Athée Canadien
Religion
“Sometimes insiders make the best outsiders”*
Sep 8th
One of the local groups I help facilitate in Saskatoon is Café Apostate. Here’s how the group is described:
Are you a recovering religionist? A former fundy? Someone who grew up deeply involved in the faith, and now has gone all heretic? Or did you escape any religious indoctrination, and are just interested in hearing stories from the formerly religious?
If so, then you should come out and join us for coffee and religiously-based rants at Café Apostate. It’s a low-key way to interact with other freethinkers who have “left the flock,” and share stories and maybe even brainstorm some strategies of how to deal with religious friends and family members who don’t understand your godlessness.
Café Apostate: A cupful of heresy!
The intention of our group isn’t quite along the lines of the Recovering from Religion groups, or even the Living without Religion group out in Ontario — while we do have similar aims. Maybe it’s the rebellious ex-evangelical in me, but I wanted the name of our group to be less support-group oriented. I also didn’t like how the other two names gave the (unintended) impression that the ex-believer’s life is now disempowered or is lacking something.
The little group we’ve got in Saskatoon is growing quite well, and at each of our monthly meetings, I’m always surprised at the range of people we have attend. We’ve had everyone from former evangelicals (*cough*me*) to retired Catholic priests, former Hindus, past new-Agers, and there’s always a few from-the-cradle atheists attending, too.
You can imagine that this kind of melange makes for many interesting conversations! I love how our group is open to both former-believers AND never-been-believers. I find that having the mix of the two really helps to open up conversations and disseminate stereotypes, for either perspective.
As someone who once was an active Christian, and is now turned an active heretic, there have been times where my background of being a former believer has been considered a liability by a few fellow nonbelievers.
Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but I hate it when there’s needless hierarchies and us/them divides, especially when you are all heading in the same supposed direction. This isn’t to say that I find myself in a place of privilege over someone who has never been in a faith system — but, likewise, I don’t think it means that I’ve been forever marred with a deluded/indoctrinated mind, just because I was once an evangelical Christian.
If anything, there’s a need for both types of us atheists — those who have not been in a faith system and those who have. We each have different perspectives to lend to our movement, and if anything, the two groups make for one hell (pun intended) of a tag-team against irrational religious belief!
[*I'm pretty sure I heard this quote attributed to Dan Barker, a fairly prominent apostate leading the Freedom from Religion Foundation in the States]
Spying on Atheists for Xtians
Sep 6th
This whole thing is far too funny not to share.
When I was doing the Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign with the Freethought Association of Canada I got a lot of death threats. People got my personal cell phone number and would call me at all hours of the day and night to scold me. I would get lectured, threatened and yelled at. But it has taken a rabid atheist or secular humanist to formulate his own personal vendetta against me… striking at my name at every chance possible.
In case you can’t read it:
“Katie Kish is a christian spy and saboteur. Check her profile. Everyone should join her group spying on atheists for xtians so we can see what she’s up to. She is President of the Freethought Association of Canada and was employed by CFI. This is too bizarre to make up.”
and
“Katie Kish is a christian spy and saboteur. Check her profile. Everyone should join her group spying on atheists for xtians so we can see what she and her friends are up to. She is President of the Freethought Association of Canada and was employed by CFI. She is a good spy.”
and
“Google spying on atheists for Xtians and you will see her picture. Maybe now she wants recognition for serving the Lord. Why not ask Katie why she said she was a Christian.”
What is depressing is that if you google it my picture doesn’t actually come up. The Facebook group that Facebook automatically made when I (jokingly) listed it as an interest comes up… and my picture is there.
This whole thing started when Rod and I were both on the board of the FAC. He wanted to send a copy of Victor Stenger’s “God: The Failed Hypothesis” to someone in government who was open about his Christianity (and I think a supporter of Creationism, which is why everyone was so pissed off). I basically told Rod that we shouldn’t send it. I said it would be offensive and a bad PR move on the FAC’s part. I think I also mentioned that it was sort of not on topic, and that we might consider sending science education books to multiple politicians, which would have a much better press headline.
