Why does the author of this article need to tell us these organisations are founded on Christian principles? Surely it is the giving that is the most important thing and not the principles behind it. If you are dying of thirst you don’t really care why someone gives you water.

What the author seems to be implying is that if it was not for the existence of Christian charities there would be a great deal more suffering in the world. That may well be true but surely the aim is to alleviate suffering and leave it at that. Why do we need to know that those who do this are Christians? Why do they need to advertise with Christian symbols and slogans whenever they set up a soup kitchen or humanitarian aid station? Why do people like the author need to convince us that all the good they do is somehow linked to being Christian? That Christians are basically the good guys and everyone else is a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ whose motivation must have its origins connected in some way to basic Christian beliefs.

Why would you need to advertise you are Christian if your sole motivation was to alleviate hardship? Obviously they are trying to convince themselves that they are the good guys. Christians do the good things so they must be the good people and everyone else is a cold-hearted atheist. You would only need to try and convince yourself of this if in fact you had doubts about whether Christians were the sole custodians of concern for their fellow men. If that were not true then they may be some other fundamental delusions that Christians have about themselves that could cause you a great deal of emotional unrest.

Christians may well have commandeered the welfare sector but they need to. They need to convince themselves that only followers of Jesus are able to reach out to others.

Fred Hollows was an atheist, and a committed communist.

Fred had the basic compassion to just help and not think he could tell others how to live.

Runner's precious missionaries run far short of that ideal. Conversion was a driving ambition. There are many "christian" schools and hospitals and yes temples that were built by others but were rebadged in order to control and take credit for these activities.

As Onthebeach and others observe, there are christians that just get on with it. If Rowan Forster wants to start giving "christianity" the credit over the clear humanity of the individual founders he mentions, he will need to find excuses for the rest. These people were exceptional, their christianity was incidental.

Rusty

It is good that Fred Hollows is mentioned.

Rather than the bun fight between fundamentalists on either side there is tolerance. I would likely accept the basic tenets of all religions, at least the ones that market the good of the faith. But then I would do the same for atheists proposing tenets for a good life.

Supporting one source of tenets for a good life is a bit short-sighted since none is any better than the other, although the Christian tradition in the form we have re-modelled it to suit ourselves seems fine and I will not argue with it for the sake of arguing.

We should be opposing fundamentalism and authoritarians, those who seek to control us and limit our lives for no good purpose. We have to accept some limitations for society to work, but let those be few and absolutely necessary.

From what I have seen in recent years we have more to fear from Statists and 'Progressives' than anyone else, for they are continually making inroads on nipping away individual freedom, cookie-cutter piece by piece. But always for 'good' reasons of course.

Rusty Catheter is right about the wonderful Fred Hollows.

Even though he had a large young family, and was diagnosed with a terminal disease, he continued to work with 3rd world communities to give some of tbem the gift of sight.

He never charged fees to these poor people, and if not for Fred, these people eould have gone blind in most cases.

I agree there are also many wonderful Christian based aid organisations who give freely of their time and resources, and I have no problem with who runs these help organisations, as long as they don't expect to take anyone's 'soul' in return!

I'm always amused to read the militant atheist contributions to these threads. So keen are they to avoid the fact that Christianity had made a huge contribution to western societies being more humane than anything that has come before that they run the line that all societies are equally humane.

"We are all heading in the same direction, and these things would have happened without Christ," runs the argument.

So where is the proof of this? I know where the counter-proof is. Millions bypass non-Christian societies to seek refuge in Christian ones. There is no traffic in the other direction.

What is a 'Christian society', Graham? Do you mean fundamentalist religious communities like the Amish or the Brethren? Because I don't see millions of people lining up to join those. What I DO see is people queuing to get to the enlightened secular West, where they know they can believe anything or nothing and not be persecuted for it. All the positives of Christianity stem from the fact that it has unsuccessfully struggled against science for five hundred years, and suffered in the process. Yes, it's so much easier to live with -- now that it's been beaten to a pulp. Those who were around in its prime didn't find it quite so accommodating.