Athée Canadien
Atheism
50 Top Atheists in the World Today
Dec 9th
The website, The Best Schools, has published a list of the top 50 atheists in the world today.
Larry Moran who brought the list to my attention says, “I’m not a very good atheist ’cause I’ve never heard of most of the top 50 atheists.” I recognize 44% of the names on the list. Does this make me “a very good atheist”?
Check out the list, see how many names you recognize and be prepared to be surprised, perplexed and amazed.
Why Atheists Are Angry
Dec 7th
The video of Greta Christina’s presentation at Skepticon IV was posted by tildeb on his blog, Questionable Motives. Every second of the video merits close attention, but here are some highlights:
I’m angry that people are dying of AIDS in Africa and South America because the Catholic Church convinced them that using condoms makes Baby Jesus cry. (8:40)
I’m angry about the girl in the Muslim family who was told . . . by her teacher . . . that the red stripes on Christmas candy cane represented Christ’s blood, that she had to believe and be saved by Jesus Christ or she’d be condemned to hell, and if she did not convert, there would be no place for her in his classroom. (12:02)
For the purposes of her talk, she defines religion as a
belief in supernatural entities or forces that have an effect on the natural world, the belief in entities or forces that are invisible, inaudible, intangible or otherwise undetectable by any natural means (26:32)
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.
95 % of Statistics are Made Up.
Nov 21st
OK so I am sure that Ipsos Reid, being in the business of statistics is a little more careful with their numbers, and how they portray them, than the title would suggest. Statistics can be quirky things, they can be made to say a variety of things, even the truth. No that is not my quote. The author is unknown.
Poetic atheism
Oct 19th
Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Doubt: A History, recently gave a talk at Rutgers University about her new research into “Poetic Atheism.”
The historical research is really interesting to me, and Hecht argues that the New Atheist movement breaks with our history, which was often based more in the humanities than the hard sciences. She argues that many of the great storytellers of history were potentially less religious than assumed, including William Shakespeare.
“If all of the great poets were believers, they would have been religious writers,” she said. “They didn’t believe dominant stories about what meaning is … John Keats, he never mentions Jesus. In Shakespeare, there’s none of this kind of religious thinking.”
She further suggests that many of the great writers wouldn’t have used the word ‘God’ if they had known the intellectual baggage it would carry today.
While some of these ideas sound a bit far-reaching, I’ll hold out judgement until I read the book. It wouldn’t be the first time that a news article glossed over the key details of a complex argument.
It sounds like a fascinating talk. I’ve never had the pleasure of hearing Hecht speak, but she’s definitely on my must-see list.
What are people’s favourite atheist poems (or at least poems that can be interpreted atheistically)?
Quick, someone get us on Halifax Transit
Oct 18th
Back in 2009 when Humanist Canada and the Freethought Association of Canada were both putting out atheist bus ads, a few municipalities that initially rejected the ads eventually came around and allowed them to be run.
Halifax was one of the cities that initially refused but was eventually forced to revise its policy. The city opted to ban all political/religious advertising to avoid controversy.
Now Hemant Mehta has posted a picture from Reddit with a religious ad on Halifax Transit and is asking whether this policy still exists or not.
One issue missed by Hemant is that around the same time, the Supreme Court ruled that Translink (Vancouver’s public transit company) could not ban the Canadian Federation of Students from running ads. This issue is tangential since Translink had initially banned these ads claiming they were political in nature. This opened the doors for atheist bus ads across Canada, regardless of existing policy (since this ruling essentially strikes down any existing policy).
Now, from what I remember of my early time with FAC was that there was some interest from people in Halifax in running a bus ad, but not enough to actually organize it. It wasn’t clear to me that it was banned so much as no one really tried hard enough to run an ad after the ruling. FAC had finished the Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign (There’s Probably No God…) and was trying to find a new direction to head. I’m not sure whether Humanist Canada later tried and failed to run an ad.
So, to answer Hemant’s question, the ads have to be allowed, someone just has to get up the funding and effort to run them.
Thanks… for what?
Oct 10th
I have to admit, I’m not much for celebrating Thanks Giving anymore. There have been times in my life, when it was a big family thing, but of late, with family in different places, it doesn’t really get the same attention it did when I was a kid. I still love my very secular Christmas… but I can’t claim to be anything but a somewhat-thankless sort generally.
I don’t object to the holiday, however, yay for a day off work. Sure, there is the whole association with colonialism thing, and the silly thanking a supernatural being for not smiting me… this year, yet, but really, for me, even when I used to celebrate, it was mostly just about getting together with family and getting as stuffed as the dead bird on the table.
The Ottawa Citizen’s resident atheist expert, Kevin Smith, weighed in on the Thanking, with his usual aplomb, but this holiday just doesn’t really make me sentimental for much, and thinking about the injustices in the world is not really good for my digestion.
So, what or who, is a cranky old atheist to thank? I think I’m going to thank the farmers who work hard in the field all year, no, not corporate agribusiness entities, but the people who actually work in the fields, who raise and kill the meat and veggies, who grow and pick my coffee. They work harder than I do, and many of them get much less in compensation for it.(And don’t even get me started on that Steve Jobs bastard)
Thanks may not mean that much, but to the farmers and other producers, of the stuff I need to live, THANK YOU.
I hate your god
Oct 6th
I haven’t really believed in any theistic concept of a god for many years now. It took me a while to admit that I was ‘an atheist’, but I was one in fact long before I was one in name. It wasn’t until I rounded that corner that I began to really think of the implications of theistic belief. Before that happened, I fully participated in the ‘pick and choose’ attitude that I now find so galling in others – taking the bits of the articles of faith without fully thinking them through.
Now that the wool has been fully removed, however, I will not hesitate to lambaste believers in the same way I wish someone had lambasted me when I took the easy duck-out routes from having to deal with the full implications of the god I believed in. An all-powerful being that sees human suffering, suffering that it created itself, and does nothing to intervene – or does intervene but only in the most inconsequential ways – is a monster. To call your god “love” is a complete betrayal of everything virtuous and honest in that emotion. This grotesque perversion is on display no more obviously than in the headline of this story: More >
Edmonton Atheists care for Alberta’s highways
Oct 1st
I totally missed featuring this, but a few weeks ago the good folks at the Society for Edmonton Atheists participated in their annual highway clean-up.
By picking up garbage on the side of the road, the group gets a sign recognizing their efforts.
You can read about their adventures and see more pictures on their blog.
Congratulations to the Edmonton Atheists! Keep up the good work!
Genocide equivalent to tearing a piece of paper
Sep 20th
It’s 2011 and we still have to deal with garbage like this, from Brad Hirschfield:
Fanatical atheism is no worse and no better than fanatical religion, though it may be more bitterly ironic. There is something pretty odd, dare I say hypocritical, about a bunch of people who call themselves “freethinkers” and “humanists” not only verbally abusing people of faith, but actually tearing up verses from the Bible as an act of protest, as they did on a pier in Huntington Beach, California Saturday morning. It doesn’t sound terribly humane to me, and I am quite sure that destroying texts, however much one may object to them, is the opposite of free thought.
Murder, genocide, female genital mutilation, and indoctrination don’t “sound terribly humane to me.” Ripping out parts of the Bible that no one even follows is proving a point – one which apparently flew right over Brad’s head.
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