Athée Canadien
Television
Five Reasons Prayer is Bad
Apr 6th
If you aren’t familiar with Matt Dillahunty and The Atheist Experience, I highly recommend looking them up. They do a weekly show on public access television in Austin, TX. They also have podcasts of their shows, videos on their website, and many other ways to interact with them.
On January 15th of this year, the hosts were Russell Glasser and Dan Baker. The show was entitled “The Failure of Prayer”. Around twelve and a half minutes in, Dan begins to speak about his “five reasons prayer is bad”, as well as a follow-up example for each. Here are the Coles Notes of what he said: More >
“Attack of the Atheists”?
Apr 6th
Yesterday, April 5, I received this announcement from CFI Canada
CFI’s Justin Trottier will be on Byline on Sun TV tonight (Thursday) between 9-10pm Eastern Time to discuss the effect atheism has on countries. Host Brian Lilley will argue that countries like Canada are doing well because it is a Judeo Christian country, whereas places like China have a lot of problems because they are atheistic. We will, CFI is told, also talk about ‘militant atheism’ (atheists trying to convert others to their lack of belief).
I was not at home to watch Byline last night because I was enjoying an evening with three wonderful people, who are, like me, members of CFI. Fortunately, I was able to access the video of the segment. As CFI’s message says, “Enjoy”!
If, as Brian Lilley says, atheists are on the attack, let’s “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
Humanists on TV!
Oct 14th
For those of you who still watch TV through cable, I have good news.
Humanist Canada is taking to the airwaves with a weekly TV series called Being Human (not to be confused with the sci-fi show Being Human, which was based on a BBC series). The show debuts on Monday, October 17th at 1:30PM (EST) on Vision TV. Here’s their description:
Being Human addresses social, political, economic and health topics in a lively talk-show format. Both entertaining and educational, it is produced by Humanist Canada and presents a common-sense perspective on important issues that affect everyone.
Their initial line up has already been announced and sounds pretty good:
Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 – Mary Beaty – A Humanist in Action
Monday, Oct. 24, 2011 – Matt Cherry – International Humanism
Monday, Oct. 31, 2011 – Jason Wiles – Understanding Evolution
Monday, Nov. 7, 2011 - Chris diCarlo – Good and Evil : How science helps us understand human values and actions
Monday, Nov. 14, 2011 – Agathe Gramet-Kedzior – Reproductive choice
Monday, Nov. 21, 2011 – Mike Nickerson – Sustainability: Living on the Earth as if we want to stay
Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 - Suzanne Peters – The Social Determinants of Health
Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 - Chris di Carlo – We are all African – Racism is a human invention
Monday, Dec. 12, 2011 – Keith Garebian – Humanism and the Arts
Being Human follows Pat Robertson’s 700 Club and Vision is the same network that carries James Randi’s old nemesis Peter Popoff.
There’s no official website for the show yet, and Vision doesn’t have anything about it other than the schedule listing. Let’s hope they post episodes online, or else those with cable will have to set their PVRs.
Is science too expensive?
Aug 22nd
TVO’s The Agenda is running a series this week on the challenges and changes science is facing today.
If we work on the premise that scientific research is important for improving society and for the economy, how best is it done?
For example NASA is increasingly funding smaller projects like the Kepler Mission while traditionally they focused on much larger projects. Some would be content to leave space travel to the open market, where various companies are working on for-profit space flight.
Here in Canada does the federal government need to change how scientific research is funded or supported? Does the private sector have a larger role to play?
These are good questions. The Agenda has a good history of cutting through the ideological bs that too often takes over the discussion of big questions.
Videos are usually available on the site a day or two after airing.
VisionTV releases Godless documentary
Jun 6th
Over the last year a film crew was seen around atheist events and meetups in Toronto. They filmed meetings and interviewed lots of different people for a documentary on atheism. Specifically, they focused on the congregational and activist aspects of new atheism in Canada.
The interviewees and meeting coordinators tell me the questions were good and there seemed to be an attempt to accurately capture what this specific brand of atheism is all about so I have high hopes.
Part 1: June 6 (today) 10pm ET, Part 2: June 7 10pm ET.
I can’t find a streaming link but I will post it here once/if available.
