Athée Canadien
Religion
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.
Atheism is cool
Sep 20th
At least according to the Anglican church.
Archbishop Rowan Williams says the Church of England is struggling to have it’s voice heard over the trendiness of atheism.
In a public conversation with comedian Frank Skinner at Canterbury Cathedral last Friday, Archbishop Rowan said that while the popularity of atheist authors like Richard Dawkins may be partly to blame for the Church’s declining attendance, it has not necessarily created fewer believers.
“I’d want to know how many atheists [Dawkins'] The God Delusion created. The book sold, but did it make a difference to the number of people who were actually committed one way or the other? . . . I’m not avoiding the point that the coolness of atheism is very much in evidence. I’m just not quite sure that it shifts people’s serious commitments that much in the long run.”
Declaring atheism a fad is a standard tactic by religious leaders who are finding it more difficult to justify their beliefs. Atheism has had its ups and downs throughout history making this valid argument. Yet because atheism has been around longer than Anglicism, or any other religion, in response we can just shrug off their beliefs as passing trends.
Nearly half of Canadians don’t believe in God
Sep 19th
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:
Regardless of their thoughts, these numbers show the success of the secular and atheist movements.
Keep it up!
Christian opposition to public prayers
Sep 19th
Theology professor John Stackhouse argues against public prayers.
Prayer isn’t supposed to be an opportunity to proclaim or teach your faith to others. Instead, prayer is a form of speech offered on behalf of everyone present to God.
Prayer in public secular events is like holding up a photograph of your mother and saying, “I’ve got Mom on speakerphone now, so let’s all tell Mom how much we love her as our mother and how we hope she’s proud of us for what we’ve done at university/work/war.” People would look at each other and then at you and think, “You’re crazy. She’s not our mother, and we didn’t do it for her.”
More >
God’s existence does depend on us
Sep 17th
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
Sep 11th
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.
Religious rights over human rights in Ontario
Sep 1st
Toronto Catholics still have no integrity.
Trustees at a Toronto Catholic District School Board meeting decided to put denominational rights above human rights and tried to make a direct attack on gay-straight alliances.
The Aug 31 meeting was the final debate on the TCDSB’s equity and inclusive education policy, which has already passed. More than 100 people packed the gallery for the fiery meeting; in the majority were a vocal contingent of people objecting to homosexuality being taught in any way in Catholic schools, including within the context of bullying prevention and peer support.
“Denominational rights are the first priority,” trustee John Del Grande repeated several times.
To their credit, the trustees voted against the amendment that would allow them to ignore a government mandate forcing them to accept GSA alliances, which is a good start but the language used my most of the Catholic supporters and trustees throughout the evening isn’t comforting.
Delegate Anna Lukowski says being gay is not a “lifestyle consistent with the Catholic church. The board should only have goals that are consistent with Catholic faith and doctrinal rights.”
Separate schools need to be a priority during the Ontario election that starts next week. The Green Party supports eliminating separate schools but won’t bring it up unless it becomes an election issue (which us atheist activists are working hard to create). The other major parties support the status quo so supporters need to contact their candidates to point out the hate-filled discrimination they tacitly support.
See also The Globe and Mail
Slippery when WRONG
Aug 30th
Are you looking to have your blood pressure raised? If so, then read this article by an orthodox rabbi: A Plea to Atheists: Pedophilia Is Next On the Slippery Slope; Let Us Turn Back Before It Is Too Late. According to Rabbi Averick:
Since in the atheistic worldview we are nothing more than upright walking primates, our value systems have no more significance than those of our jungle dwelling relatives. In the Darwinian view, the human is to the cockroach as the cockroach is to the paramecium. To imagine that we are something “more” is just that: a product of the human imagination.
It would be absurd then for the atheist to suggest that any particular individual or society has the authority to dictate to all human beings what their values should or should not be; it would be even more absurd to suggest that the pronouncements of any individual or society obligates others to behave accordingly. For the atheist, morality is simply a word that is used to describe the type of system that an individual or society subjectively prefers. Each society establishes, maintains, and modifies its values to suit its own needs.
If the rabbi is right, you’d think there would be high rates of raping and pillaging and other forms of immorality currently present in the atheistic countries in the world. Oh, but wait — studies show that the “societies with higher percentages of secular people are actually more healthy, humane, and happy than those with higher percentages of religious people” [source].
Thankfully, Rabbi Averick won’t let a little thing like reality stop him from spreading fallacies about atheists and our sense of morality:
One can reasonably predict that as the infatuation with skepticism and atheism grows among the influential “intellectual elite” of our society, so too will their readiness to embrace more radical changes in moral values. Religious believers expressing dismay and horror at the ominous moral storm clouds looming on the horizon are met with smug derision, hysterical counter-accusations, or utter indifference. There is nothing that atheistic societies are incapable of rationalizing and accepting – including the sexual molestation of children.
I had a hard time reading the rest of the article, due to my blind rage. Someone help me out, and set the good rabbi straight in the comments.
Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice…
Aug 19th
Twice in one week!? Who’d of thought we could be this “lucky”! More >
Any Thoughts?
Aug 19th
On August 17, Jerry Coyne announced that the National Center for Translation in Cairo has just commissioned an Arabic translation of his book Why Evolution Is True. There were numerous comments congratulating Coyne, but a comment by Ben Goren prompted an irrational reply from dguller and resulted in a dialogue between Goren and dguller.
Ben Goren says
Woo-hoo! Conga rats!
The Arab world carried the torch of intellectualism while the West had its Dark Ages. It’s about time we returned the flavour (sic). Just imagine what we can do working together!
and dguller’s first reply to Ben Goren’s innocuous comment is off topic and irrational
Wait wait wait!
Don’t you know that in Islamic lands, non-Muslims, or dhimmis, were treated overall as second-class citizens, marked by signs to identify them (a la Nazi Germany), and generally considered inferior to Muslims?
Does this mean that you are an apologist for Islamic apartheid?
Or rather does it mean that a human civilization can have both positive and negative qualities, and that you are able to see the noble aspects of Islamic civilization without having to endorse all that such a civilization entails?
When asked for an explanation dguller replies
It’s simple, actually.
You refuse to allow the Church any possible positive effect upon individuals and history, and constantly describe it as an utterly malevolent entity that poisons and destroys everything it manages to touch, without exception. And you do this because it has done horrific things, and still does horrific things.
I just found it curious that you can be so casual with your praise of another faith-based civilization with its own share of injustice, e.g. its treatment of dhimmis, but seem completely unable to apply the same perspective to Christian civilization. . . .
Any thoughts?
The discussion continues, and I encourage you to read all of the dialogue.
However, I have a question:
Why does praise for a non-Christian person or country prompt apologists to defend Christianity and Christian countries?
Any thoughts?
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