Category Archives: Atheism

Poetic atheism

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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

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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?

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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

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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: Continue reading →

Edmonton Atheists care for Alberta’s highways

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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

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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.

Continue reading →

Nearly half of Canadians don’t believe in God

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In addition to the swath of new reality, cop, and comedy shows, there’s a new “news” show coming to Global this fall called Context.

Context promises to discuss “life beyond the headlines” (the quotes are on their Who We Are page), meaning news from a Christian world view. The show is hosted by Evangelical Christian journalist Lorna Dueck, who previously hosted Listen Up.

I was going to go through the Answers provided by Context, or how she responds to her “atheist friends” that science has disproved god but it’s fairly standard Christian mumbo-jumbo. I don’t have the will power to go through it right now, maybe I’ll pick on it later, or you can demolish it in the comments (or if anyone wants to actually read through it all, send it to me and I’ll post it here).

What’s more interesting than picking on another evangelical TV show (which shows at roughly 11:00 AM local across the country), besides the opportunity to crash her set if you’re in Toronto, is the results of the poll that they commissioned to launch their show.

They hired reputable firm Ipsos Reid, who polled 1129 Canadians earlier this month. Among their findings:

  • Only 53% of Canadians believe in God. This puts a combined atheist/agnostic/unsure response rate at 47%, the highest ever reported. Worth noting is the 1 in 3 Catholics and nearly 1 in 4 who attend Church service weekly do not believe in God.
  • The same number of believers also think religion is a net positive, while the remaining 47% agree that religion does more harm than good.
  • Only 29% of Canadians believe in heaven, and only 19% believe in hell. So sticks and carrots aren’t dictating our morality.
  • 71% don’t think that religious people are necessarily better citizens – which means sadly that 29% still think atheists are lesser than the rest.
  • 64% think religion raises more questions than answers.
  • Finally, a slim majority – 51% – do not think “religious practice is an important factor in the moral lives of Canadians.”

I think the TV show is trying to play these results off as demonstrating the need to evangelize more, given their tweets:

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Regardless of their thoughts, these numbers show the success of the secular and atheist movements.

Keep it up!

God’s existence does depend on us

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Daniel Racicot writes for the Sudbury Star.

In the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, Hades says to Zeus, "The prayers of the mortals sustain our immortality."

I wonder how many people understood what he meant? Greek mythology is commonly regarded as a great source of ideas and imagery for fantasy movies, but to the ancient Greeks it was their religion. So, what does it mean, in religious terms, that the gods need our prayers for their sustenance? What does it mean that the existence of God depends on us?

Unfortunately, he goes off on some babbling about a two-way relationship with the Almighty when the answer is so much clearer and simpler.

God’s existence depends on us because he only exists in the minds of people. No appeals to philosophy, cosmology, or scripture are necessary.

No consciousness, no God.

Theology makes things complicated, atheism makes them simple.

Godless money… you can’t take it

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For those of you who are fans of A.C. Grayling, you may or may not know that soon you will be able to learn from the atheist masters. Certainly looks interesting.

New College of Humanities, in London. With some of the world’s most prominent atheists signed up to teach (including Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, Niall Ferguson, Laurence Krauss, and Steven Pinker)

And of course, it is already ruffling a few feathers… not just because its godless, although that is definitely a bad.. but also… because it is capitalist. So it goes.

No one will attend the “God (still) does not exist” conference

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I wanted to fully respond to a recent comment that questioned why atheist conferences discuss “activist” issues like diversity rather than just stick to “a discussion about Atheism.” Here’s the full comment, by Chyrch:

People get pissed off when discussing sexism (and racism for that matter) because we’re constantly bombarded with it. The main reason I don’t go to Atheist conferences is because of crap like this. It should be a discussion about Atheism, and instead half the conference is unqualified bloggers who just want to speak about what they’re passionate about.

The general sense of the Atheist community as a whole, is simply that it’s full of activists who happen to be Atheists.

I think there’s quite a few issues here, and I think they may be prevalent enough to warrant this response.

Continue reading →

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