C'mon...

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If you're a humanist, then you can't wait for or worry about God acting. You have to do it yourself.

normally once a week i go to a womans shelter for battered and abused women and their kids, but ive had to much going on as lame as that sounds.

You know I don't know what altruism, and I didn't understand the rest of your post either

altruism -- it's a good word. Look it up. Or not.

Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.Ok, now to answer your question, does it truly exist? Hell no.I think it'd be safe to say taht there are not more than a handful of people in the world who are altruism (you get what I'm saying)

There are philosophers who agree with you. In fact, they argue that no one is truly altruistic.

Well I don't know what philosophers do, and I don't erally wanna know eitherBut I'm sure there's someone out there who is giving everything they can afford to the poor

I doubt that any form of absolute altruism exists, as in giving absolutely everything an individual doesn't need to the needy without the slightest hint of concern or greed, but in general I believe that most people have concern for others and want to help them. Whether they actually take time or money to do anything is another question.

If you gave them money they'd be that much happierWe buy presents so we know the kids are getting things they need. You make it sound like all we buy are toys. Actually we buy them mostly clothing and hygeine supplies. Yes for the younger kids we do get them a few toys, I certainly don't see anything wrong with that.>Then they could eat for christmas, instead of having to play with a remote control carWell if it puts your mind at ease, my grandmother bought the family a turkey last year, as well as a couple boxes of stuffing and such so they can have a meal on christmas.. This family was very bad off because of the husband walking out on them. The mother was working 3 jobs, and the oldest child (Who I believe was 15) had to stay home and take care of the 2 young kids who were (If I remember)4 and 8 years old.>And what about the people who CAN afford to buy christmas presents, but their kid(s) STILL wake up with no presents? Just scrwe them, right? They don't matter Are we to take a collection of money and give it to the not needy families? I'm not trying to sound rude but we go for the families who really have nothing, those who are truely struggling in life.And so you understand yes we do this one time a year. But my family also does a lot more throughout the year. My grandmother and Aunt work at the "soup kitchen" quite often not to mention they host free dinners about 1-2 times a month at their church. My uncle (and grandfather when he was alive) help families repair homes and such to make sure they are safe during the winters and such.My family has always been very active in the community. We wish we could support more families around christmas but we do what we can. But as you can see above we do a lot more throughout the year as well.

Great post. What my church specifically is doing is not really what you say but we have this thing called missionary trips where a group of people go to a certain place in Africa and we are building orphan buildings for the children there so we've been working on that since last year and we're almost done. But this thanksgiving and christmas we're sending over loads of gifts, clothing, food... all that good stuff. Alot of people were volunteered to go, I wanted to go but my youth group is still working on the Katrina victims so we can't. But yeah that's basically what we've been doing so far. It's fun but takes ALOT of work.

We give every month to a childrens charity, and my kids gave half of their christmas money to the Tsunami releif fund. Finding things to do in the local community is a real boost to me.Insearch: i don't think its fair to pull someone down for giving at occasions, such a thanksgiving and not any other time, at least they are giving something, there are too many people that don't give anything and don't even care.

we have this thing called missionary trips where a group of people go to a certain place in Africa and we are building orphan buildings for the children there so we've been working on that since last year and we're almost done.So are you guys mainly there to convert people to your flavor of Christianity? Does your group fill the classes with bibles?

wow Steve I said no such thing. We build the buildings, give them a home with what they need and thats it. There are people who decide to stay and look after them if the mothers are too sick. We don't convert them. We're not into forcing our religion on people like that.

Your church does missionary work, but doesn't proselytize? That's nice...and a bit unique. Most missionaries I know of have spreading the gospel as one of their principal objectives. But it's good of your church to help. In some parts of northern Africa (Sudan, for example) where no one but the churches seem to care. The governments don't seem to.

Bush is a big supporter of the federal government's giving money to support "faith-based initiatives." Some of those charities are pushing their religion big-time on their clientele. It's interesting to see how much harder it is for non-Christian charities to get government funds.

Wow thats really great, and it does take a lot of work. My friend from my freshman year of college went into the peace corps, to a village in africa, she loved it so much.Angel- I love how helping people makes me feel, and thats great what your kids do, if i asked any other kid to help out for some more unfortunate people they would give me a weird look and hide their money probabaly.

She loved peace corps cause she got high as a mother fucker

You get more out of life when your not high, we dont smoke or take drugs.

Hardly...Im serious. They smoke all kinds of shit when they are in those crazy villages.

You've been going harder on the drugs lately haven't you?

Nope... Less