Diluting Homeopathy
Jan 13th
Well, I’m not much for watching TV… since I don’t have one, and even if I did, it probably wouldn’t be the CBC, but if its an internet war they want…. well now that I can do… saddle up and lets ride into town… or rather if you are so inclined to rational rebuttal… make your voice heard on Homeopathy, and put your money where your molars is.
Medical woo is not consequence-free
Dec 7th
Yes, after a long absence, Crommunist is back with a bug up his ass about something else. However, this time it really has nothing at all to do with religion or atheism, so maybe you can hold the eye-rolling in abeyance long enough to hear me out.
One of my favourite blogs to read is Orac’s Respectful Insolence – a valuable repository of science-based medical factoids and critical appraisal of all manner of medical science. While a healthy proportion of the writing casts Orac as the happy warrior, from time to time he really lets his humanity shine through. That has perhaps never been so true as it was for today’s post:
I’m still perturbed that a cancer quack was able to convince a woman who had everything to live for that he could cure her of her breast cancer without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. I’m still perturbed at this particular cancer quack’s attitude, where he tried to claim that he didn’t know the woman who is dying, Kim Tinkham, and imply that her cancer recurred because didn’t follow his regimen carefully enough, that she had stopped living the quack’s “alkaline diet.” I thought of my mother-in-law, who died in 2009 of metastatic breast cancer, and watching her decline.
And then I thought of Oprah Winfrey and her role in what ultimately happened to Kim Tinkham.
Proponents of “alternative medicine”, or people who are not specific advocates but still think it has some merit, often use a line that goes something like this: “if it makes people feel better or happier to get reiki or acupuncture or homeopathy, who cares if it doesn’t work? What’s the harm in letting them do whatever they want?” The harm is that people often forgo legitimate treatments that have been shown to work in favour of things that either are not likely to work, or worse still have been shown not to work. This can have disastrous consequences.
Oprah, through her show, encouraged a cancer patient named Kim Tinkham to follow an “alkalizing” protocol to treat her late-stage breast cancer. First off, as someone who researches cancer treatment for a living, I can tell you with a great deal of confidence that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that either a) cancer is caused by acid, or that b) an alkaline diet will do anything to either your blood chemistry or your overall health. While Ms. Tinkham made the choice herself to commit slow suicide, Oprah essentially put the gun in her hand.
I’ve said before that lack of dissent is assent – tacit encouragement is even more egregious. Someone with the reach and influence that Oprah wields has a responsibility to either give sound medical advice or to stay out of that game altogether. By encouraging people to pursue quack treatments or ludicrous faith healers (like John of God), she undermines both the ability of people to make truly informed choices and the work that real researchers do every day to try and improve the lot of people with cancer.
Orac’s post comes complete with a plea:
Oprah needs to know what can happen when people choose quackery and woo instead of effective science-based medicine. You, my readers, are just the folks to inform Oprah (or at least Oprah’s producers), too. You can do it by heading to Oprah’s contact page and letting her know what happened to Kim Tinkham…
This strategy requires a lot of people bombarding the Oprah website with requests. It’s unlikely to work just from my readership alone. It needs other bloggers willing to urge their readers to do the same thing to have even a wisp of a chance of working. So, if you have a blog, consider urging your readers to remind Oprah’s producers about Kim Tinkham.
I would add my own voice to this plea, and ask that you take a couple of minutes to tell the Oprah show what you think of anyone who uses their power and heft to endorse quackery, whilst simultaneously branding yourself as a source for information about health and wellness. It is frankly unacceptable to abdicate any responsibility for the consequences of your actions, even if you’re not the one who pulls the trigger.
Praise Grilled Chessus
Oct 6th
I’ll admit this off the bat, I watch Glee, every week, and with my fiancée own all the DVDs and CDs they have produced. So my discussion about last night’s episode of Glee that dealt with religion comes with full knowledge of these characters storylines and pasts.
For those who really don’t know, Glee is a comedy TV series set in a rural American high school where a group of losers (plus some football players and cheerleaders who joined for different reasons) formed a glee show-tunes club. The cast of characters includes a cheerleader who was head of the celibacy club but got pregnant when she cheated on her boyfriend (but she lied and told him it was because he ejaculated in a hot tub with her), a flamboyantly gay kid, a kid in a wheelchair, a Jewish bully and a cheerleader coach who tries to end their club at every chance (because it’s diverting funding from her award winning Cheerios).
