I don’t imagine non-profits of any stripe are raking in the dough right now, outside of emergency relief organizations anyway. The immediate emergency tends to take precedence.
Personally I’m completely unaffected, and find it odd that anyone (of any religions stripe) would suddenly change their tune when this kind of event tends to reinforce rather than change preconceptions. Faiths don’t last long if they don’t have a mechanism to turn hardship into reinforcement, what with hardship being the bulk of most people’s lives. As for non-believers, well, the universe is a cold and hostile place so we expect no better. :)
It did occur to me that breaking the community connections that keep most organized religion going might be very bad for churches that are already struggling with declining membership, though.
Seeing as the value of enduring suffering and keeping the faith in times of great trouble is a core concern of many religions, I don’t expect to see many people jumping ship into godless land.
Conversely, while the pandemic is quite terrifying, I don’t think that as a whole it poses a threat devastating enough to make an atheist break into prayer.
Me, I expect the superbeings in charge of the simulation and/or UFO overlords are enjoying the tizzy that resulted from checking the “Enable zoonosis” box.
Muslim family socmedia earlier in this year: This is God’s will and punishment against the kufir CCP for their actions against the Uighur
Followed by: Sharing memes about shia licking the shrines in Qom to prove their faith and Facebook quack cures/preventatives (not unique to Muslim socmedia of course)
followed by: ohshitohshitohshit we need a lockdown.
Agnostic here. Humm… no change. 99% of people is religious, so you have to examine your ideals all the time, and they are pretty solid. I have it easy because (has agnostic), I don’t deny that god exist, I just think the likelihood is 0 or near 0, so I had not problem praying… maybe to the void.
Protestant Christian here and feeling at peace. I am mindful of my due diligence keeping at least 6’ away from people and not doing anything stupid (I’m blessed to live in a more rural location and can work from home); I let God sort out the rest.
Some anecdotal charity evidence to the contrary… we have a local food bank which is reporting that donations have gone way up since the start of all this.
For what it’s worth, I cannot find any evidence of the post in the OP being legitimate either. There’s nothing like it in Humanist UK’s twitter feed, nor on their website, nor do I get results for google searches on phrases from it.
In fact, if anything, this pandemic is making more confident that there is no God. I mean, why would an omnipotent benevolent being allow this to happen?
I’m glad to hear that. We’ve certainly been trying to up our giving to relief organizations considering the circumstances. As I said above, I’d like to think folks aren’t so much reducing their charitable giving as redirecting it to the more immediate problems posed by this situation.
Now there’s an evergreen statement if ever there was one.
I get the same sort of emails all the time from various lefty groups that I don’t and have never belonged to. “We’re almost out of money! Donate $20 right now or Mitch McConnell is gonna rape a dog!”
My personal barometer tells me it may have been slightly strengthened, if anything. I’m somewhat bemused at how quickly the Catholic church went from ‘missing mass on Sunday is a venal sin’ to ‘for the love of God stay at home!!1’ in my area.
Well, one could always get excommunicated (I occasionally gave thought to it, when I was young and still cared about such things) but it’s a hassle. :)
Exactly. I don’t believe in God but what some people are capable of going thru while still having faith is amazing. It is also something that has been tested over and over during the last 1,000 years.