Rod got pissed off and said I was censoring him while trying to protect someone’s faith. He continued to say that I had been in contact with a United Church Minister and was probably starting to get confused (or something) about faith. I feel like I should mentioned that I’ve been in contact with a United Church Minister every single day for the past 13 years of my life – as my step-dad is one. He started to say that I probably shouldn’t be employed by FAC because I wasn’t an atheist and was therefore not looking out for the best interest of the group.
The FAC board decided to have a meeting about it. At the meeting Rod further accused me of censoring him and being to kind to religion. At the time thought I was an atheist, and so said so (I’m obviously not anymore and am very open about it). The board also took an official vote on sending book. I abstained from the vote, so that Rod could no longer blame me for the book not being sent, 3 board members voted not to send the book and Rod voted to send it. Despite my attempt to stay out of it Rod still holds me entirely accountable for that book not being sent. (Yes, we’ve told him many times he can send it on his own, but apparently that’s not good enough).
Now I’ve pretty much tried to steer clear of this guy ever since all of that happened. But he continues to attack my name every chance possible. (And agnostics… saying they are intellectually dishonest and stupid. He said this at a Coping Without Religion meeting, even… a support group for people trying to leave religion… *anger anger anger*) If I comment on someone’s thing on Facebook he is right there to start attacking me. Apparently he googles me to see what I’m up to. He tried to start talking about me at a Living Without Religion group, but luckily people stopped him from further slandering my name.
Just a few nit-pics about this guy:
- I’ve never been employed by CFI. I have been employed by the FAC where one of my main responsibilities was to help CFI in event planning and taking care of the library. But ‘ve never been a CFI employee.
- Even though I am a Christian I don’t see why it matters that I’m involved with CFI and FAC as neither are specifically atheist groups. You can very easily be a liberal Christian who sees the problems with religion, with the issues that atheists face in society and the problems with religion interfering in the public sphere. CFI is becoming increasingly irritating when it comes to religion (ie: saying that religious spaces are not good for humanity!!) but you still don’t need to be an atheist to be involved with the majority of their campaigns.
- Myself and other CFI-Ontario/FAC/Toronto-atheists have amplified the joke that I’m a christian spy simply to make fun of Rod… but the interesting thing is that the more we amplify the joke the more convinced to becomes that I actually *am* a Christian spy.
Seriously. It’s not like this guy is getting on my nerves but it is starting to get a little bit ridiculous. How can he call me a saboteur when I have done far more for the secularist movement in Canada than he will ever do. Despite having to put up with atheists arguing with me about faith and telling me I’m stupid I stick around and continue to volunteer to support the freethought/secularist cause. It’s not like I’ve read a book, found amazing truth in it and now use it against everyone’s argument about everything without actually thinking if the book worthy of so much praise. I’m not referring to the bible here, I’m referring to his seriously weird obsession with Victor Stenger’s book… which has become his own personal bible making him just as closed minded at conservative/extreme Christians.
For Halloween everyone in Toronto should join me in making an army of Rod Tamneys. All that is needed is a silly looking fedor, a pompus looking suit, a copy of Stenger’s book and the following three lines memorized: “agnostics are stupid”, “katie is a christian spy” and “read chapter 2 of this book”.
So… Can I sue him for slander or something yet?
A campaign against a homophobic charity
Sep 6th
Mark at Slap Upside the Head, has started a campaign to get the Canadian Revenue Agency to revoke charitable status for Exodus Global Alliance.
This “charity” is a homophobic US Evangelical group that seeks to “proclaim freedom from homosexuality.” They run anti-gay conferences where they attempt to “cure” gay people and counsel families with gay people in them.
They have been registered as a religious charity since 1999 within the category of “Missonary Organizations and Propagation of Gospel,” which basically means that our government considers curing gay people worthy of issuing tax receipts for (while at the same time also sanctioning gay marriage). While we (and I presume to speak for everyone here) at Canadian Atheist take exception with the propagation of religion as a charitable activity, it is especially disgusting to see such an endorsement of hateful, discriminatory practice by our own system.
So what can you and I do?
