Athée Canadien
Posts tagged canada
Another Canadian humanist organization?
Aug 8th
From The Waterloo Record:
A new national humanist organization based in Waterloo Region hopes to bring humanists across the country together to work with people of faith to help others.
It may a lofty goal but it is a doable one, says Doug Thomas of Elmira, who along with Barrie Webster of Victoria, B.C. started the Secular Connexion Seculaire in May.
“We often move together and vent. We need to get beyond shouting into each other’s navels,” said Thomas, a retired high school English teacher.
“Let’s find a common purpose and work together,” he said. Thomas hopes that strength in numbers will encourage other humanists to work together in community projects such as building homes with Habitat for Humanity.
Well that’s fantastically noble and commendable, but this article neglects mention of the other existing national freethought groups in Canada: CFI Canada, Humanist Canada, Canadian Secular Alliance, and (until recently) the Freethought Association of Canada. Not to mention the countless local and campus groups. Do we really need more?
Of course, it may be a desire to replicate the schisms that rule American freethought, and as long as they end up doing good work, I’m not going to stand in their way, so let’s take a look through their website.
CFI to establish physical centres in all Canadian cities!
Jul 15th
Centre for Inquiry Canada has just announced that it has a donor who is willing to put forward a fifth-of-a-million dollars (Canadian dollars even!) if CFI can raise another $300,000. That would total half-a-million dollars, enough to lease or buy physical locations for each of their centres in Canada.
Even if you’re not the biggest fan of CFI, these physical centres will benefit the entire freethought movement. Local groups, as is the case in right now Toronto, will have a sympathetic landlord who will either rent at a reduced or complimentary rate.
So go and donate now, and again, and get your friends to donate to the Next Big Step campaign.
The deadline is September 30th, so there’s not a lot of time to reach this goal.
Pulpit and Politics: Competing Religious Ideologies in Canadian Public Life
Jul 14th
Dennis Gruending writes some of my favourite pieces on the intersection of religion and politics in Canada at Pulpit and Politics. He was a member of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and a member of parliament for the NDP.
Despite being religious, he’s generally on the same side as me on most social issues, and is also concerned about the rise of the evangelical right in Canada.
So this means I’m excited to hear that he’s publishing a book by the same name as his blog:
I have been struck over the past few years by the growing competition between religious progressives and conservatives for power and influence in Canadian politics. This is an historic rivalry and one that will become even more pronounced now that Stephen Harper has won a majority government, partly through the efforts of religious conservatives. Their political agenda is anchored in opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, publicly funded childcare, a dislike of many social programs, and a general suspicion of government. Since its inception in 2006, the Harper government has courted conservative evangelicals, along with certain Catholic and Jewish voters, to join a political coalition that would change Canada into a leaner and meaner state, albeit it one with more prisons and a larger military.
Which sounds quite similar to the themes of Marci McDonald’s “The Armageddon Factor” from this past year, but Gruending expands:
The book will look closely at the political ideology and tactics of religious conservatives, but that is only half of the story. I will also report on efforts by religious progressives who are struggling to have their voices heard on issues of equality, justice, human rights, and peace. This is an effort that plays out on Parliament Hill, as well in church basements, synagogues and temples. It is not merely a topic of casual interest; the consequences for our future are potentially dramatic. Religious faith informs political decisions about the division of wealth in our society, education and race relations, immigration, respect for democracy, foreign policy, and environmental issues, to name just a few.
So he’ll cover the religious left too, which should be interesting. He has more on the book at his blog.
I find his religious right versus left dichotomy a bit strange. The religious conservatives tend to paint themselves as fighting against we evil secularists, which of course is an easier group to vilify than people who think of God as love.
I also wonder how much credit Gruending will give to the rise of secularism in Canada. Humanists like Henry Morgantaler blazed the trail for abortion rights in this country.
Nevertheless, it should be an interesting read.
Atheists support everyone
Apr 23rd
The Toronto Star has a new poll out tracking where the religious will vote, and, unsurprisingly, Catholics and Christians are supporting the Conservatives.
However, the same poll also shows that atheists and agnostics are a bit more divided:
Among those outside of Quebec who said they are agnostics or atheists, 32 per cent favour the Conservatives, while 31 per cent support the Liberals and 25 per cent are NDP backers. Eleven per cent are with the Greens.
Compared to the national polls, this shows a slight increased preference for the Liberals and Greens and a slight decrease for the Cons.
I don’t have a link, but supposedly Humanist Canada conducted a survey a few years ago that suggested the majority of its members were NDP supporters, a few were Liberals and a small minority supported the Conservatives.
Much ado about the ‘nones’
Mar 26th
Hi Everyone!
I just did a quick interview with Ben Mercer of Newstalk 1010 in Toronto, regarding the recent study on the potential extinction of organized religion.
My interview will follow a discussion with a U of T sociology prof who addresses some of the nuances of the study. I didn’t have to be very nuanced in my interview, as I mainly talked about the stigmas of being an atheist today, and the need to have our secular voices considered in the public sphere.
Anyway, if you’re in the Toronto area (or awake anywhere in the world) and want to listen online, it’s scheduled to be on AM 1010 during the 7AM EST hour — that’s 5AM Saskatchewan time, so perhaps I’ll just await the producer emailing me a clip of the interview.
Religion on its last legs in Canada?
Mar 22nd
The BBC reports on a study of nine countries, including Canada, in which a model suggests that religion will become extinct:
A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
The data reflect a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
…
The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.
They claim that religion is like under-used languages and that it is increasingly more useful in these countries to be non-religious than religious.
The study is available online in the free arXiv under Physics and Society if you want to dig deeper (I may try to later). Here’s a teaser:
Math proves religion is dead.
While I haven’t read it yet, this seems to be a case of physicists making oversimplified assumptions about the world. This is risk any time you extrapolate data.
Nevertheless, for anyone with more time on their hands, or more experience in modelling societal growth, let me know your thoughts.
Bibby on Canadian secularism
Feb 7th
Special note: this is my 100th post on Canadian Atheist making me the most frequent/obnoxious writer here. Overall this is post 314.
Dennis Gruending, at Pulpit and Politics, has posted an interesting piece about Reginald Bibby, sociologist and categorizer of Canadian religious trends. Unfortunately, as both Gruending and Bibby are Christians (Catholic and Baptists respectively, I believe), the analysis is sometimes biased.
Followers of Bibby’s work out of the University of Lethbridge (where atheist Religious Studies professor and blogger Dr. Jim happens to reside) will remember that he is fond of publishing surveys, steeped in religious language, that purportedly show how the religious are more generous and good than the non-religious [pdf]. He is also fond of declaring that there are no more atheists in Canada today (2007) then there were in 1978 [pdf].
Nevertheless, there are some interesting quotes that I want to selectively pull from this post, about Bibby’s latest book.
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.
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