A HOMELESS MAN in Texas decided to augment his panhandling with a sociological experiment, wherein he laid out several cardboard boxes, each marked with the name of a specific religion. He had a catholic box, a protestant box, and hindu box, an islam box, an athiest box, and several others.
Passersby were invited to contribute to the box matching their personal belief systems. It might be argued that anyone sufficiently energetic and intelligent to arrange this is quite able to not only seek but gain employment, but, that is another matter.
While homeless and soliciting free money, why not pursue a little scientific research, eh?
It turns out that, on that day in Texas, the athiests were the most generous, with the agnostics close behind, and adherents of most of the world's great religions lagging far behind. The study fails to include any evidence whether there exists any correlation between religiosity and generosity;
it could be that generous people and parsimonious people are both distributed evenly throughout the philosophical spectrum, but that on this particular day the generous athiests simply happened to be out in greater numbers.
This is where the scientific method comes in handy. Similar experiments could be conducted throughout the country, indeed the world, which would produce independently verifiable results. This would have the added advantage of providing the homeless an opportunity to engage in meaningful research,
while inculcating within them an awareness of their own capacity for productive enterprise.
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