Tell people “You ought to do X if you want to be a good person” actually works pretty well, if it comes at them from enough directions.
That actually depends on a lot of factors and I would be wary of sweeping generalizations. Attempts to “change the culture” sometimes work, but sometimes backfire. In any case, it’s a very slow process.
Also, “social pressure” has a chicken-and-egg problem—it only works if enough people do it.
And even in the US, less than a third of charitable donations are religious.
So you are comfortable with 1⁄3 of the “atheist’s tithe” going straight to churches (and some additional percentage going to church-affiliated charities)?
Note also that “religion” is by far the largest category of charity recipients, twice as large as the next one (which is “education”, aka schools and universities).
1) Agreed. I don’t imagine this one backfiring, though it is of course hard to actually do. Still, most of the thing LW sets its mind to are equally hard, so I don’t see this as a particular barrier.
2) I suspect it’ll be less than that—the religious donate more(which is a big part of why the US is the most generous developed nation), and a lot of them actually do tithe as-is, which means this proposal won’t result in them giving any more. But even if it is 1⁄3, yeah, I’m fine with that. A lot of religious money these days is spent on good works that even an atheist like myself will give props for, and even if it was all wasted, 2⁄3 of donations will be doing good things.
That actually depends on a lot of factors and I would be wary of sweeping generalizations. Attempts to “change the culture” sometimes work, but sometimes backfire. In any case, it’s a very slow process.
Also, “social pressure” has a chicken-and-egg problem—it only works if enough people do it.
So you are comfortable with 1⁄3 of the “atheist’s tithe” going straight to churches (and some additional percentage going to church-affiliated charities)?
Note also that “religion” is by far the largest category of charity recipients, twice as large as the next one (which is “education”, aka schools and universities).
1) Agreed. I don’t imagine this one backfiring, though it is of course hard to actually do. Still, most of the thing LW sets its mind to are equally hard, so I don’t see this as a particular barrier.
2) I suspect it’ll be less than that—the religious donate more(which is a big part of why the US is the most generous developed nation), and a lot of them actually do tithe as-is, which means this proposal won’t result in them giving any more. But even if it is 1⁄3, yeah, I’m fine with that. A lot of religious money these days is spent on good works that even an atheist like myself will give props for, and even if it was all wasted, 2⁄3 of donations will be doing good things.