Comment on Check mate, atheists.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 13 hours agoScience doesn’t take anecdotes.
Most food pantries and beds for the homeless in the USA are faith based. Here are the scientific papers that show it.
Assessing the Faith-Based Response to Homelessness in America: Findings from Eleven Cities
Lemminary@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
What anecdotes? The woman who called dozens of churches and only got 3 willing to provide emergency food for a hungry child who had been starving? You can listen to these calls yourself in the video I shared. Notice that I’m not arguing about food pantries, but rather churches not being willing to help adequately.
And still, your emphasis on food pantries is exaggerated. Food pantries were invented in the 1960s and are a distinctly American religious invention, so naturally, they would be primarily religious. What’s more is that your article even mentions the negative effects that these food banks have and their questionable efficacy:
I also found this:
www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0272-3
Regardless, food pantries and poverty in general are symptoms of great social inequality and of a society that doesn’t prioritize welfare, despite its religious devotion. So why confine ourselves to questionably effective religious-based initiatives? I’d rather compare the overall state of caregiving between religious and secular nations.
I concede that religion is useful for bringing communities together and alleviating the hardships of poverty by providing people a coping mechanism, but it’s by no means a towering force over secular initiatives because the desire to help and contribute to charity is innately human. Religion arguably only serves as a reminder of that with regular church attendance.