Tag Archives: secularism

Apparently we don’t pick on natives enough

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There’s a very conservative Jewish Christian Zionist student who occasionally shares some shallow thoughts at SFU’s The Peak where I have submitted a few articles to, and he has decided that “secular progressives” are not anti-religion, they’re merely anti-Christian.

His evidence? Progressives were apparently more respectful of aboriginal beliefs at a tar-sands debate than Judeo-Christian beliefs.

As someone who may at times be called a secular progressive, meaning I want to see a better future (progressive) where religion plays less of a role in society (secular), I feel like responding to this article, but my difficulty is deciding which is the appropriate course.

First, I could deny his premise entirely. As a secular progressive, I admit that aboriginal beliefs are as erroneous as Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Zoroastrian beliefs.

Another case in point is acclaimed lecturer and 2008 Humanist-of-the-Year Dr. Christopher diCarlo who found himself in hot water after challenging the creationist belief of a First Nations student with the statement (of fact) ‘We Are African.’

Atheist have no trouble saying that all religions are equally false and are human-constructed myths to understand an intimidating unknown.

Second, I could rephrase his thesis as: why isn’t the left as racist as the right?

In terms of shit ends of the stick, North American aboriginals have been given the foulest, while white European Christians have been holding the clean end for centuries. Picking on their (admittedly false) beliefs is a bit like making fun of the kid who just got beat up on the playground for crying.

Recognizing and respecting aboriginal spirituality is more about levelling the playing field then laying blanket criticisms across all religious people. Similar to many men’s rights groups and people who wonder why we don’t have straight pride parades, we don’t really need to emphasize how much better off the privileged majority is.

Finally, I could concede that we should spend a bit more time debunking Native beliefs. Many Canadians of European decent are tempted by holistic Native healing methods for similar irrational reasons that they see traditional Chinese medicine as somehow more worthwhile than evidenced/science-based medicine.

However, this is similar to the arguments about how atheists apparently tend to not criticize Muslims (we do), and very similarly, we spend most of our time on the biggest issues in our area – which tends to be Christianity. Note how our National Anthem references God (and Christianity explicitly in the French version) but not the aboriginal cultures.

I think there is a point to be made that erroneous postmodern cultural relativism has infected far too many people, and many stand up for aboriginal prayers at city councils and in universities. But in the same way that it is wrong that the Taliban destroy non-Muslim artefacts, it is wrong for us to continue to allow thousands of years of culture to die in North America.

Despite my disapproval of the Pope, the Roman Catholic Church, and all it stands for, I would not want to see the Vatican levelled and all Bibles burned and forgotten.

tl/dr: The best way to respond to people who think we don’t pick on Natives enough: Aboriginal beliefs are wrong too, you are not being persecuted, get over yourself.

The Queen recognizes atheists

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I’ve never been a huge fan of the British/Canadian monarchy, mostly viewing it as an archaic and superfluous institution that doesn’t really represent Canadian modesty.

My only personal reason for not being gung-ho for a Canadian republic is the fear that it would be done wrong and more power would be centralized in the already dangerous Prime Minister’s Office.

And I really don’t care about the upcoming royal wedding.

But, it’s still really nice to hear our Queen, head of the Church of England, say a few nice words about the non-religious:

In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none.

Almost makes you want to sing God Save the Queen, eh?

Of course, some Anglican priests aren’t as progressive as Queen Liz II, and are going Catholic out of fear that the Church of England is sufficiently “protecting” against female priests.

Although, maybe I should commend them for taking such a strong stance on this issue, since their overt sexism makes the Queen’s statement so much more visibly true.

Reason Vancouver moves forward

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I guess I haven’t really made any updates here about the Vancouver Secular Party since mid-August, so I thought I should fill you in on how that project’s going.

First off, we changed the name. While Secular Party is a great name to rally atheists, non-religious, and Katie-Christians ;-), it is a very single-issue name, even more so then the Green Party, and they’re still having trouble appearing as more than environmentalists. So we switched to Reason Vancouver.

