A little love for humanity, and a biblical prophecy I might actually believe.

I know I do a fair bit of ranting and complaining on this blog.  I would say it’s actually my primary purpose here.  I created this blog as a space where I can speak out about things I find important.  Usually the stories I’ll write about are the ones that make me most angry.

But to make sure that I don’t entirely get swallowed up by my own misanthropy and disappointment in the world, I thought I might take a chance to tell some stories that are a little more affirming.  None of these stories have anything to do with the schism between theism and non-theism.  They’re just stories I’ve found that are uplifting, fun, or interesting and they might not get the recognition they probably deserve.  I also picked quite a few sports-related stories, mostly because that’s just how I roll.

Lastly, before I get into some stories, I have to credit the last episode of the Thinking Atheist podcast for both inspiring this post, and telling me about one of the stories.

So with no further ado, here’s a few tales to make you like the world a little bit better.

This first one goes back a bit.  Here’s a video someone posted of his proposal to his girlfriend about a year and a half ago.  This video is the one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.  I know there’s a story behind it somewhere.  I know there’s all sorts of interesting facts about the development and planning behind it, but I don’t want to hear about those.  This is a video that is almost perfect as it is, without the complications surrounding it.

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Next, an 80’s hair metal band called Steel Panther played a show in Kansas City, MO last month.  An 11 year old fan who came to the show with is dad held up a sign challenging the band’s guitarist to a guitar solo duel.  The boy was invited on stage where he floored the band and the entire crowd.  Watch this video, it will make you grin.

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Next we go to Dallas, Texas.  AutoSource Dallas, a local car dealership, accidentally ordered 80 pizzas for an event they were hosting.  Rather than refusing the extra pizzas, they paid for all 80 of them, grabbed a car, and started delivering the extra pizzas to homeless people around town.

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Out of all these links and videos, I think this is the one I like the best.  If you’re gonna watch any of them, take 10 minutes to watch this one.

The Make A Wish Foundation is one of the most brilliant and amazing charities out there.  The work they do to give kids chance to have uniquely amazing experiences is unparalleled.  But last year, when Atticus Lane-Dupre asked for the chance for his entire little league team to play against the Portland Timbers, over 3000 members of the Timbers Army made sure that his experience was more special than the charity could’ve possibly hoped.  This is such an amazing story that it even got me to say nice things about the Timbers.

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Speaking of sports rivalries, the Seahawks and the 49ers are developing a fascinating one.  First there’s the story about the brick that Seahawks fans bought.  See, the 49ers are moving to Levi Stadium, their new home starting next year.  Levi Stadium will have what’s called the “Fanwalk” where fans can buy personalized bricks engraved with their own message.  Seahawks fans put together $1000 to buy a brick of their own, so there will always be a pro Seattle message at the 49ers home.  Since the brick only cost a third of the money the fans raised, they donated the rest of it to the family of Brian Stow, a San Francisco fan who was brutally attacked outside Dodger Stadium a few years ago.

49ers fans responded.  After more Seahawks fans paid to have a 12 man flag flown over Candlestick Park before the Seahawks vs 49ers game a few weeks ago (extra funds donated to the Wounded Warrior Project), San Francisco fans put together a fundraiser to buy a billboard in the Seattle area.  The did eventually get billboard space, but missed Seattle by a few miles by getting an electronic billboard in Fife.  Even I had to put together a little meme to commemorate that one:

But what was best about the billboard fundraiser is that all the money that didn’t go to pay for the billboard was donated to Seattle Children’s Hospital.  These fans are proving that this is a rivalry with class on both sides.  I wish the Sounders and Timbers fans would learn this lesson, and perhaps their rivalry might grow to be more fun.

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Sports and charity stories tend to be related.  For example, if you’re a fan of the NFL, you know that they levy hefty fines for all sorts of actions.  Players and coaches have faced fines for excessive touchdown celebrations, taunting other players, and even wearing the wrong colored shoes.  And these get expensive.  NFL fines add up to $2 to $3 million a season.  But where does all that money go?  Turns out, it’s all donated to charity.  The league office and the players union agree on which charities will benefit from fines.  When a player is fined, the notification includes which charity will receive the money.  After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, the Red Cross was given over $600,000 of NFL fine money.