First, read more from Mark, and learn what’s going on. Then write CRA to complain. And finally, share this story so more people can get the word out.
Mark’s even provided a form letter to use to file your complaint:
I’m concerned that the activities being performed in Canada by Exodus Global Alliance, a registered charity, do not meet the criteria of a public benefit as defined by the Canada Revenue Agency.
Exodus’ primary activities include the promotion and treatment of homosexuality as a mental disorder—a notion not supported by the medical and psychological community. Since homosexuality has not been listed as a disorder in medical literature since the mid 1970s, it does not require treatment as promoted by Exodus. Several respected medical and psychological associations, incuding the American Medical Assocation and the American Psychological Association, have issued official statements attesting that such treatments may even result in serious psychological harm.
For these reasons, and in the interest of Canadians, I believe Exodus Global Alliance’s charitable status should be re-evaluated according to the Canada Revenue Agency’s public benefit criteria.
Which can be sent to:
…Contact Revenue Canada’s Charities Directorate at 1-800-267-2384, or write to them:
Charities Directorate
Canada Revenue Agency
Ottawa ON K1A 0L5You can also contact the Office of the Commissioner and Office of the Deputy Commissioner of the CRA:
Mrs. Linda Lizotte-MacPherson
Commissioner — Chief Executive Officer of the CRA
7th Floor
555 MacKenzie Avenue
Ottawa ON K1A 0L5Mrs. Lyse Ricard
Deputy Commissioner of the CRA
7th Floor
555 MacKenzie Avenue
Ottawa ON K1A 0L5
It’s about time that we started challenging the promotion of religion as a basic charitable activity.
I’m not Catholic…
Sep 6th
Nor do I come from a Catholic background, so my patience for the antics of the Holy See is fairly limited, but when I saw this article I was thinking ok.. this could be good.
The Vatican has said it could appeal diplomatically to Iran to spare the life of an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.
So even with the whole adultery being sin thing, the big V is willing to take a stand against capital punishment. Looking good.
The statement followed a plea for help from the son of the woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, in an interview with an Italian news agency.
Not exactly springing into action, but I’m willing to give credit where credit is due, helping the helpless puts into action a lot of christian rhetoric about charity and compassion.
The Vatican said it was “following this affair with attention and commitment,” spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement.
“The Church’s position against the death penalty is well known and stoning is a particularly brutal form of it,” he said.
Alright, Lombardi’s the man, celibate or not, looks like this guys got some balls. Gonna get it done.
Fr Lombardi said the Vatican could use diplomatic channels to try to save Ms Ashtiani, but he told Associated Press news agency that no formal request to intervene had been made.
What?
Formal what?
Like an engraved invitation?
OMFgawd.
Who exactly made the formal request that you intervene in preventing disease by opposing condoms? Because, I’d like to formally request that you STFU about that. And…
Dear mister pope,
I hereby formally request you get off your hypocritical ass, and to the very best of your ability, help this poor woman.
Sincerely, your pal,
Joe
PS I’m a vocal atheist, so listen damnit.
The Paradoxes of Atheism
Sep 6th
Zeno was a philosopher in Ancient Greece, who was well known for proposing paradoxes. One involved shooting an arrow at a tree. Zeno observed that at any one moment in that arrows flight it has a certain position in space. Every succeeding moment can be thought of as a different position. This being the case, he reasoned that it made no sense to assign a speed to a moment, and if there is no speed in a moment, how does the arrow move? This may seem strange and irrelevant, but this particular paradox presented a serious problem for logic and physics.
The solution, is as marvelous as it is unsatisfying, at least to me. The solution is called Calculus. It doesn’t so much solve the logical conundrum as much as bypass it, to find useful solutions based on varying degrees of approximation. Good for physics, not so good for philosophy.
The crux of the paradox, as with other paradoxes lies in having two seemingly contradictory ideas about the same thing. In Zeno’s case it was about our conception of velocity vs position.
Another similar example is how we think of Time: does time actually flow, or is it just a series of consecutive moments? No answer so far.