Our emphasis is now on an open, empirical, secular approach to politics. We reject ideological dogmas of the left and right, and instead choose to focus on policy that is evidenced-based and rational.

Together with the founding members from those discussions in August, we have formed a non-profit society in BC, registered domain names and have opened a PayPal account to start accepting donations and memberships.

I presented on this project at Vancouver SkeptiCamp 2010-II to a warm reception. The most critical point came as to how do we define our priorities and values without an ideology.

After some thinking, I realized that the direction comes (at least in part) from listening to what the people want. Far too many politicians and political parties have become self-serving: just look at the recent US elections.

A Reason Vancouver rally

As part of this consultation and democratic listening, we established a policy wiki, where anyone can edit our policy and suggest directions for the party to go. Our only request (beyond registering, although its not necessary yet) is that all policy actions are referenced by evidence. We even incorporated the infamous (citation needed) tags from Wikipedia.

We have a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, YouTube and Flickr account (although the later two lack any content yet). Our logo is almost ready and we’re planning a policy conference in February (potentially formatted after SkeptiCamp – specifically see CiviCamp Calgary to which new mayor Naheed Nenshi was a part of).

Finally, with premier Gordon Campbell’s surprise resignation today, we launched the page for Reason BC for anyone in the province who wants to champion Reason’s flag at the provincial level. It will be much more difficult to win provincially, although if Campbell also steps down as an MLA, there will be a by-election in my own riding.

So things are getting exciting on this coast.

Gnu Atheist Questions

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By Andrew Komar

The factually challenged wingnuts over at the  Discovery Institute have asked the scary new atheist movement some questions. I’ll do my best to answer them, but if the courtier’s reply applies, I’m going to use it. I’m an engineer, damnit, not a doctor of philosophy.

1) Why is there anything?

One of the defining principles of quantum physics is the fuzziness of reality, provided you are looking close enough. Call it the uncertainty principal if you want, but nature as we know it has some inherent randomness  ’built’ into the universe. One of the stranger aspects of this is seen in the phenomenon of virtual particles, which are bits of stuff that pop into and out of existence in time spans shorter than we generally notice. This weirdness also manifests itself in the decidedly spooky Casimir Effect, but the take home lesson is that points of what we think of as empty space actually are teeming with vacuum energy.

The laws of reality allow matter and energy to pop into existence, given small enough time frames and small enough distances. Our cosmological model has that the early universe being of just this fuzzy size, so small and energy dense that time itself got squished into another spatial dimension (see: A Brief History of Time). This was just before the inflationary epoch. which expanded the size of the universe by a factor of 10 followed by 43 zeroes. If Stephen Hawking and the string theorists are correct, than a self-consistent understanding of physics demands that universes can and will be spontaneously created from nothing. We’re just lucky enough to be in a universe that happens to support our kind of life and allows these questions.

Now, it should be noted that we are beyond any experimental evidence regarding the ‘creation’ event, even in theory.  As for the ‘why’ bit, that implies intentionality, which is straight up silly. Try asking gravity ‘why’ it is keeping your butt in the chair. Moving along.

2) What caused the Universe?

Again, ’caused’ implies intentionality, but I think I’ve just explained that the universe is essentially self-caused, randomly, as a necessary outcome of the way physics operates.  This question also seems to require time existing independently of the universe, as causality requires time for a sequence of events. Asking about sequences ‘before’ the universe, or what caused the universe without time existing is as meaningful as asking what is north of the north pole.

3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?

I’m going to invoke the anthropic principle here, it’s doubtful that we’d be here to ask that question if the universe wasn’t ordered enough for complex life to arise. If our universe is a probabilistic fluctuation in some grander design, than there are also an infinite number of other universes that would not have perceived regularity, because their variation on the laws of nature wouldn’t allow for beings capable of observation. Call it a self-selection bias with a sample of 1.

