Help a Fellow Warrior Weather a Storm

BY R ICH AR D CAR R IER / ON OCTOBER 19, 2012 / 7 COMMENTS

Greta Christina only a few months ago quit her day job to work for herself as a writer and
speaker (both of which she’s really good at), and things were looking great, then bam, her
dad gets badly ill and dies, causing her to lose work for about a month…and then she gets
cancer. Not a terrible cancer, but still. Curable–but at a cost (thanks to our being the only
first world country without national health care). It’s a double-hit for the self-employed,
because you lose income while also paying the new medical bills (she has already had to
cancel her Skepticon gig and might not be able to get back to work for several months,
depending on how things go).

She really needs gap funding to keep her in biscuits until she can get back to work and get
her medical bills behind her. In Bad News, Good News, Greta explains her situation and
what you can do to help. So hop on over there, read her piece, and see what you can do. It really doesn’t require much–
the cost of a nice birthday gift, say, only it’s cash rather than trinkets. A little will go a long way if lots of us help (so spread
the news if you’re inclined). If you aren’t familiar with Greta’s work, she’s a superb writer, and an asset in communicating
real life issues from an atheist perspective. I’ll soon be posting a review of her great new book (I’ve read it; it rocks) as
soon as it finally hits Amazon (to help get her a boost in sales ranking there)–but you can already buy it elsewhere; see her
blog for details. But if you want to test the waters first, you can explore her blog (see her “categories” index down the
right margin and pick the one that intrigues you the most).

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7 comments
R OO BOOK A R OO • OC TOBER 20, 201 2, 7:52 AM

Same situation and same solution as in John F. Felix’s call for help for Robert Price, who is now very sick and
with no stable source of income, and a wife with only menial jobs.

No, the wisdom seems to be, if you want to be a professional critic of religion and be protected from the
hazards of sickness and accidents, better to secure some kind of regular job with health insurance.

Robert Price, like Greta Christina, is in a very precarious position. He has no full-time employment. His only
security is having a wife who works at small jobs and brings only a meager stable income, plus the income from
his books to allow him freedom to pontificate as a criticism guru.
And now, Price finds himself in the same predicament.

People like Earl Doherty, D.M. Murdock, and other free-lance biblical scholars or “independent researchers”
are in the same precarious position.
Self-marketing, personal savings, private Blue Cross Blue Shield is all they can count on. And probably tiny
Social Security payments in future retirement.
Very scary.

Look at other critics: Richard Dawkins, professor at Oxford, George Albert Wells, professor at London Un.
Frank Zindler, professional translator, etc…Arthur Drews was efficient because he had a job as full-time
philosophy professor, even though in a German technical high school.
Paul-Louis Couchoud became a doctor, so did Albert Schweitzer, etc..
All the Dutch radicals were blessed, they all got Un. professorships in Holland. Marvelous.
They all managed to have some kind of secure employment as a support system. Which is a safer position, if you
can get it.

R E P LY

R IC H AR D C AR R IER • OC TOBER 20, 201 2, 1 1 :1 1 AM

Can you provide the link where Felix calls for support for Price? If people want to help him,
too, they need to know where to go and what they can do.

As to the general point, you can’t really do much good work in this field if you are working
40-60 hours a week doing something else. So that really isn’t a solution. Professorships are
just about the only thing that can serve both functions, but now many professors are being
increasingly underpaid and thus forced to work double or triple jobs, defeating the advantage
 and leaving no time for real work (as Dr. Dan Fincke explained before he had to depart
Freethought Blogs and go to Patheos for more cash), or are being buried under committee
assignments that leave no time for real work. The concept of the research professor in the
humanities is dying, and such positions are now so few there is little prospect of getting one
unless you make it your singular obsession to get one, are willing to live anywhere in the
world, and sing the tunes the establishment wants to hear (which in most cases means not
being an atheist or mythicist actively rocking the boat).

That’s why there aren’t more than a handful or two of Dawkinses…in a world filled with 6
billion people.

Scary, I agree. But we have to make the best of it (if we’re the ones doing it), or help make it
possible (if we want to see it get done). And that’s where fans can pull together and provide
the income that dogma-entrenched establishments won’t. It won’t be big money. But it can
be enough.

(Of course, national health insurance would solve half this problem. Obama 2012!)

R E P LY

R IC H AR D MAR TIN • OC TOBER 20, 201 2, 4:1 5 P M

How ironic that the most Christian country on Earth is also the least ‘Christian’ when it comes to health care.

R E P LY

H UC K LEBER R Y549 • OC TOBER 22, 201 2, 1 1 :46 AM

Richard, I found that link. Didn’t know about Price’s condition. I assumed he had professorship, I guess not.
“Don’t quit your day job” is a common saying with musicians.
http://freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/731-dr-price-needs-our-help.html

R E P LY

R IC H AR D C AR R IER • OC TOBER 23, 201 2, 1 0:46 AM

Thanks. That article says it all. Note that it suggests sending money directly to Bob’s PayPal
account at criticus@aol.com (to send money using PayPal go here; you need an account,
but it let’s you create one, and since it’s free, everyone should have a PayPal account
anyway).

That’s a good idea, since I can vouch for that being his account, so it will definitely go directly
to him. Definitely send a little his way if you can.
 R E P LY

A LLA N JON ES • N OVEMBER 1, 2012, 3:31 PM

“the only first world country without national health care”

What’s the problem in the U.S.? Is the idea just too ‘socialist’.

Universal health care is supported by right and left wing parties across europe. Any party trying to remove it
would be committing electoral suicide.

R E P LY

RICH ARD CARRIER • N OVEMBER 2, 2012, 9 :11 AM

Yes, it’s too socialist (even the capitalist version Obama enacted).

Really, it’s mostly because of the selfishness of Americans, whose cruel, self-centered
materialism is continually ginned up by special interest media and church leaders who are all
funded by the rich. Until the people break away from those lying machines of economic
perdition and wake up to how reality actually is and actually works, they will continue to think
sharing is evil.

R E P LY

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Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to
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