Paradoxes exist because our minds can conceptualize the same thing, in different ways. This can lead to new discoveries, but it can also entail endless argument when one group decides one conceptualization is the correct one, and another group takes the opposite position.
When I have discussions with other atheists, quite often the latter becomes the case, in large part because atheism is such a thin commonality to base any kind of community on.
The communist vs objectivist aspect of the atheist community is a good example of this. The two sides simply value different things. So even when they appear to be talking about the same thing, they really aren’t. They are actually talking past each other, and therefore see each other as irrational.
I think this is also the case with the recent Islam discussions. Some take the view that freedom of religion equals freedom from religion, so its perfectly reasonable to defend the rights of Muslims. An opposing view, not the only one, is that any sort of faith-based decision-making is irrational, and therefore dangerous, and therefore should be opposed.
Both can be deduced logically, but they have distinct and opposing premises. Which is more important to you? Freedom or Reason?
As a relativist, my answer is, unsurprisingly, it depends. Others however, are more wedded to one or the other.
So if this sounds crazy to you, check your assumptions, I bet mine are different… either that, or it’s the other thing…. which reminds me…
Don’t Drink and Blog.
Canadians are an anti-religious bunch
Sep 5th
A new poll is out in the National Post from a group at Carleton University and the Association of Canadian Studies on religious belief in Canada.
They only surveyed 420 people, but it was completed as an 80-question mail-in survey, so their margin of error is nearly 5%, the results are pretty striking.
First, the good news:
…respondents also registered concern about some negative aspects of religion. About three out of four Canadians agreed with the statements “religion breeds conflict” and “religious people are too intolerant.”
Also, belief in the afterlife and miracles is down to 54% and only about 30% “know God really exists and have no doubts.”
The atheist position was represented by 7% and agnostics made up another 12%. These numbers seem consistent with most recent data, but this does leave a lot of soft “spiritual but not religious” people out there to be recruited. Roughly 40% of Canadians are either deists or Sunday theists.
Atheist in a foxhole
Sep 5th
When people used to say “there are no atheists in foxholes”, my response used to something like this: that’s because atheists aren’t dumb enough to get trapped in one.
The chaplain was struck both by RP2 Chute’s command of the Book of Revelation, and his refusal to take it seriously. “He’s familiar with the Christian doctrine, but he chooses not to believe it,” says the chaplain, a slender-faced, soft-spoken man with a fringe of gray in his black hair. “That’s what I find puzzling.”
But my experience in the secular movement has opened my eyes a bit to the actual numbers of men and women in uniform who are atheists and proud to serve there country. Took me a bit of time to wrap my head around the notion; ‘patriotism’ seems so irrational, so religious.
“He trusts God to keep him safe,” says RP2 Chute. “And I’m here just in case that doesn’t work out.”
The rational thing of course is to settle differences with compromises, not guns, but all too often the world we live in, plays a different game.
Be vocal
Sep 4th
Hemant Mehta began his blog as the “Friendly Atheist,” with a characteristic style of being willing to reach out and dialogue with religious moderates.
If you’ve been reading him for a while, you’ve likely noticed that he’s slowly shifted from that position to a growing cynicism and increased mocking of extremists.
Today he provides some elucidation on his shift. He touches a bit on how one cannot just be quiet when injustice happens, or when people are blatantly wrong and lying, and you know you’re right. He also talks about the lack of religious moderates condemning, really condemning, the extremist responses to things like Draw Mohammed Day, Instead they tend to get wishy washy and fail to defend freedoms.
The whole post is worth the read, but I think the real worrying emotion he noted, in one of his equally liberal, skeptical, albeit less active friend he describes, is that of “I’m okay with the crazies being wrong.”
I think there’s a real danger when forces of ignorance persist unchallenged. 27% of Americans think the President of the USA was definitely or probably not born in the USA. More think the world is 6,000 years old, and many other people think it’s okay to let your kids go to school without their shots.
These wrong beliefs don’t go away on their own. They must be challenged.
So, while I’m probably speaking to a converted audience, why are you not more active at challenging ignorance and irrationality?
Let’s go to Ohio!