Besides, just because we call an observed pattern regular doesn’t make it so; ask the financial markets. The two theories that best explain different properties of our universe are mutually incompatible, but we consider both laws. All we can do is attempt to characterize our observations in a systematic fashion, incorporating them into self consistent models that explain and predicting relevant aspects. Science is the endeavor of weeding out the bad explanations based on evidence, but you are still left with models that are limited by what we know, or even can know.

4) Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?

Buh? Anyway, I don’t know what injecting a thinker who didn’t even get inertia has to do with a modern scientific understanding of the universe, but honestly, I have no idea what to say to this question.

5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?

I think consciousness, an intrinsically subjective experience, is a property of a functioning brain. The specific mechanics of this process are still an active field of research, but I think we have the basics mapped out. We certainly understand the underlying behavior of chemicals, but the 100 trillion or so neurons all interacting with each other in potentially infinite ways is a particularly difficult problem to tackle, but I suspect it is all our neurons firing in a time-dependent fashion that causes our subjective consciousness. That is, mind is what brain does, and consciousness is an epiphenomenon. The fact that it isn’t ‘real’ in some objective sense is no more consequential than the fact that this website is no more than a series of ones and zeroes being interpreted by machinery.

6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?

Courtier’s Reply. I don’t really know what is being asked, but if this is some question intended on injecting some mind-body dualism into the mix, I’m not biting. Mental states are, as far as I’m concerned, a product of neuro-biological phenomenon in time, and it is an unnecessary step to include some soul. You are your brain, and your brain is you.

7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)

I think it is much more likely that ‘moral law’ is something humans made up to help us make sense of the world as it relates to us. That is, right and wrong are words we use to describe events that happen to humans, as opposed to some set of events that are objectively right and wrong. By this definition, we can understand how moral law has changed through human history (see: slavery, genocide, CO2 emissions) because moral law is simply how we define the rightness of any given action.

However, to assert that your particular preferences on right and wrong are some objective feature of the universe is offensively self-centered. All I can say with any certainty is what I think is right and wrong, and if we agree on those definitions, than maybe we can build a society together that implicitly respects our definitions. We might even build institutions (like a church, or a police force) to enforce those definitions, but they are not, nor have they ever been, objective things in a universal sense.

8) Why is there evil?

Evil is a matter of definition, overwhelmingly as actions relate to us (see the last answer). Sometimes, events like earthquakes happen that affect humans, but the events themselves are not intrinsically evil, because they are the result of a non-thinking process that is incapable of intentionally causing harm. The universe on grander scales is completely indifferent to the trials and tribulations of the little apes on the pale blue dot, but what we do have in our control is how we act towards each other. We are what we choose to be, and if our fellow monkeys choose to act in a way we think is evil, we have the choice to accept or challenge that.


Ultimately though, ‘evil’ will die with the last human being that understands what is meant by evil. The universe got on just fine for 13.7 billion years before us without our metaphysical hand-wringing about evil, and I suspect it will do just fine when the only remains of humanity are our electromagnetic transmissions speeding endlessly through the cosmos.

Any questions?

Secular Countries Often More Developed

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This is an opinion article of mine that was published in the local university newspaper.

A recent study in the U.S. conducted by the Pew Research Center has shown atheists know more about religion than the religious. It’s hardly surprising that atheists everywhere are enjoying a feeling of smug satisfaction. But the study highlights something rather unexpected — while the United States is a very religious country, it’s also relatively uninformed when it comes to religious knowledge. Ignorance is a dangerous thing, and there can be little doubt that the current religious tensions in the U.S. are caused, at least in part, by a lack of knowledge. However, this study gets at something deeper — a lack of critical thinking south of our border.

The study, published in late September by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, asked basic questions designed to test religious knowledge. About 3,500 Americans from various religious denominations completed the 32-question survey. Self-identified atheists and agnostics scored the highest, followed by two religious minorities: Jewish people and Mormons.