While not the first time Glee has dealt with religion, last night’s episode, Grilled Cheesus, was an episode based extensively around religion. Now I’m going to break my analysis up by plotline and let you know that spoilers will be scattered throughout, so go find the show and watch it first if you care.
Finn and Grilled Cheesus
Finn, the quarterback, discovered the face of Jesus one day when he was making a grilled cheese. Not the brightest of characters, he saw it as a sign from God that he should be more religious.
Unsure of how prayers work (in one prayer he wonders if it’s like genies and he only gets three wishes), he asks for (in order):
- For his team to win their first game,
- To feel his girlfriend’s (Rachel) boobs, and
- To be made quarterback again.
All his wishes are granted, but he feels guilty because his position as quarterback is reinstated after the new QB is injured. The guidance councillor gives him a dose of rationalism however, and suggests that while “big questions” exist (and everyone has them), the things he wished for were probably just coincidences and he should throw out his sandwich (he ate the week-old grilled cheese instead).
This plotline was definitely the most blasphemous, and helps add some humour to an episode that also featured a single parent almost passing away. In the end Finn ends as a sort-of agnostic who lost his religion (yes he sang the song), which consisted solely of pareidolia.
Sue the atheist
We learn that antagonist Sue Sylvester is an atheist because while she though of her sister (who has Down’s Syndrome I think) as perfect, everyone else made fun of her disability. After praying for her sister to be normal fails, Sue stopped believing in god as a kid.
Sue uses half the episode to try to bring down the Glee club for signing religious songs in a public school and probably is meant to be the stereotypical ACLU/FFRF lawyers pouncing on innocent teachers who just want to explore spirituality with their students.
At the end of the episode, Sue’s sister asks to pray for her and Sue lets the club sing a religious song (Joan Osborne/Sheryl Crow’s One of Us) that the students asked to sing.
Sue has a great scene with the councillor (Emma), where Sue calls the religious students out as arrogant for throwing their faith in other people’s faces and claiming they’ll go to hell if they don’t convert. While it comes off a bit as the angry/aggressive atheist, her lines are succinct and poignant.
Kurt almost loses his dad
The main reason for all the faithiness in the show was Kurt’s father who had a heart attack and fell into a coma.
As a gay high school student, Kurt has little room for religions that ostracize and insult him. He also mentions the subjugation of women and science as reasons not to believe in religion.
A couple lines from Kurt referencing Russell’s Teapot and the Flying Spaghetti Monster show that either an atheist is among the writing team or they really did their homework.
Kurt is subjected to continual pressure from his high school peers to pray or let them pray for him, to which he asks them not to but eventually gives in. His best friend Mercedes’ even takes him to her black church where she preaches from the pulpit for him and then sings a gospel song for her father. He submits mainly because he can tell its the only way his friends know how to reach out to him.
To demonstrate to his friends how he would rather cope, he sings the Beatle’s I want to hold your hand to a montage of scenes as a child with his father (of course he’s having tea and cupcakes in a collared shirt at 6).
The most disappointing bit about Kurt’s line was that he decided to try acupuncture to cure his dad from a coma. However, this can be partially forgiven when you remember that he’s a helpless high school kid who’s losing the only parent he has and even a faint credulous hope might be worth the effort over doing absolutely nothing. And besides, not all atheists are skeptics (although his references to science and FSM somewhat betray his this hypothesis).
Overall conclusions
I’ve heard a bit of frustration among atheists that atheists were portrayed as bitter or that they had to be traumatized to leave religion, but I strongly disagree.
Kurt is the most fabulous character on the show, and his bitterness and snide comments last night had everything to do with his father dying. Similarly, he’s not a wussy atheist for not yelling and screaming at the few friends he has when they try to help him in their own way.
He’s a gay high school student in the rural USA who’s a member of the loser club. He’s going to be careful not to alienate the few friends he has. It’s easy to hide behind anonymity in online blogs and forums, but in the real world you sometimes need allies.
As for Sue, she seems a bit like the atheist who wants to believe but can’t. It’s a stereotype, but as most people recognize, so is the entire show. I think her arguments were cogent and she’s somewhat of an anti-hero on the show.
Overall the show was as good as most. If you like the show, you probably will like this one (unless your offended by Jesus in grilled cheese or atheists who have religious friends). I wouldn’t say it’s a must watch for atheists, but it’s still a positive step to have more atheists in the media (especially gay and strong female ones).
