ScienceBlogs has the funniest ads sometimes. This image adorned the right hand side of my screen this morning (maybe now it's there twice). Intrigued I wanted to know more:
Compassion believes it takes more than education, healthcare and social programs to make a difference in the life of a child and help nations escape from poverty.
Finally, someone's advocating the abolition of all third world debt. Or they're suggesting that there needs to be a nonviolent civil uprising to remove authoritarian regimes throughout the Global South and expose the multinationals who support them. Exposing the World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs as a sham?
Well, not quite:
It's only by the gospel of Jesus Christ that poverty can end, and lives be forever changed.
Cue The Onion's biting satire.
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Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Oh cynical man. Clearly your historical education has been deficient, otherwise you would know that child poverty has never existed in a Christian country. Never.
Posted by: John McKay | December 14, 2009 1:56 PM
:)
Posted by: EMJ | December 14, 2009 2:09 PM
Of course, maybe we should consider the studies that show that more religious cultures have citizens that are happier and healthier and have lower unemployment than less religious cultures....
link to links;
http://deepthought.blogtownhall.com/default.aspx
Posted by: Aquinas Dad | December 15, 2009 4:55 AM
I believe that Jesus wants that western world helps other world to escape from poverty. But in England there was poverty in 1800-1900 centuries.
Posted by: Ollitapio Pursiainen | December 16, 2009 4:27 AM
I really like their slogan "Releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name". Couldn't you do it on your own ?
Oh, glad to learn there is no poverty left in England...
Well, maybe, but unfortunately, your link's links don't provide such information. After a really long rant about Japan's alleged disaster, is... not much.
-It repeats that "Religious societies tend to be happier" without a definition of what is a "happy" society nor giving any relevant data.
-There's no mention of health
-There is some data about employment but all the relations are weak except for one which shows that more religious societies tend to not hire lesser educated women. Oh, BTW, all the relations between religion and employment are inverse... (learn to read a graph).
-And the interpretation about the (non-existent) relation between suicide rates and projected population growth is soooooooooooo far fetched...
-But if you wanna keep using correlations for everything and throwing mud on the wall and interpret all the weak relations you find, why don't you use ALL of them ?
Like the ones that show that more religious countries have more child poverty, have more children under five suffering from stunting and underweight ?
Like the ones that show that more religious countries have more adults at low literacy levels, spend less in research and development and have more children who dislike school ?
Posted by: BdN | December 17, 2009 8:00 PM