Some factors were far more important than others in determining the extent of religious knowledge. For example, gender made little difference, and religious affiliation was relatively important; education, however, was the most significant determinant of performance in the survey. The difference between the genders amounted to only four per cent, while the performance difference between the most educated and the least educated came to a whopping 30 per cent — on average, 40 per cent correct for high school or less, and about 70 per cent for recipients of post-graduate education.

What can explain this difference? It’s interesting that global studies of religion and intelligence have shown a very strong relationship between IQ and religious affiliation — more secular countries tend to have higher average levels of intelligence in their citizens. But less religious countries also tend to be more developed countries, so it’s not as simple as assuming that less religion translates to intelligence. There’s a link between high levels of education, proper nutrition, and low levels of religiosity in more developed countries; impoverished countries tend to have poorly developed educational institutions, higher levels of malnutrition, and more religious citizens.

What I think is a very important lesson to learn from all these studies is that secularism is somehow related to high intelligence and economic development. I’m not going to say that we should all abandon religion if we want to make the world a better place. What we should do instead is identify the underlying causal factor, or factors, that link secularism, high intelligence, and development.

One of the contributing factors is likely critical thinking, the willingness to analyze problems from a certain perspective, with an attempt to find an optimal result, drawing upon the best knowledge available. Developing countries don’t have enough critical thinkers willing to seriously tackle the problems of their society — or perhaps they’re all too busy trying to secure food and shelter to sit around and ponder. Among those few educated people in impoverished countries, the tendency is to move elsewhere. It’s a vicious cycle of under-development.

Assuming that developed countries have more critical thinkers, this idea might also help explain the association of secularism and development. Having a critical-thinking approach to religion often gives rise to the rejection of religion. Atheists can be found debunking religious claims all the time, thinking critically about the evidence for and against gods, angels, and flying spaghetti monsters.

Perhaps the lesson to learn from all of this is that the United States should work on their education and critical thinking abilities. Having a high level of ignorance — especially of subjects important to societal cohesion, such as religion — is clearly not a good thing. People may not like learning about one another, but it’s better to have an enlightened knowledge of their neighbours’ religious beliefs than not.

Alberta NDP calls on ending private school funding

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Alberta currently has one of the most absurd policies regarding school funding. They completely fund competing secular public and Catholic school boards (except in St. Albert where the protestant board was never secularized and there is no secular school board), but they also fund private schools (including Islamic and Christian fundamentalists) up to 70% of their budget.

So I like it when half of the NDP caucus there (it’s only 2 members) calls for an end to private school funding.

Rachel Notley uncovered that $171 million is going to private schools in the province. I’m not sure what percentage of private schools are religious, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a large portion.

This number doesn’t even include the amount being spent on the redundant Catholic school boards.

Unfortunately, political will in Alberta is pretty stagnant and I don’t foresee this situation getting better without a lot of pressure both outside and inside the legislature. However, this announcement shows that some consider this an issue worth fighting for (although likely for financial and not secular reasons).

Announcing the Vancouver Secular Party

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We had a very productive meeting last night at the Railway Club.

The basic consensus was that a lobby group is very useful, but a civic electoral organization will provide those same functions during the periods between elections, but also have the benefit of running candidates and making a bigger splash during campaigns.

So we agreed to start work on an electoral organization for the 2011 Vancouver municipal election!

The name Vancouver Secular Party is still pending, and although we’re generally against names like “Atheist Party” or the “Anti-Religion Party” (since we won’t mind if soft-religious people vote for us), we haven’t officially finalized the name (or done any paperwork).

We agreed that we want to be more than a single issue party (tax exemption for churches) and are going to start collaborating on a policy document and investigating the necessary paperwork.

Our basic policies will be rational, evidence based policies (which we understood there can be disagreement on, especially with think-tanks like the Fraser Institute and CCPA both claiming to have evidence for their claims), but we will also have policies written down so we don’t just sound like pandering fools by answering every question with “we support the best option.”

