tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8021266862340067394.post-16165975714989307082008-03-17T20:33:00.000-04:002008-03-17T20:33:00.000-04:00Famous overacheivers in the realm of charity in today’s news (who are not religious) include Bill Gates & Warren Buffet (who you mentioned). <BR/><BR/>There's also Lance Armstrong (winner of the Tour de France bicycle race, and promoter of charities to cure cancer).<BR/><BR/>The non-religious biologist, Maurice Hilleman, who developed more vaccines than any other scientist, and those vaccines have spared hundreds of millions from illness and death. See Dr. Hilleman's biography that was published recently, "Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases" (author, Offit, Paul A., published, 2007).<BR/><BR/>So if it were not for a host of scientists who happened to be either lapsed churchgoers, unorthodox Christians, heretics, apostates, infidels, freethinkers, agnostics, or atheists--and their successes in the fields of agricultural and medical science-- hundreds of millions would have starved to death or suffered innumerable diseases this past century.<BR/><BR/>Those agricultural and medical scientists “multiplied more loaves of bread” and “prevented/healed more diseases” in the past hundred years than Christianity has in the past two thousand.<BR/><BR/>Also, it has not always been the most orthodox of Christians who have changed the face of charity for the better.<BR/><BR/>Florence Nightingale (the lady who helped make nursing a legitimate profession, and taught that no one should be refused admittance to a hospital based on their religious affiliation, and no patient should be proselytized in a hospital, but instead they should be allowed to see whichever clergyperson they preferred) was not an orthodox Christian, but instead a freethinking universalist Christian. (Ms. Nightingale also wrote a few steamy letters that suggest she may have been bi-sexual.)<BR/><BR/>The founder of the International Red Cross (now called the International Red Cross and Red Crescent), Andre Dunant, was gay.<BR/><BR/>Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was another freethinking universalist Christian.<BR/><BR/>Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who spent years in Africa as a doctor and helped to publicize the plight of suffering Africans, was a liberal Christian and author of The Search of the Historical Jesus in which he concluded that Jesus was a man who preached erroneously that the world was going to end soon.<BR/><BR/>And, Helen Keller (the woman who lost her sight and hearing to a bout with Scarlet Fever when she was very young, but who learned how to communicate via touch, and who proved an inspiration to several generations of folks suffering from severe disabilities) was both a Swedenborgian, and a member of the American Humanist Society.Edward T. Babinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.com