Warren Buffet: Atheist Philanthropist?
The Jewish Atheist quotes from the Celebrity Atheist List:
“He did not subscribe to his family’s religion. Even at a young age he was too mathematical, too logical, to make the leap of faith. He adopted his father’s ethical underpinnings, but not his belief in an unseen divinity.” --from Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein (Doubleday, 1995), page 13.
Unless Warren Buffet believes in a seen divinity, or some divinity that is completely unlike whatever divinity his father believed in, it sounds like Warren Buffet doesn’t believe in any divinity at all. Of course, if he doesn’t believe in any gods, this makes Warren Buffet an atheist. Warren Buffet, if you remember, is giving away 85% of his USD $40 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the charitable work they do. Notice that he isn’t giving it to any religious foundations and he isn’t even giving to secular groups, like the United Way.
The Foundation, which is already worth USD $30 billion, was founded by Bill Gate — who may also be an atheist, according to the Celebrity Atheist List:
Gates was interviewed November 1995 on PBS by David Frost. Below is the transcript with minor edits.
Frost: Do you believe in the Sermon on the Mount?
Gates: I don’t. I’m not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I’m a huge believer in. There’s a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very very positive impact.
Frost: I sometimes say to people, do you believe there is a god, or do you know there is a god? And, you’d say you don’t know?
Gates: In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.
It’s interesting that he thinks “religious principles are quite valid,” but he isn’t a believer in the Sermon on the Mount. Usually, when an irreligious non-Christian recognizes any validity to Christianity, it’s usually through some of the principles in the Sermon on the Mount. I wonder what Bill Gates had in mind?
Gates was profiled in a January 13, 1996 TIME magazine cover story. Here are some excerpts compiled by the Drudge Report:
“Isn’t there something special, perhaps even divine, about the human soul?” interviewer Walter Isaacson asks Gates “His face suddenly becomes expressionless,” writes Isaacson, “his squeaky voice turns toneless, and he folds his arms across his belly and vigorously rocks back and forth in a mannerism that has become so mimicked at MICROSOFT that a meeting there can resemble a round table of ecstatic rabbis.”
“I don’t have any evidence on that,” answers Gates. “I don’t have any evidence of that.”
He later states, “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”
So, Bill Gates doesn’t go to church on a regular basis, doesn’t believe much in the specific elements of Christianity, doesn’t think there is any evidence for souls, doesn’t know that there is any god, and doesn’t consider religion very efficient. Bill Gates is definitely irreligious and is definitely agnostic. He may or may not be an atheist, but he is also definitely not the sort of person whom religious believers have in mind when they claim that religion is necessary for charitable work. Bill Gates is thus an effective demonstration that charity is possible without religion playing any role whatsoever.
Understanding Atheism & Atheists:
Comments
What a terrific rebuttal to the notion that only Christians give to others!
I don’t presume to know what Bill Gates believes beyond what he stated in interviews. But it seems to me that people who claim to be agnostic only, even after it’s explained that gnosticism and theism aren’t mutually exclusive (gnostic theist, agnostic theist, etc.), are just afraid to say out loud that they don’t believe in any gods. Granted, I’ve never had to directly interact with a religious person arguing for their religion, but based on the mail and comments that Austin gets on a regular basis it seems there is a condition of fear in the US. Fear of ridicule and possibly even attack from certain religious people.
I don’t see how a third option can even exist between believing in god and not believing in god. Even when a person says that they don’t know if god exists, that doesn’t preclude them from saying whether they currently believe in said existence.
A friend I once talked to about this told me that he hopes that god exists but he didn’t know whether god existed, I didn’t really argue the point. It seems to me that even if one hopes that a god exists, he should still have a current belief of gods existence. The main reason I didn’t continue to argue with this friend was that I didn’t want to create a rift between us that often results from lengthy discussion of religious beliefs (even when we’re both agnostic). But I think this just underlines my original point. That people are unwilling (even if only subconsciously) to admit to not believing in any gods, and that, unfortunately, this position is actually justified given the anti-atheist culture that we currently live in.
Needless to say we didn’t even get into discussing a logical definition of god, although I’m pretty sure we were both talking about the Christian idea of god.
Bob
A meaningless Straw Man argument.
The facts show that the religious are 4 times more likely to give to charitable causes:
See this study:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730&page=1
Excerpt:
The Church Connection
Finally, the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation.
Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization:
“Actually, the truth is that they’re giving to more than their churches,” he says. “The religious Americans are more likely to give to every kind of cause and charity, including explicitly non-religious charities.”
If this isn’t clear enough.
The facts from Charitable Choices http://www.charitablechoices.org/chargive.asp :
Those who give $1391 to religious institutions also give $958 to non-religious institutions.
Those who give only to non-religious institutions give $623 on average.
The religious give $335 more on average to non-religious causes.
PLUS they then give an extra $1391 to religious institutions (MANY OF WHICH ARE RELIGIOUS CHARITIES DOING, SAY, DISASTER RELIEF OR WORK WITH THE HOMELESS ETC.).
A massive percentage of the money given to our church goes to our work with Romanian orphans and other causes we are involved with in places like Botswana.
The rest goes to the upkeep of the building which is used as a community centre, a day-care centre for pensioners, a day-care centre for those with learning difficulties and so on… It also supports a full-time community worker who supports and represents those who live in a deprived area.
What is not factored in is volunteer work, which in the UK is more than likely to be done by Christians.
So it appears that the religious give in total $2349 on average.
The non-religious give $623.
So as the above study said, the religious outgive by 4 times
It’s nice to have some facts to get at the truth.
So, I know you would like it to be otherwise, but atheists are far more indifferent about these things than the religious.
Since churches that spend money on priests, Bibles, and buildings are “charities,” that doesn’t necessarily say very much.
I know you would like it to be otherwise, but none of the figures you cite support your conclusion. Your figures about the religious vs. the non religious; many theists are not religious and are members of no religious organizations while some atheists are devoutly religious (Ethical Culture, Buddhists, etc.). Thus, both sides of the figures you cite will include both atheists and theists.
The simple fact of the matter is, you have no statistics regarding the charitable donations of atheists vs. theists. Furthermore, what you do have is only about America and says nothing about religious, irreligious, theists, or atheists elsewhere. Without such figures, you cannot make any broad generalizations about any of those groups.
So, in the end, what we have is you arriving at negative conclusions about atheists on the basis of data that says nothing about atheists. This indicates that your position is more likely based on anti-atheist bigotry, not on any sober evaluation of facts and figures.
When you have something substantive and reliable regarding atheists and charity, please share it. If all you have is anti-atheist bigotry that you’re trying to rationalize and prop up with irrelevant data, please don’t.