Some discussion also occurred about modelling ourselves on the success of the Swedish (and international) Pirate Party.

Looking at some of the paperwork with the city of Vancouver, it looks like we’ll need 50 registered voters (i.e. live or own property in Vancouver) to sign up as members before we can be recognized. If we aren’t recognized, we can still endorse candidates, we just won’t be able to have our acronym on the ballot.

Our next meeting is scheduled for September 21st, also before the next Vancouver downtown Skeptics in the Pub.

So despite my very uninspiring and somewhat discouraging introduction at the meeting (I downplayed the idea a lot so as not to overinflate our egos too early), we still came to a near-unanimous consensus on the direction we should start heading.

This is a very exciting project, and hopefully things start to come together quickly.

If you want to be involved, join the Google and Facebook groups or email me.

Australia’s winning the secular race

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Canada’s not doing too good in the race to be the most secular member of the Commonwealth.

Australia has an atheist for prime minister, and it’s not a big deal there. Australia also has a secular political party.

Now, their godless heathen of a PM is announcing that Australia should drop the monarchy when Queen Elizabeth II dies.

This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, Australians were actually in favour of a republic in the lead up to a 1999 referendum to drop the monarchy, but the awkward questions and alternative systems didn’t win the support needed to pass.

At least Canada fully recognizes same-sex marriage and doesn’t have any claim to Ken Ham.

Time for secular political parties?

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Tonight, I’m hosting a meeting to discuss the formation of a secular political party in Vancouver. To build some momentum for this and to get my ideas flowing, I have written a few pieces about the intersection of atheism and politics that I will be posting over the next week. The first article discussed categories of political atheism, the second called for atheists to get political, and this article will outline my thoughts on starting an atheist political party.

In Canada at the provincial and federal levels, representatives are chosen in a local plurality system, where the person with the most votes wins. This system tends to entrench local two-party races, and very rarely a three-way race.

Therefore, any new party that hopes to be successful (at those levels) needs a very strong regional presence (like the Reform Party or Bloc Quebecois). Support of 10% of the electors for the country has failed to net the Green Party one single election win thus far.

With winning out of the question at the federal and provincial levels, there is still the opportunity to use a doomed party to bring issues to the stage that have not previously been heard. Most local election forums are willing to invite any and all candidates running, and will give them an equal stage with the front-runners.

This strategy could be very successful at bringing secular causes to the stage for one or two elections, but in the long run would be very costly and provide less exposure as we drifted into the obscurity like the Communist and Marxist-Leninist parties (no offence meant to them, I do have a soft spot for their passionate rhetoric).

The greatest chance for electoral success for a secular, rationalist party would most likely be at the local level. Several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, allow for local political parties to compete, while in other cities, parties often support their favoured candidates without the same recognition (i.e. an acronym on the ballot). Vancouver has the added advantage of electing its councillors at large, meaning that support can be drawn from the entire city, and doesn’t have to be focussed in any one region.

There are many initiatives at the local level for a secular party to pursue: specifically, the tax exemption for churches and promoting science and critical thinking in our schools. Even on the Vancouver Parks Board, a rationalist can stand for freedom of speech and assembly at local parks and community centres, where controversy is often banned.

Obscure parties run at the local level in Vancouver too. The Nude Garden and Work Less Party have for years run unsuccessful mayoral and council candidates.

However, I don’t think we need to aim so low in a city that is over 40% non-religious.

The difficulty here, I believe, is ensuring that a party, and its candidates, are not perceived as single-issue candidates. And with our movement’s diversity of political beliefs, it may be especially difficult to have a party that stands for reason and secularism and candidates who may have entirely different views outside of the party platform.

I think it is possible to run a party on secularism, and the Aussie’s have already beat us to it. I’ll be sure to let you know how the meeting goes though and what comes of it.

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