Atheist Ireland supports secular charity
Secular charity is a question we are often asked about and Atheist Ireland ‘God Without Gods’ campaign was launched in 2012. It was started as an initiative to encourage, promote and facilitate charitable and other worthwhile activities by our members and friends. Currently our active project is our Kiva – ‘Good Without Gods’ team.
We plan on developing our secular charity initiative on a local level in 2016. If you are interested in developing or supporting a secular charity project in your community email Ashling, our Regional Officer, at regional@atheist.ie.
Ethical and Secular Good Causes and Charities
We are occasionally asked to recommend non-religious and secular charities and are frequently asked why there are so many religious charities and no specifically non-religious ones. The answer to the secular charity may seem obvious to us but not so obvious to others in Ireland where historically there are many high profile religious charities. If often surprises many people that there are so many excellent, non-religious, inclusive charities in Ireland and Irish charities working both at home and overseas. We do not list them here because it would be unfair to try to construct such an inclusive list when we would clearly forget some due to there being so many.
Most atheists prefer to work for good causes with others, regardless of religion, of all faiths and none, and to donate time or money to secular charity and causes that do not discriminate on grounds of religion (or non-religion) or promote one particular worldview. A better question might be why some religious people feel the need to work through religious charities rather than secular charities that support everyone affected by their cause equally and without any religious influence.
If you want to see what a charter for secular charity looks like then the excellent Medicins San Frontiers charter and principles is a great example of an ethical and equality based set of principles:
“Médecins Sans Frontières provides assistance to populations in distress, to victims of natural or man-made disasters and to victims of armed conflict. They do so irrespective of race, religion, creed or political convictions.
Médecins Sans Frontières observes neutrality and impartiality in the name of universal medical ethics and the right to humanitarian assistance and claims full and unhindered freedom in the exercise of its functions.
Members undertake to respect their professional code of ethics and maintain complete independence from all political, economic or religious powers.”