Athée Canadien
Ian
Ian holds a MSc in Physics and lives in Vancouver, BC. He is president of the BC Humanist Association. He grew up outside of Calgary before moving to Edmonton for his undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics at the UofA. While there he founded the UofA Atheists and Agnostics and was active in the Edmonton freethought and skeptical communities.
Homepage: http://ian.bushfield.ca
Posts by Ian
Turkey’s secular military leaders arrested for treason
Jan 7th
Last summer I tried to delve a little into the current situation in Turkey.
In short, Turkey is currently ruled by an elected and popular right-wing proto-Islamist party which is highly resented by the military, which has long defended the country’s secular constitution. Several times in the past the military has overthrown governments that threatened the separation of church and state.
When I wrote about it, several military leaders had gone on strike to protest the increasing number of religious-inspired laws being passed.
Now, the government has arrested 200 people including the former head of Turkey’s armed forces General Ilker Basbug, claiming that they were engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the government. The case is now before the courts after several years of investigations.
The BBC weighs the issue and tries to balance fears from the government and people of an over-powerful military and the secularists fears of increasing Islamism.
It’s all very messy but if anyone has some insight, perhaps you can share it with us so we can piece together the whole story.
I assure you, we’re OPEN!
Jan 6th
A number of readers have alerted me that they have randomly seen some “Account Suspended” errors appearing instead of our main page from NetFirms.
As far as I know, it’s all cleared up now, but you may need to clear your browser’s cache before it will clear up. For future reference, Zak handles our web hosting issues, so yell at him if there’s an issue.
Now back to business as usual.
Preach at Calgary City Hall and go directly to jail
Jan 6th
The past few weeks have been a bit of a blogging blackout from me. I finished my thesis, passed my defense, became an official Master of Science, and then buggered off to Alberta to visit family for Christmas (that’s right). Now I’m unemployed and can start to catch up on blogging.
To begin, here’s a story that was mostly missed before Christmas where a Christian evangelist was arrested by the City of Calgary for trespassing on their City Hall.
Now the Catholics care about children’s safety?
Dec 19th
Wi-Fi hysteria is one of those issues that really grinds me.
There must be a checklist that pseudoscience journalists (because no one pays for real science journalists anymore) have when discussing the issue:
- Quote parents with irrational fears
- Interview Magda Havas, lead Wi-Fi fear monger
- Provide a token quote from real scientist to provide balance
- Cite the WHO’s reclassification of electromagnetic radiation as “possibly carcinogenic”
- School administrators who don’t understand science and preach the precautionary principle
An article in todays Vancouver Sun hits all of these marks.
But I’m not posting today to complain about bad science journalism, that’s a dime a dozen. Today, I want to highlight the irony at the end of the article.
The continuing story at CFI Canada
Dec 13th
The drama never seems to end as the story at Centre for Inquiry Canada takes on a few new twists. For those looking to catch up, check out my first long post on the situation, followed by a few resignations, and finally my thoughts on where freethought can head in Canada.
The War on Christmas
Dec 13th
Michael Coren, who hosts a panel on VisionTV that consistently features former CFI Canada National Executive Director Justin Trottier, has a piece in the Ottawa Sun (naturally) on the “War on Christmas”.
It’s typical garbage about Christian persecution, but you can get a sense of where he’s going from the intro:
I have friends who are conscientious objectors in the war on Christmas. They don’t celebrate the birth of Christ, but they’re not so neurotic that they will actively fight against it.
Then there are people like me, who joined the resistance years ago, and carry out combat actions behind enemy lines.
But I’ve hardly ever met any members of the occupation forces, those people who hate the season and want to expunge it from our calendar.
Yet while I’ve not seen the soldiers, I’ve seen their destructive work.
It’s a sad and pathetic piece about how there is “an outright blitzkrieg against” Christmas, which is not only anti-Christian, but anti-Western. Apparently only good white Christians only ever lived in Europe and North America (sorry First Nations and the many doubters of history).
A good rebuttal was written in 2007 by the ever-enlightening Dan Gardner. He notes the many religious relics of our language, but also the cultural imperialism and privilege enjoyed by Christianity. In the end he argues that we just shrug the whole thing off. He’s one heck of a militant secularist.
Generally, the “War on Christmas” is never anything more than an increasing number of people realizing that there is an increasing number of different beliefs in this country and that maybe it would be the good Canadian thing to do to recognize that pluralism. It’s more about ending the cultural dominance rather than oppressing Christianity.
Multi-Faith Secular?
Dec 12th
There are some phrases that are so oxymoronic that you know that what follows will be some vacuous attempt to violate rules of logic and common sense. At least, that’s how I felt before, and after, reading a piece on the Canadian Educator’s Association blog about “The Multi-Faith Secular” which tries to argue for “spiritually inclusive schools.”
The post is by Nadir Shirazi, who as far as I can tell has created a company to push religion back into schools and workplaces in a politically correct fashion.
He argues that since people derive meaning from religion that we need to meet them where we are and accommodate them. Depending on which side of my atheist lair I climb out of, I am either sympathetic or hostile to this view. Let’s try to continue with an open mind though.
Questions remain about the Office of Religious Freedom
Dec 5th
The CBC has obtained some information through access to information laws about the mysterious Office of Religious Freedom that the Harper Conservatives promised during the last election and established quietly.
The released preparatory interview questions show that the government expected concerns that the office would be used for partisan purposes – i.e. to win over with religious and ethnic minorities – and that it may encroach on the (unofficial) separation of church and state in Canada.
Secular prayers at Vancouver City Council?
Dec 1st
I got a request for an interview over the weekend because an intrepid reporter with News1130 here in Vancouver noticed that Vancouver City Council is opening its weekly sessions with a prayer.
The story highlights that these prayers often don’t involve any references to religion or god. I guess we’re very liberal with our language here on the left West Coast. Google gives the following definition for prayer:
prayer/pre(ə)r/
Noun:
- A solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship.
- A religious service, esp. a regular one, at which people gather in order to pray together.
Neither definition sounds very secular to me.
So I gave my two cents to the story
Atheist Ian Bushfield with the BC Humanist Association disagrees. He would like to see the name prayer changed to something more accessible, like "opening remarks."
"When they bring these church ideas or religion into city hall, they potentially exclude a lot of people of different or even no faith. So I don’t think there’s any need to invoke any higher power. Having some opening words is not against anything I believe in, to mark the ceremony. It’s just important to recognize there are different viewpoints and we should try to include anyone rather than exclude anyone."
This is the second time in a week where I’ve played the token atheist around here. Hopefully by putting that atheist label out in the media more and more we can begin to raise our profile above the rapists.
They also have a poll, so go and crash it. It’s currently pro-prayer by a slim margin.
Beyond CFI Canada–Reasons for optimism
Nov 30th
For anyone still not fully caught up on the drama that has become CFI Canada’s latest implosion, check out Katie Kish’s piece at SkepChick. Overall I think it’s the most impartial of all of the work to be written thus far.
But this post isn’t about re-hashing the drama. No, today I want to talk about reasons for optimism in a situation that has worries many activists and volunteers across the country.
Comments