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While we’re on the subject of NFL fines, perhaps you’ve heard recently that Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch was fined $50,000 by the league for refusing to speak to the press all season.  Seattle fans decided that was unfair, and put together a fundraiser to pay the league.  Of course, Lynch is not exactly strapped for cash, so instead of using the money raised to pay his fine, he said he would match whatever funds he received and donate it all to charity.  Lynch even appealed the fine, and doesn’t have to pay it, but will still give a matching donation for the fundraiser to charity.  Everyone wins!

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And one final bit about Marshawn Lynch.  Turns out that his game this weekend against New Orleans very well may have been prophecized in the bible.  Some enterprising biblical scholar – who I would love to credit if I knew who it was – found this obscure passage: Revelations 13:7

“Also [the beast] was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them.”

Bring it on, Brees and the rest of you Saints.  I’ll leave you with one other biblical passage.  Romans 8:31, “…and if god is for us, who can be against us.”

Wow… I almost sound like a believer.  Fancy that.

Our money’s no good here.

Here’s a scenario I’d like you to imagine.  Say you saw something that bothered you; a charitable need that could be filled.  So you, with a community of like-minded folks, raise some money for this need.  Good deed done, and the world is a better place, right?  What would you do if money you donated was returned because those you donated it to didn’t want to associate with you?  How would that feel?  Even worse, imagine on top of your charity being refused, you were accused of being selfish and uncaring about others because you never give to charity.  This seems absurd, but it’s an alarming trend the atheist community has faced in recent years.

For example, in 2011 Todd Stiefel wanted to set up a partnership with the Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB).  The plan was to organize a national team of atheists and freethinkers to raise money for the American Cancer Society (ACS) through their Relay For Life program.  Stiefel and his family offered a matching donation up to $250,000 for any money raised nationally by the FBB.  It seemed like a great deal for everyone.  Half a million bucks for cancer research and a great bit of PR for the atheist community.  The ACS, however, didn’t quite agree.  They put up roadblock after roadblock to keep the atheists from donating as a group.  ACS insisted that they weren’t turning down the donation.  Instead they wanted to take it piecemeal at the local level in a way that didn’t give national recognition.  While it can’t be said for certain why they didn’t want the donations, ACS’s actions didn’t leave a lot of explanations besides a reluctance to be associated with atheists.

Steifel spoke about his bewilderment and frustration with the entire situation in an interview for Ask an Atheist.

More recently, a similar situation happened on a much smaller scale.  Hemant Mehta, founder of the Friendly Atheist blog, wrote a story about a local park district that lost a yearly donation from a local American Legion chapter because one of its board members refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  Mehta was making the point that while the American Legion has the right to donate their money to whomever they wish, it’s absurd to stop donating to a group for expressing their freedom of speech (particularly since the American Legion is filled with members who fought to protect those very freedoms).

Mehta came up with the idea of asking for donations from his readers to replace the lost donation funds to the park district.  It wasn’t a lot of money, just $2600, but his readers came through.  When Mehta first contacted the park district about the donation, they seemed perfectly willing to accept the money.  However, after Mehta sent the check, the board returned it, claiming they had, “no intention of becoming embroiled in a First Amendment dispute,” and that they wanted to avoid seeming, “any particular political or religious cause.”  In short, the park district would rather lose money than be seen accepting funds from atheists.

Not to be discouraged, Mehta then told his readers that he would find another worthy group in the same town to donate the money.  He eventually settled on the local library.  None of the original donors objected, since they gave to help a small community, and that’s still where the funds were headed.  The library, however, also rejected the money.

Unlike the park district, however, the library was quite clear on why they were unwilling to accept the donation.  In a video of the library’s board meeting posted on YouTube, boardmember Catherine Peters called the Friendly Atheist a hate group.  She asked the rest of the board,

“Would you take money from the Klan? Would you take money from Holocaust deniers?”

Sometimes it’s not even money that’s turned down.  Last month, a soup kitchen in South Carolina was asking for volunteers to help out during the busy holiday season.  The previous two years, a local freethinker group called Upstate Atheists came to lend a hand.  This year however, the director of the soup kitchen, Lou Landrum, refused their help, and wasn’t shy about explaining why.  She told the press:

“This is a ministry to serve God… We stand on the principles of God. Do they (atheists) think that our guests are so ignorant that they don’t know what an atheist is? Why are they targeting us? They don’t give any money. I wouldn’t want their money.”

and that,

“They can set up across the street from the Soup Kitchen. They can have the devil there with them, but they better not come across the street,”

According to Landrum and Peters, atheists are no different than Neo-Nazis or any other hate group.  Fine, they’re welcome to their opinions, and they can turn down charity if they want.  But I imagine most reasonable people would seriously question giving to an organization that refused donations out of personal spite or ignorance.

