Thank god for philanthropic atheists

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“A wealthy, retired financier is giving $22.5 million to the Catholic Archdiocese of New York to pay for scholarships for needy, inner-city students. It's the largest donation the archdiocese has ever received. What makes the gift extraordinary, howoever, is not just its size, but also that the donor, 80-year-old Robert W. Wilson, is an atheist.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Ironically, religious schools, because they are not run by the state, have a freedom to promote secular humanism that public schools cannot. Religious schools can uphold reason, ethics, justice, and promote behavior that results in good and happy lives. Such schools can offer courses in philosophy and comparative religion without fear of overstepping First Amendment limits on what public schools can teach. Students will be taught the logic and reasoning skills needed to separate all this from the supernatural and spiritual explanations for good and evil. If the schools do this job well, the now bright students will see through the superstitions. In such cases, I see nothing inherently contradictory with an atheist funding tuition for poor children to attend religious schools. It all depends on the religious schools being good schools and many of them are.