By now, we all know that Haiti is badly in need of aid and there are many groups out there which are working to try to get it there.    Due to the enormous scale of the disaster, there’s almost no limit to the need for everything from food to water to search and rescue equipment.    Military air and sea-lift divisions from several countries are working to get the complex logistics in place and organizations ranging from the Red Cross to the United Nations are doing what they can to get food, water and other supplies to the people of Haiti.

As a general rule, organizations are asking for individuals and small groups to donate money, as opposed to directly donating the supplies.   There are some exceptions to this, such as for specialized equipment, or in cases where an organization can supply large quantities of an important aid supply, but in general, the logistical issues with sorting and shipping many individually donated canned food, water bottles or first aid kits makes these kind of donations less useful and slower to get to those who need them most.

However, if you are going to donate something to the effort and it’s not money, it should at least be something with some kind of usefulness to it.   There are many things that would fit the bill here.   Water purifiers, sanitary supplies, basic clothing like undergarments and even items like eyeglasses could help those who lost everything.  It’s been said that “nobody wants your old sneakers,” and that is certainly true, but if you happen to have several truck loads of brand new sneakers, that might actually help.

Yet one group has decided to send something even more useless than a pair of old smelly sneakers.  What is it they’re sending?  Solar powered bibles.   Yes, you read right.   Apparently they felt that the people of Haiti need faith right now and that faith comes from the “good book.”   However, the “good book” is apparently not good enough – or maybe it’s just too inexpensive and doesn’t have that whiz-bang novelty of a new gadget, so they’re instead sending a solar-powered device which is preloaded with an electronic audio-book version of the bible.   They already are planning on sending 600 of them and would like to raise money for 3000.

If it’s not a frivolous enough expense to send portable self-reading electronic bibles to Haiti, these ones also have a solar panel on them, thus assuring that the quake refugees will be able to charge them with the same sun that beats down on them as they search for clean water and food.    That way, they will at least not have to worry about finding more batteries to listen to the bible.

They state that the audio bibles are necessary to send “hope” to Haiti.    It justifies this by providing a sample of a bible reading in both French and Haitian Creole (the primary language in Haiti) to show that the passionate and dramatic reading of the bible versus is so much more hopeful than words on paper.  These bibles can also be listened to by a large number of people, even if they’re not literate and thus could not read it themselves.   Apparently it never occurred to them, that a single person could read the bible to a large group gathered around them – a person who might be called something like a “priest” or “minister.”


Via ABC News Australia:

As international aid agencies rush food, water and medicine to Haiti’s earthquake victims, a United States group is sending Bibles.

But these aren’t just any Bibles; they’re solar-powered audible Bibles that can broadcast the holy scriptures in Haitian Creole to 300 people at a time.

The Faith Comes By Hearing organisation says its Bible, called the Proclaimer, delivers “digital quality” and is designed for “poor and illiterate people”.

It says 600 of the devices are already on their way to Haiti.

The Albuquerque-based organisation says it is responding to the Haitian crisis by “providing faith, hope and love through God’s word in audio”.

The audio Bible can bring the “hope and comfort that comes from knowing God has not forgotten them through this tragedy,” a statement on its website says.

“The Proclaimer is self-powered and can play the Bible in the jungle, desert or … even on the moon!”

Tens of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents are living outdoors because their homes have collapsed or they fear aftershocks following Wednesday’s quake.

Despite the fact that it’s totally irrelevant, I feel obligated to point out that there’s no atmosphere on the moon and thus it can’t play there.

Now finally, let me just ask something to these groups that want to send hundreds of solar-powered techno bibles down there at about 60 dollars a pop. If these people are facing a time of hardship and your god would like to see his people comforted by the charity and good will of others, is this really how he would want it? After all, can’t he inspire their faith through the Holy Spirit or something, or by inspiring them? It seems like he might like you to deal with the more tangible needs. Also, don’t they already have clergy down there to preach at them? And if you really want to send a bible, how about just the paper ones? They cost so much less you’ll have money left over to actually help someone with.

Given how absolutely useless these things are, it seems like it might be better not to donate anything to Haiti than to donate these, because this is just insulting to the victims of the quake.  Perhaps they can use these as hammers to pound in a stake to a tent or rip off the solar panel and use it to power a shortwave radio or something, but other than that, these will just contribute to the trash and refuse that needs to be removed.

Maybe we can also give all the children a laptop too, while we’re at it…

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 1:39 am and is filed under Bad Science, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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