Blogpost for Bangladesh

As you're probably aware, a cyclone hit Bangladesh yesterday, and has wreaked a good deal of havoc on what is already a fairly fragile country. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have been all over this, and are urging people to contribute to relief efforts in both text and video.

So, well, consider this an extra ecouragement to help out. If you'd like to donate, Chris says that the Red Cross/ Red Crescent is in the best position to help. If you prefer to give to charities without religious symbols attached, you can check out this summer's posts on non-religious charities, and the resources therein, and see if any of those agencies are running relief programs.

Special note to "Uncle Al": I am not particularly interested in hearing your opinion of giving charity to Third World countries, so why don't you just save yourself the effort of typing in something that I will very likely delete or disemvowel? We'll all be happier.

More like this

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum are saying that it is now time to start plugging for donations for relief for Bangladesh in the wake of Sidr. I mildly disagree. Let me explain. At this moment, I have yet to find a single on line secular vehicle for donating to this particular issue. If you go…
So, you may or may not recall that last week, Matt Nisbet posted about a study purporting to show that religious people were more generous in their charitable giving than atheists. One of his commenters opted to go for the "sour grapes" response, claiming that religious charities were all stupid,…
Over at Framing Science, Matthew Nisbet notes a survey about poverty which finds, among other things, that atheists are less likely to take part in anti-poverty efforts. There are a number of good reasons to be skeptical of this survey, which I'll mention at the end of this post, but Nisbet seems…
Over at the Intersection's new digs, Sheril has posted a rather long list of fellowship programs for people interested in science policy. Sponsors include government agencies, private universities, professional societies, and private foundations, and cover pretty much every branch of science. If…

FWIW, the Red Cross is completely secular. Its symbol is a color reversal of the Swiss national flag, in honor of the founder, and is not intended to have any religious connotations.

I think even we Angry Atheists aren't inclined to refrain from donating to the Red Cross, hard as that may be to believe ...

By Kurt Montandon (not verified) on 16 Nov 2007 #permalink