Charity and good works are things that many religious people do for their own sake, Rig, simply because it is the right thing to do...and not to "add to their numbers". You seem incapable of even imagining any religious person who acts out of an inner social ideal rather than to enlarge or aggrandize an outer religious power structure.

That's sad. Most of the kindest and most intelligent and finest people of character I've ever known have been members of some religion (a great variety of different ones) or of some spiritual discipline. And a few others have not.

It shows that you do not even begin to comprehend what religion means to any sincere person who happens to be, to use your term, "religious".

Your terms of reference are way out of context and they are based on some kind of emotional grudge you are carrying.

******

As for the Faith-Based Initiatives thing, I don't know enough about that to comment much on it. It's not an issue in Canada, only in the USA.