It's Not A Contest, But . . .

Not everyone lending on Kiva is a lone wolf like me, playing by his own rules and daring The Man to do something about it.  Some prefer the squishy embrace of the like-minded to the wind-swept loneliness that is my only companion, and those people band together into lending communities.  The way Kiva arranges the list of these groups - alphabetically in order of money - leads me to believe that they want these communities to fight it out for ultimate microloan supremacy.

It just so happens that the top two groups are diametrically opposed to each other.  Like Guelph vs. Ghibelline and Jet vs. Shark, here we have Atheist vs. Not Atheist.

The leading group, at least in total money donated, is the Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious.  That's a pretty wide range of outlooks, ranging from full-on Spaghetti Monster sneerers to "spiritual but not religious" free spirits, all united under a common cause and a pretty rad logo.

Did the Skeptics and Secular Humanists get a say in what letter to use?

#2 is (as you probably already guessed) the Kiva Christians, who are prompted by James 1:27 to start doling out the moolah.  I quote (and I totally knew this off the top of my head):

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Not bad.  Maybe I'll get that under the Kiva logo I had tattooed on my chest last week.

Of course, a competition like this isn't decided by Bible quotations and scarlet letters.  Let's go to the stats!

• The Atheists (that's the shorthand we're using - no offense to the mere skeptics) started up on August 28, 2008.  The Christians didn't get underway until August 31, 2008.  Thus, the Atheists are three whole days better.
• Atheists: $1,659,700.00. Christians: $1,012,325.00.  The Atheists win this one by the sticker price of the world's fastest street-legal car.
• But what about on a per-Believer-or-non-Believer basis?  The Christians win this one, $268 to $195.
• Who has the better website?  The Atheist one is actually about their lending activities, and it even has a poll to figure out how many of them fall into each category of their endless name.  The Christians' site is about Jesus in general rather than microfinance.

Verdict: Hell, I don't know.  Let's call it a draw and also everyone wins just for participating, because that's the kind of thing this is.  It's not a deathmatch like Norway vs. Sweden or 101 Cookbooks vs. Beer Goggles.