Last night, I attended talks by Katha Pollitt and Julia Sweeney here at the Freedom from Religion Convention, and I learned that the godless are a happy, humorous, good-natured group — even if I weren’t philosophically inclined this way myself, I’d want to be a member of this community.
Then this morning, I checked in on my DonorsChoose challenge and discover that you’re all generous and charitable, and that you care about kids and education. I’m having a grinch moment right here…my heart is growing a few sizes larger, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a symptom of congestive heart failure. We met my initial challenge to raise $10,000, and then some.
So then, because this particular atheist is a cruel taskmaster, I simply bumped up the challenge amount to $20,000, and added a bunch of new grant requests, including some that asked for tools to do developmental biology in the lab, and some on fossils. So if you haven’t yet kicked in, you’ve still got an opportunity.
If that isn’t enough for you, or if you’d rather not have your donations going to a group labeled “freethinkers”, check out the Scienceblogs leaderboard — there are lots of unfunded proposals in those other guys spaces. I told them they should have tapped into the charitable goodness of the godless if they really wanted to draw in donations.
Oh, and many thanks to Phil for drawing in the astronomy crowd. Even people who stare into the cold, unfeeling void for fun are glad to help a good cause.
And thanks to all of you!
PZ, this is such a wonderful idea. I had no idea this type of charity was out there. I’ve donated what I can to your challenges (and I wish I could donate more — there are so many worthwhile opportunities!) I really like knowing exactly where my money will be going and what, exactly, it will be buying. I’m happy your challenges are being met so quickly.
Anything in the New England area that needs help? I would prefer to help out close to home if I can.
Why are some of the amounts showing in £ and others in $ and some things just have a generic currency symbol (at least from what I see)? I’m not at all sure how I would donate from the UK anyway (I was sort of expecting to find a PayPal button somewhere).
All the obviously sensible requests for microscopes (and calculators) are gone! I’m not particularly keen on people chopping up frogs. I’m rather fond of frogs.
Some of Julia Sweeney’s CD’s are available for download on iTunes. ‘Letting go of God’ should interest most of the people reading this.
I’ve noticed the interchangeable currency symbols, too. It doesn’t seem to change the actual monetary amount, that I’ve noticed anyway.
yay, fossils! I’ll talk to the husband and put in some funding.
Happy I could donate, even if it wasn’t much.
You should maybe make this an annual thing – you’ve got the potential here to be running the equivalent of Child’s Play for the godless.
There’s a message saying they can only accept donations from US citizens. What’s that about?
I’m sure “Answers in Genesis” deals with fossils as well. They would be grateful for any donations. Now they are a good cause!
AiG ignores the dates of the fossils. Would be beyond pointless.
Ross Nixon has issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rossnixon
Snort! Issues… How could someone who, if I read the page right, thinks the Red Menace is the greatest threat to wikipedia, and got a prize for defending it, doesn’t believe in global warming, and is a believer in intelligent deception and/or crankism be said to have “issues”? Surely you jest! lol
Seriously though.. Why not add a few more crank ideas to the list, just to round things out a little.
I bet it has something with his…
starts with , ends with n, and eligio in the middle.
Conservatives are laughably disconnected from reality.
Even people who stare into the cold, unfeeling void for fun are glad to help a good cause.
-GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR !
U nflng blgy nts fck ff w rck
Kidding of course….we voidnuts are only too happy to help
Steve_C (#10)
AiG doesn’t ignore the dates of the fossils, it matches them with the ‘historical documents’. i.e. Most of them are 4506 +/- 500 years old. Believe it or not.
But this is getting a bit off-topic. Send your donations to whichever you think is the better cause. Or if anyone has started an impeach Al Gore movement, you might like to donate to that. ;-)
I second Jewel’s “wonderful idea” and and K. Signal Eigang’s let’s do this more. When you first pointed out this opportunity, I contacted the local local youth group coordinator in my little town, who put me in touch with the appropriate middle school/high school contacts. I was looking for science projects to fund. Didn’t hear a word back.
So thank you PZ for taking the time to give us a list of projects you think are the best for funding. Hurrah! The Chicago 7th & 8th grade kids will have microscopes and it looks like the MI 4th graders are on the way to hatchin’ some salmon!
This is fun!
But this is getting a bit off-topic. Send your donations to whichever you think is the better cause.
can we donate to the Ross Nixon needs a shrink fund?
Ross is a bit out of touch with reality. He’s a young earth creationist and the bible is an “historical” document that dates dinosaur fossils.
He’ll be saying he has DNA evidence that links him to “adam” next/
Impeach George Bush? Absolutely!
Frickin crackpot.
Ross is a bit out of touch with reality. He’s a young earth creationist and the bible is an “historical” document that dates dinosaur fossils.
something tells me you’ve dealt with this “Monarch” character before, Dr. Venture…
What a phenomenally good idea! I don’t suppose anyone knows if there is a similar organisation within the UK?
Go Embryology in the classroom!