What’s most appalling about this whole situation is that altruistic atheists are often stonewalled while simultaneously being accused of not being charitable.  It’s a baffling catch-22 of that leaves atheists incapable of disproving the stereotype that they’re narcissistic and ungenerous.  It’s just another example of the damaging and insulting misconceptions that atheists have to deal with regularly.

A couple months ago Joe Klein wrote an article for Time magazine about returning veterans finding purpose at home doing community work, especially disaster relief.  In an otherwise brilliant and interesting article, he inexplicably dropped a backhanded insult at atheists claiming they’re never seen helping their communities.  It was a pointless jab that interrupted his narrative, and bore no relation to the story he was writing.  I don’t understand why he even wrote it, or why his editor didn’t cut it.  Not only was it unnecessary, but it was also completely wrong.

Joe Klein’s assumption that atheists aren’t charitable is disturbingly common despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.  He was writing about the aftermath of the tornado that wiped out Moore, OK.  While plenty of church groups gathered to lend a hand, numerous atheists groups also showed up or donated money to help the relief effort.  Just the briefest of research would’ve showed him that there were plenty of non-theistic groups helping.  Klein instead decided to take the easy route and encourage the falsehood that atheists don’t care.

I first heard about this a few years ago.  In the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, there was an outpouring of support from the international community.  In the midst of this torrent of charity, our local paper, The News Tribune, ran a letter entitled “Christians stepping up; Where are atheists?”  (Note:  I tried to find a link to the letter, but the News Tribune has not kept it in their archives.)  The letter writer listed all the ways Christian charities were helping out, but claimed that atheists weren’t doing the same.  When Sam Mulvey of Ask an Atheist wrote to the paper to respond with numerous examples of atheist group’s generosity, the paper refused to print it.  Seattle Atheists also responded, but had to post their retort on their own website.

The tendency for people to believe that atheists aren’t charitable is reinforced by every one of these stories.  One of the criticisms is that atheists don’t give nearly as much as the religious, and I would wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.  In general, atheists are not only massively outnumbered by believers, but they also don’t have the infrastructure to divert energy and funds where they’re most needed.  But that doesn’t mean that they don’t give at all or don’t care.

Another objection is that atheists don’t publicize their charity, which is only partially true and wholly unfair.  In situations like disaster relief, atheist groups usually won’t wear matching t-shirts to announce who they are, partially because to do so would cut into their already limited resources.  Also, most atheists consider the work itself important, not being seen doing the work.  But since they’re getting no recognition at all, and are sometimes even accused of the opposite is making some nonbelievers change their opinion about publicizing their charitable works.

I don’t want to make the opposite mistake of painting all charities as prejudiced against atheists either.  On the contrary, most charitable organizations treat atheists very well, when they even notice that they’re working with nonbelievers.  The vast majority of charities are focused on helping people, and don’t care at all where support comes from.

However, the frustration I feel every time I read a story about atheists’ money or time being turned away or refused has to go away.  Everyone needs to learn that atheists are a part of the world community, and should be treated as such.

***Update***

I’ve been provided with the original letter written to the Tacoma News Tribune referred to earlier in this article.  Thanks to Becky – producer and co-host of Ask an Atheist – for finding the original text.  Here it is in its entirety:

“My prayers go out to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti, and I will help by donating through a Christian charity. I am thankful that the United States, as always, takes the lead in helping when disaster strikes As I read The News Tribune, I am struck by the fact that the Christian organizations are mobilizing and sending aid and aid workers without any thought as to the religion of the people of Haiti. Just as when the tsunami struck Indonesia, and tens of thousands of Muslims were killed, the United States and Christian charities took the lead. So where are the atheist organizations? Are they sending aid workers, money or prayers? No. But they do have money to devote to a display in the Capitol building in Olympia, to tell us there is no God, there is no heaven or hell. If there are atheists interested in helping the people of Haiti, I ask them to give to World Vision or one of the other fine Christian organizations. Or they can do nothing.”   -Brad Elkin