According to the Foundation Beyond Belief, a secular charity “funded by atheists, freethinkers, and humanists,” the American Cancer Society has rejected its offer to raise up to a half million dollars for cancer research through the American Cancer Society‘s Relay for Life program. The ACS declined to allow the Foundation to field a national relay team, though every other non-profit that has applied has been allowed to participate.
Talk about “beyond belief”: I have a hard time accepting this story as true, though it is being reported by respectable sources. Why wouldn’t the Society, whose mission is to help those with cancer, including helping them by finding a cure, turn down any group’s generosity, as long as its donation wasn’t going to be raised through illegal means? Bank of America, CitiBank, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart and other companies whose reputation is hardly without tarnish are among the ACS’s listed donors…and as we know, a lot of the people who run these companies worship Mammon, not God.
Not taking the atheists’ money is also a breach of trust, responsibility and duty. If the leadership of the American Cancer Society doesn’t like the faithless, too damn bad: their job is to help cancer sufferers, who include believers and non-believers, saints and sinners alike, and who couldn’t care less whose sense of charity and caring generates the money needed to find a cure. Why should you, or anyone, respond to their pleas for funds if they are turning away perfectly legitimate gifts of a half-million dollars?
This is beyond discrimination and bigotry, though it is both. This is criminal stupidity.
One of the arguments often used to support the existence of God is that without the oversight of a Supreme Being and the presumption that moral rules are divine in origin, there is no reason for human beings to avoid evil. It’s circular reasoning, of course, and profoundly unethical, presuming that the only reason a person would do good during his or her life and not live for pure self-interest is to avoid offending an all-powerful entity who is keeping score. The proffered charity of the Foundation Beyond Belief shows that a belief in God is not required to understand the value in doing the right thing and sacrificing for fellow human beings.
The American Cancer Society’s rejection of that charity, in contrast, proves that having a worthy mission doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand right and wrong, or, for that matter, are smarter than the average gibbon.
Ethics Alarms 
The American Cancer Society was my Mom’s favorite charity. She worked tirelessly for the cause for many years… this was long before she was diagnosed with the colon cancer that ultimately took her life. I make a fair number of contributions to charitable causes. ACS will never again be a recipient.
Oh I hope we’ll find out this isn’t true. Would they also want to withhold treatment to atheists? Shame.
This story doesn’t smell right. It doesn’t make any sense that I can imagine. Maybe somebody’s political agenda?
Bob, I share your skepticism. I decided it had credibility because the atheists have made a clear statement, there’s been no hint of a response from the Cancer Society, and I can’t imagine any explanation for any of it other than Occam’s Razor: it is what it appears to be. The the Foundation is lying, that’s outrageous. let me know if you find out anything that indicates that the story is false.
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One of the details is not being represented accurately. While ACS rejected participation in the Relay for Life program, they did not actually reject the donation. It went like this:
FBB: Hey, can we be part of Relay for Life, we’re putting up 1/4 million with matching
ACS: Awesome. We want you to be part of Relay for Life. We’re hiring an intern to handle your donation
ACS:
FBB: What’s Up?
ACS:
FBB: Come on?
ACS: You can’t be part of Relay for Life. We don’t accept non profits, as they’re not worth it and it costs too much to track.
FBB: What about all the current non profits? You have an automated system and an intern, how much overhead can there be? Hey, screw it, we’ll track it for you.
ACS: We tried for months, but we can’t do it.
FBB: BS.
ACS: You can’t be part of Relay for Life because we’re phasing out non profits.
FBB: Then why didn’t you ever say that before? Oh, we also have a corporate charter. Can we participate under that?
ACS:
ACS has not rejected the money; they have simply rejected a high profile linkage to the atheist group for confusing and contradictory reasons. It doesn’t make sense to anyone in the atheist community either.
Isn’t it the same thing? Yes—the ACS would accept the money if it was anonymous, but why should any donor put up with that insult? So they like the money, not the donor. Why doesn’t a charity love all 500 grand donors equally?
It’s the same thing generally, but not exactly. We atheists are careful to delineate the line of unequal treatment, so Godly people don’t come back and say “But they did accept the donation, you unethical liars! I knew this smelled!”
We’re not complaining that they didn’t accept the donation. We’re complaining that they didn’t accept the donation on equal footing, after stringing us along, and not giving us a coherent reason as to why.
I don’t get it at all. What’s your theory?
I’m trying to be careful and exact. They didn’t reject the donation itself, they just shunted the group aside as second class citizens. Sure you can give us the money, but we’re not going to do the mutually beneficial things that we normally do for huge donations.
It doesn’t change the ethics at all from what you said, but it closes down unethical cheap shot attacks.
Does the American Cancer Society take money from Roman Catholics (whose recent record as a religious organization is a teensy, weensy bit besmirched), from the Southern Baptists (full of bigots), from the Methodists (liberal to the point of socialism), Episcopalians (who exist only so Henry the Eight could get a divorce centuries ago… good, sound theology), Mormons (who believe not only in Jesus Christ but the “Angel Moroni” [I’m not kidding about the name] who brought another set of divine rules for living), etc., etc.? The Foundation Beyond Belief is “funded by atheists, freethinkers, and humanists.” Frankly, I think if you scratch the avowed “religious,” underneath you will find thousands of atheists (or at least agnostics), freethinkers, and humanists. Despite that, ACS rejects funds from “humanists?” Why?
I would like to see someone take a poll of cancer researchers who are working day and night on cures for cancer, and see what they think of their major fund raising arm refusing a half million much-needed dollars based on dubious, unexplained reasoning.
Question: Does ACS take money from gay organizations, and allow them to participate in the Relay for Life program? There are many who would find gays more offensive than atheists and, ahem, “humanists.” So what’s the policy? They’d better get one out there, and soon.
For now, I’ll confine my charitable contributions to the Animal Welfare League and the Humane Society. They don’t mind atheists, agnostics, humanists, or free-thinkers and their money: they care about saving animals from cruelty, and they are actually doing it.
Follow up: http://www.alternet.org/story/152914/has_the_american_cancer_society_been_caught_covering_up_a_rejection_of_atheist_money/?page=entire
All the nonprofits have been moved under the youth program. With 400 youth organizations, FBB has repeatedly asked to participate under that program. It has been met with silence. There are other details that corroborate the original story and show the duplicity of ACS on this story.
I read this article in the first place because my wife is struggling with stage 4 breast cancer.
Sometimes the tone of a message conveys more than the words. And I found tone of this article to be angry, accusatory and divisive. It leaves an impression that the reason for proposing to raise funds was more to raise the public profile of Foundation Beyond Belief, than it was to actually help people with cancer.
Don’t get me wrong; anyone who does anything to bring us closer to effective treatment or prevention of cancer is doing the world a fine service. And as far as I can tell, the American Cancer Society does this. The article implies that ACS turned down the offer on religious/ideological grounds, but no proof is given for this. The claim may or may not be true. But like it or not, the fact is that ACS is a private, non-governmental organization, and they are entirely within their rights to accept or decline donations from any other organization for any reason.
Please spare the world this vitriol. If Foundation Beyond Belief is sincere in its motives, there are many avenues available for it to contribute to the abatement of cancer. These means might not afford Foundation Beyond Belief much publicity. But right action is its own reward, and that, I pray, is something on which both the faithful and the faithless can agree