Banned Assisted Suicide Commercial
Sep 29th
This commercial, posted by Bulletproof Courier, ties into my post from a few weeks ago stating that the right to die is the next battle that humanists should step up to defend.
It was created by Exit International and calls for the Canadian government to strike down bans on euthanasia. It was banned because the website listed allegedly tells people how to kill themselves, and that’s illegal in Canada.
The Unitarians are already ahead of us and are sponsoring two talks by the Dr Philip Nitschke. He will be speaking in Vancouver on Thursday October 7 at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver, 949 49th Ave West and in Toronto on October 13th at the 1st Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, 175 St Claire Ave West.
I’ll hopefully be able to attend the event here and report more on what Dr. Nitschke has to say.
Secular Television
Aug 28th
A long while back there was a lecture at the CFI about secular TV and a huge fight broke out during the question period, and later, about the idea of everything that is non-religious being considered secular. I bring it up again because I think there were some interesting points that came up:
- Sports are secular television
An argument was made that all television that isn’t inherently religious is essentially a “secular” program. To me, this seems sort of obvious. 
There are shows that don’t talk about God (police/detective shows, decorating shows, Holmes Inspection!…etc) and there are shows with atheist characters (Dexter, Lee Adama, Mr. Big from Sex in the City, Perry Cox, Jen from Dawson’s Creek…etc). Additionally there are shows that make blatant fun of religion such as South Park, the Simpsons… etc. If you consider these shows to be “secular” TV then there is actually a disproportionately high number of secular shows in comparison with religious shows. If this is the case then people saying that we need more secular television are simply… wrong.
The other side of the picture are people who essentially want atheist propaganda channels much like there are religious propaganda channels, and I think this is a waste of time and effort. Besides the fact that every atheist show proposal I’ve seen has been totally crap, I don’t think that it would help advance the movement in any way. Most of these shows interview atheists and look at what is happening in the atheist movement… but why would anyone want to see that? It is probably more desirable to have more openly atheist characters who are likable in mainstream television than to have some cable access show that no one will watch.
I would also like to point out that most evangelical churches *do* see most mainstream television as being inherently atheistic and secular. Mainstream shows have premarital sex, drug use, abortions, homosexuality…etc. The L Word isn’t exactly wholesome christian television.
- Is atheism simply a supernatural standpoint or is it associated with an ethical base that needs to be represented?
For “atheism”, specifically, to be represented on TV more often it means that there needs to be some sort of universal definition for atheism. If atheism is just the lack of belief in God and there isn’t any god or religion in some TV shows then I think it is fair to call them secular and atheistic. Are secular themes enough to call something atheistic or do people WANT to see identifiable atheist television and what would that look like?
For there to be a show about atheists I can only thing of two ways: a) a show where people interview atheists, or the follow an atheist around, or they do like atheist home-remodeling, or they follow around a bunch of atheists doing good deeds… so reality television that no one would watch or b) a show based around a universal atheistic principle… But besides there being “no god” what is a universal atheistic principle? Perhaps it could be a show about making the most out of today and showing that it isn’t just hedonistic? I’m not really sure.
- Atheists want us to feel sorry for them all the time and when we say they’re not being oppressed, they get pissed.
Yeah… I’m gonna say it: A lot of people went into this talk with a predetermined notion that this guy was going to say that atheists are not represented sufficiently in mainstream media and when he didn’t – they got pissed off. There is nothing like going into a room of people who think they’re the underdog and then telling them that they’re not. But I think it’s true. I’m thinking about the shows that I watch on a regular basis and none of them are inherently religious. Once in a while there might be a “well we just have to pray to God that it works out” line or a stereotypical Christian wedding reception – but nothing out of the ordinary for regular Canadian/American society.
The one problem I can find with atheist representation in mainstream media is something I’ve already alluded to: the atheists always seem like the mean/sociopathic/disconnected people of the shows. Just look at the people I listed:
Dexter – murderous sociopath, Lee Adama – I guess he wasn’t so bad, Mr. Big from Sex in the City – grumpy cynical old man, Perry Cox – alcoholic asshole, Jen from Dawson’s Creek – the one with all the “problems”…
So yeah…It would be nice to see atheistic characters that are openly atheist while being the good guy.
(I realize I use bullet points and numbering a lot – it helps me formulate my thoughts…)
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