy paper for the copier and printer. So they’re asking for the princely sum of $140 for a few reams of paper. Think you can spare $10 out of your stipend so a poor disabled child can show off a printout she made and smile? You, and a few more like you, and that $140 could be paid off today.”
See http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=111399
No I disagree. Atheists are cheap – and selfish.
Tina Marie recently came to Morris High School but all the atheists were whining – why weren’t they invited to the school? But wholly (no pun intended) Tina Marie is doing a good thing for the teenagers by showing them some sort of positive role model & how their media idols really don’t live decadent, downwardly spiraling lives as they portray. Sure, a bit of religion is probably added to her talk – what’s wrong with that? It’s better than no morality/lessons. Teens are so unsure of themselves at that age – they need some sort of belonging organization. If the atheists go in – which I hope will never happen – we’d have kids going suicidal and becoming monsters of the street.
As it is, I don’t see the atheists giving much of anything (money, time, education, leadership training, positive role models, etc.) to anyone of any age – a bunch of good for nothings whom only think how right they are and how persecuted they have been and will always be.
As long as it’s easier for human minds to not have to think about our origins, and subsequently the complexities of evolution, religion will always sprout right back.
Related link:
http://www.tinamarielive.com
You’re a tool.
Probably wearing a scuba suit too.
Dear Octopussy;
You really had me there for a while. I thought you were sincere, thinking that all atheists are selfish jerks. But then you made that comment about “we’ll have kids going suicidal”, and I realized that this is just trolling. The really good trolls don’t make it so obvious that they’re just joking.
Overall grade: B-, and keep trying!
Yours sincerely,
Spudbeach
Fund the frog dissections in the Bronx! (It’s my neighborhood, but everyone should get to dissect a frog in high school. I didn’t, because of the same issue — funding, although that was in Florida.)
(Also, octopussy’s name combined with support for Tina Marie’s abstinence “education” is funny. So maybe raise the grade to a plain B.)
Ok, I’m a disloyal lurker; even though I found out about Scienceblogs via Pharyngula, I immediately went to one of the other blogs that I read that gets less traffic and donated to one of their causes. (Does that mean I don’t get counted as an atheist who donates?)
As soon as I get enough time to pull up my budget for this month (read lunch break) I’m going to donate. We probably need to put some urgency on the “Microscopes Needed!” on since it expires in 10 days.
Katrina,
Couldn’t agree with you more about the Bill Nye thing. My wife and I were going to buy a bunch of them for my nephews because they love all things science…until we saw we couldn’t afford it. A pox on Disney.
Done.
Oh, and PZ, I didn’t just specify “blog” when asked how I heard of DonorsChoose.org. I put down Pharyngula’s link. Great idea with this charity.
John
Bleh. Nevermind, they already know it’s from Pharyngula. Oh well, another plug couldn’t hurt. :P
You’ve got the atheists fired up to donate now!
Perfect! Ever since I paid the IDiots $20 of my hard-earned money to reconnoiter their “museum,” I’ve been looking for the right cause to which to make an offsetting donation of $40. I think that donating to science education makes excellent sense, don’t you?
When I first saw this post this morning, the indicator was at 17%. Now, it’s at 47%. Not too shabby.
In england, 59% of donations are made through secular organizations. That doesn’t include secular donations to certain altruistic yet Christain established humanist organizations.
>One child dies every three seconds. Together we can help< http://www.savethechildren.org/
I will donate to teachers, for education is the fundamental foundation of humanity. But I feel very sad right now and have to go deposit moneys into my paypal account…
http://www.poverty.com/
Christians give a lot of money to charity…which includes running their own churches and funding people to go start more churches. Take that out and I’ll bet secular charity donations match or exceed theology-based ones. Because, if you give money to an organization that uses it to buy and hand out Chick tracts, that’s not helping anyone.
Does it count that I’m spending about $30 to bring in supplies to do a guest stint in my kid’s grade school class next week?
It warms the heart to see the response from Pharyngula readers. I’m happy to do my part. Just wish I could be there to look in the microscope with the students. I remember my first experience with a microscope…my world was never the same.
I just broke my wallet over at NPR. Dollar a day….ouch! Still, it’s for a good cause and I plan to keep the tote bag in my car so I don’t have to use the plastic/paper ones at the store. Sorry they got to my wallet before you did.
p.s. I’m an atheist. Do I get credit from the fundies for this donation or does it have to be to a church to count?
I went to DonorsChoose a little while ago to give to one of Tara’s candidates and the page specifically says they do not accept donations from non-US citizens. Presumably there’s some accounting basis for that, but still, it’s darned annoying. On the other hand, I suppose if I’m going to give money to a deprived foreign country it should really be somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, rather than the richest nation on the fucking planet. What was I even thinking?
As an atheist, I really hated to give money to kids. I would have rather eaten them after force-reading “The God Delusion” to them. But, I sent $ten for the microscope purchase. The teacher publicly stated that the kids will be learning about evolution.
I just donated $100 and got an email thanking me for my gift of $3,295.14. These guys really, really, need to use Paypal. Everybody should check their confirmation to make sure nothing went awry.
Don N.
“DonorsChoose.org cannot accept donations from non-U.S. citizens.”
What the heck? I’ve donated to U.S. charities lots of times. Why won’t this one take my money?
Don N –
We actually do use PayPal for the processing of our credit card orders – we just don’t have the option yet of paying via a PayPal account.
As for the incorrect donation, it appears that the project was mistakenly funded in full and not partially funded, as intended. We have refunded your credit card for the overage.
Thanks so much for supporting public schools and…errr…the honor of the godless.
– Zach
Dwayne L –
As far as non-US citizens not being allowed to donate, the unfortunate short answer is: the USA Patriot Act.
However, non-citizens living abroad can surely donate. When entering their addresses they simply need to enter their city, country, and post code in the “CITY” field, then select “New York” as their “STATE” and enter five zeroes for their “ZIP CODE”. We do mail feedback packages overseas.
And no – we aren’t going to ask for your social security or green card to prove you’re a citizen. We don’t pretend to be the INS…
Thanks for asking!
Zach