I have two quibbles with their numbers. First, if WalMart gives 1% of revenues, and they have $400 billion in revenues, they give $4 billion to charity. They say $13 billion is given to charity by corporations. Note that U.S. GDP is $14 trillion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States), so WalMart takes in under 3% of that. It seems off that 30% of all charitable giving by corporations is high for one organization.
Also, it says that public charities "collect a total of " more than $1.4 trillion. But we only give $300 billion to charity. Where does the other $1.1 trillion come from?
If giving to charity includes supporting the local church to promote prop 8 like laws, then I'm not impressed. And given that religious donation make up for 35% of all, it is actually kind of scary.
Countries like France are much less religious so it makes sense that donation there (to religious institutions and in general) are lower, plus, if you take out the few US billionaires there, I wonder if the French actually give less than the Americans. Also note that French and Italians and most European countries pay much more taxes than the Americans do, and donation are not as tax deductible in Europe as in the US. You can also consider taxes to be some kind of charity, in France, minimum wage is huge and people who are unemployed get almost minimum wage like compensation + health care. So you can consider that in Europe, the state takes care of charity while in the US, it is taken care of by the people (with little success for health care).
A donation to Catholic Charities would count as a religious donation although 0% if it will go to the Church's political activities.
A great deal of the aid to the needy in the US is provided by religious-affiliated charities. Heck, even the Salvation Army is a religious charity.
But I think you're right that the structure of a country like France allows it to run on less charitable giving. I would imagine that the welfare state eliminates the need for a lot of food kitchens and shelters, for instance.
American numbers are also inflated by a large number of organizations operating as 501c3s and collecting contributions that would not be considered "Charities" by most people. For instance, the second largest 'purpose' grouping for 501c3s is "education".[1] Is Harvard University really a 'charity?'
Notice that the largest purpose grouping (by revenue) is health care. I know that Advocate Healthcare -- one of the largest hospital chains in Chicago -- is a 501c3 which has been attacked by health reform advocates for being very stingy with charity care and engaging in aggressive billing practices.
The "healthcare" segment is over 52% of the 501c3 sector by revenue. Some of that may be charity clinics, but I imagine the vast majority of it is institutions like Advocate. If you combine the healtchare and education segments, they account for over 71% of the entire sector.
"Heck, even the Salvation Army is a religious charity."
Yes, and they have been known to use donated funds to support political causes (specifically, prop 8).
I support religious charities (currently a Buddhist one), but absolutely oppose any who will use their influence for political ends. I also oppose any who count proselytization as one of their primary goals.
Interesting that this broke out the religious and secular giving. I've always heard the statistic that religious people giving more, but I always wondered if most of that was in tithes. Apparently it's not.
I've always heard the statistic that religious people giving more
The statistic they showed was religious people being more likely to give at all: this doesn't say anything about how much they give, or the distribution of giving.
It's dangerous to extrapolate too much from limited data.
There is the part that says "religious people give more to secular causes than secular people do." Then the stat: 71% of religious give to secular causes while 61% of secular people do.
Assuming you're not a religious person, I don't really understand how a concept of answering for anything fits in your world view (except on an emotional level, that I can understand completely). It's all just atoms, right?
That aside, I haven't ever seen anything even resembling of well-constructed argument that religious people do less net good/more net harm to the world more than secular people.
It's not about real good/harm, it's about perceived harm. When confession lies at the core of your religion, you end up obsessing over your "sins" and then praying for forgiveness. When this becomes a norm in your life you'll have "more to answer for" than the guy who doesn't spare a second thought for his actions. Charity then becomes a way to pay for your sins.
That aside, I haven't ever seen anything even resembling of well-constructed argument that religious people do less net good/more net harm to the world more than secular people.
The stereotypical example is wars in the names of deities.
However, there's also a burden of proof for the inverse of that on the religious people, specifically the anti-atheists, who claim that without God, we'd all be amoral and unethical, which they don't have arguments, well-constructed or not, for.
> The stereotypical example is wars in the names of deities.
Another stereotypical example is oppression and murder in the name of state atheism.
> specifically the anti-atheists
I've never met an anti-atheist. Yet social sites such as this or reddit.com seems filled with militant foaming-around-the-mouth atheists.
I sincerely hope that the reddit trend doesn’t spread to ycnews.
I am not one of those. I think the Bible actually specifically teaches that this is not the case due to something called the "common grace." There's a Wikipedia article about it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_grace). You can pull that out next time you meet an anti-atheist from the Christian camp (although I have never met someone like that).
Also the wars in the name of deities thing is bull. I am not a student of history, but in the secular school I attended growing up the history books typically taught that these wars were normally based on geopolitical aspirations. IF you believed the "wars in the name of deities" argument, you might be tempted to believe that Muslim extremism was the cause of recent terrorist bombings (buying into the "they hate our freedom" line of thought), but that too is false. Those bombing us are doing so because of specific actions that our country has taken against their people, like keeping military bases in Saudi Arabia, oppressing the people of Iran, and other things we have done.
Good points. How much difference is there between a single leader's goals of geopolitical conquest and the way that leader convinces the people to fight?
My church feeds the homeless in Toronto, helps run a rehab clinic in Russia, and sends food and medical supplies to Haiti. Yes we do spend money on keeping on the lights and teaching our congregation about lessons from the Bible, but I've never even heard of the Pastor ever supporting a particular bill or politician. Maybe its because I'm Canadian.
Your church may or may not be a great example, I'm not sure.
In part, the issue revolves around if people know what their tithes are going for and why they tithe. E.g. if they know the money is going to help starving kids (or whatever charity) and they give for that reason, then it makes sense to count tithes (or a percent of tithes?). If they would give tithes no matter what because they are supposed to, then it probably doesn't make sense to count them (at least if you are trying to analyze who is the most giving based on money spent or percentage of income, whatever).
Most churches take care of homeless and the helpless and help members of their congregation (in whatever situation, including bereavement).
In the USA, a lot of the top tier universities were started by churches. Surely this isn’t a bad thing? AFAIK, almost 30% of hospitals in the USA are owned by the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church (which receives most of its money from abroad) basically built the education and healthcare system of Lesotho (as an example).
Saying that they aren’t charities just because you have an irrational hatred towards churches isn’t a reason. If you want an echo chamber for religion bashing, you should maybe try www.reddit.com/r/atheism.
Churches do more than just spread their message, they also spread their money and effort around their community. I suspect that churches would have an expenditure breakdown similar to the "high administration" charities, with low costs of fund raising.
Also, it says that public charities "collect a total of " more than $1.4 trillion. But we only give $300 billion to charity. Where does the other $1.1 trillion come from?