Atheist Richard Dawkins Aids Haiti, Touts God-Free Giving (Cathy Lynn Grossman/Faith & Reason blog/USA Today; Jan 17)

Donations to faith-based aid groups are soaring and believers get a great deal of just credit for stepping up to help in Haiti. Now unbelievers want the world to know they’re just as caring.

The champion of unbelief Richard Dawkins, Britain’s star atheist scientist, has announced he’ll personally cover the PayPal fees (up to $10,000) for donations to two non-religious relief groups — Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross — through a newly established site called Unbelievers Giving Aid.

The twin goals at the site are are first, to help Haiti, and second to “counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.”

While others debate if it’s God or the devil that caused the quake, the atheists and skeptics here say the natural world is…

… “supremely indifferent to human affairs and sadly indifferent to human suffering. Those of us who understand this reality are sometimes accused of being indifferent to that suffering ourselves. Of course the very opposite is the truth: we do not hide behind the notion that earthly suffering will be rewarded in a heavenly paradise, nor do we expect a heavenly reward for our generosity: the understanding that this is the only life any of us have makes the need to alleviate suffering even more urgent.”

Regular F&R readers might recall that earlier this year we saw that unbelievers were among the fund-raising leaders at Kiva, the international Internet person-to-person micro-lending site. When I checked in July, the unbelievers were leading other special interest groups including churches, raising funds to uplift the world’s poorest.

That last paragraph deserves elaboration.

Here it is:

Atheists, Spaghetti Monster Fans Say No To God, Yes To Giving (Cathy Lynn Grossman/Faith & Reason blog/USA Today; July 31, 2009)

To really help “the last and the least” do you have to focus on “the lost” as well?

Maybe not — if you go by the statistics at Kiva, the international internet person-to-person micro-lending site where it appears that folks with no religion are spirited participants in efforts to uplift the world’s poorest.

Kiva, which kicked off in 2005, is a global force in orchestrating small loans to individual whose business successes ripple through the lives of their families and communities. Forbes once described it as mixing the “entrepreneurial daring of Google with the do-gooder ethos of Bono…”

According to the Associated Press, Kiva has raised more than $75 million for nearly 200,000 individuals in 44 countries and, this June, expanded the ranks of eligible entrepreneurs to struggling small businesses in the United States.

Last year Kiva added a gimmick for encouraging folks to lend (and re-lend once their original $150 or so has been repaid) through competition. There are teams by organized dozens of ways including special interest groups, churches, businesses and more.

And who’s whomping the crowd overall?

In first place, with $761,975 loaned — Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious “committed to caring about suffering.” Next in the listings: Kiva Christians ($519,725), followed by Team Obama ($408,500).

Sort by “Religious Congregations” to find that, topping Kiva Mormons ($57,425) and Kiva Catholics ($59,625) is the squadron devoted to the The Flying Spaghetti Monster ($81,725) who sign on to give because “Thou shalt share, that none may seek without finding.” Unfamiliar with the FSM parody “pastafarianism”? Check it out here.

DO YOU THINK… giving can be faith-free and still have “values?”