Sep 2nd
Okay, so Joe wasn’t wild about the counter-religious protest in a Toronto neighbourhood last week. Fair enough, Joe, you raise a number of valid points. However, I think we can all get behind this Ohio protest:
Several Ohio strippers are protesting outside a church whose members want to put their strip club out of business. The bikini-clad dancers are picketing a congregation that has photographed customers’ number plates and asked if their wives know where they are.
I’ve never been to a strip club. I find them more than a little disgusting and, quite frankly, disturbing. I’ve known a few women who worked as strippers, and none of them really liked their jobs much. Maybe in the super-classy places we see glamorized on TV there are women who enjoy taking their clothes off for leering, drunk boors – I’m skeptical. However, I’m not such a prude as to try and inflict my own discomfiture with the concept of stripping on an entire community.
The Fox Hole club’s owner has told the pastor he will call off his protest if the church ceases its demonstrations. But the pastor has refused, saying, “as a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil”.
Ah yes, the loving tolerance that is so prevalent in the Christian community rears its ugly head again. Apparently the territory that the church “shares” with the world extends in a radius at least 14.5 km around the church building.
The point to be made in all of this is that while you absolutely have a right to avoid strip clubs, it’s entirely possible to do so without going on a campaign of intimidation against them. You don’t want it in your community? Don’t go! Is your husband going? Well then the two of you need to have a chat, I suppose. Either that, or get over the fact that some people go to strip clubs (it’s much easier to do so when you realize that some of the strippers are in their 40s).
The Salvation Army destroys books
Sep 1st
An interesting email exchange was passed along to me that I’ve been given permission to publicize regarding books that are sold at Salvation Army Thrift Stores.
Over the course of the exchange (which lasts several months and includes many non-responses from the Army), it is admitted that the Salvation Army occasionally censors donated books that they receive that do not fit their Christian worldview. The censored books are then destroyed.
I’m not going to post the entire exchange here, or give out names or emails, but here’s some choice snippets (Salvation Army spokespeople in bold):
The Salvation Army store staff do their best to screen books so that we don’t sell books of a pornographic nature, or those that promote promiscuity.
If you find a book that you feel falls into the above categories, please don’t hesitate to bring it to the attention of the store Manager.
Regarding books that describe various philosophies on creation and evolution, non-Christian philosophies and beliefs, etc. we do sell those, as long as they don’t promote non-Christian beliefs. Again, if you see something that should not be on the shelf, please address it with the Store Manager, who will be happy to remove it if it’s unsuitable.
Does this mean that you will be more vigilant about Shakespeare, Greek mythology, or similar classical literature?
- No, because to meet the criteria which you are advocating, we would have to have staff with a thorough knowledge of every author, their opinions, theologies, writing styles etc and that is possible. We do the best we can with the resources and knowledge that we have available to us. We realize that our system is far from perfect,but we try to screen the books at our warehouse and again at store level, but it is difficult because of the enormous volume we process.What books (besides pornography and promiscuity) are removed from your shelves?
Books that promote any religion other than Christianity. Certain authors who we know use bad language, explicit sex or violence in their books. Again, I repeat our knowledge in this area is limited so it is highly probable that we miss some unsuitable books.What happens to those books? Are they put in a place where others may read them?
Destroyed, not re-circulated.
Of course the Army is not known for it’s progressive ideas, including about homosexuality:
For this reason such practices [as homosexuality], if unrenounced, render a person ineligible for Salvation Army soldiership, in the same way that unrenounced heterosexual misconduct is a bar to soldiership. The Army recognises the strength of feeling about sexual identity, and the difficulty many find in expressing this identity in keeping with scriptural standards.
However, it believes firmly in the power of God’s grace to enable the maintenance of a lifestyle pleasing to him, including a lifestyle built upon celibacy and self-restraint for those who will not or cannot marry. No one who yields to the lordship of Christ and who undertakes by his grace to live in accordance with the teaching of Scripture is excluded from Christian fellowship and service in the Army.
So when donating at Christmas, or giving away used clothes, books, or other belongings, consider Value Village or other thrift stores which donate portions of their profits to secular charities.
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