Monthly Archives: March 2008

Calgary gives middle finger to Earth Hour

Capitalism, Global Warming, Links, Politics

Saturday evening was Earth Hour (I’ll admit now that I knew it was coming but didn’t realize until Sunday when it was), and saw many people across Earth turning off their lights from 8-9pm local time.  Many Canadian cities saw drops of up to 9% consumption, and some smaller towns went completely dark!

However, in the heart of fossil-fuel burning Alberta, Calgary saw an increase in power consumption:

Calgary is the only known city in Canada where energy consumption actually went up during Earth Hour, a trend organizers pinned on colder weather and a late start locally in promoting the global event.

The “late start” I think refers to people not being organized in Calgary, unless people only started turning off around 8:30 or 8:45 and had only a little time.  One other reason given is that there was a Flames vs. Oilers game (Oilers won 2-1) that evening as well.

This is the province in which I live, it’s pretty sad.

In the REAL Journal

Atheism, Links, Personal, UofA Atheists and Agnostics

My story has been boosted to the print version of the Edmonton Journal, check out page B6 for the scoop.

Godless and proud

A new U of A club is challenging religious groups on campus by preaching the word of atheism

Gilbert A. Bouchard, edmontonjournal.com

Published: Monday, March 24

Engineering student and avowed freethinker Ian Bushfield is still amazed at how quickly his brand-spanking-new University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostic club took off, and how much of an impact the neophyte group is having on the campus’ established religious community.

Officially founded last summer when Bushfield and some of his god-optional friends grew frustrated with the “overbearing” religious groups on campus, the Atheists and Agnostic group took off like wildfire as soon as it was officially unveiled at the September 2007 Club Fair held at the U of A Butterdome.

“We collected over 300 signatures (from students interested in membership and/or looking for more information about the club), which was one of the highest number of the clubs that participated,” says Bushfield, the founding club president.

“We now have probably about 130 members, and have 10 to 12 people show up to our regular meetings.” Not bad, given that Bushfield, 22, says he wouldn’t likely have formed the club at all if there had been “no other religious clubs on campus.”

By comparison, at a recent event hosted by the U of A Chaplains, Lutheran Chaplain Richard Reimer remarked that he was “really bummed” during the club fair when he dropped by the atheists’ booth and discovered that they had already collected 75 names when the Lutherans had managed to collect four.

“Basically, this club is a way to unite non-religious people together and give them a voice and a social group that can be used to do a bit of activism,” Bushfield says.

So far, club-sponsored activities have included screening a documentary about renowned atheist/scientist/author Richard Dawkins (60 people attended), joining in (in a good-natured, oppositional fashion) public discussions about religion, and waving the secular flag during the recent provincial election campaign.

This commitment to reason-based and secular society is a big point for Bushfield and his fellow club members.

“I remember being in elementary school when the Gideons came and gave out Bibles, and thinking to myself that this was stupid, and I didn’t want one,” Bushfield says.

Unlike earlier generations of atheists who had to work hard to shuck a religious upbringing and the constraints of a universally religious society, Bushfield was raised in a diehard irreligious household, and has been inside a church only five times in his life.

Bushfield and his U of A band of non-believers are hardly unique. In fact, it could seem like the group is riding a wave of popular atheism. For example, not only is Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great still ranked number 47 on the Amazon.ca bestsellers list months after its release (at the time of writing), some 20 new atheist groups have been founded on different Canadian campuses over the past year.

“You’re seeing the same thing all across the U.S. as well,” he says. “This is the first generation raised in a secular society that doesn’t feel awkward if it doesn’t go to church.”

A tale of two cities

Atheism, Links, Politics, Religion, UofA Atheists and Agnostics

This past Sunday (Easter), I was riding the Red Arrow from Red Deer to Edmonton, and got a chance to pick up the Calgary Herald. On the Editoral Page I was surprised (not really in retrospect) to see these articles:

“Cherish freedom of the season”

People who view the state as more important than its people write totalitarian constitutions. Think of Communist parties, for instance, or Louis XIV, who notoriously declared, “L’etat, c’est moi.”

On the other hand, somebody who believes the individual is important because God accepts each one of us on the basis of a personal decision about the resurrection — not because they belong to some favoured class or race — is much more likely to see the state as an instrument of individual empowerment.

and “New breed of atheist treads too much on glib ground”

Besides, the worst atrocities of the last century came not from faith-inspired conflicts, but from Marxism and fascism — atheist replacement creeds for Christianity.

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Pol Pot — atheists all — went on ideological killing sprees which made the religious wars of the distant past look like an afternoon tea party tete-a-tete between bluebloods.

…

In a world absent of God, the most critical condemnation one can offer is that the meanness between humans is unpleasant, akin to watching other animals tear at each other, and that it offends our esthetic sensibilities.

Moral condemnation implies some absolute standard outside of nature which atheism denies by definition.

Continue reading →

Pope changes St. Patrick’s day, drunks don’t care

Links, Religion

In more stories from the Vatican that seem like they’re coming from the Onion, the Pope has declared St. Patrick’s Day as rescheduled to today (March 15th).

Although St. Patrick’s Day traditionally falls on March 17, that date conflicts with the beginning of the Roman Catholic Holy Week, which is the seven days leading up to Easter and the most sacred time of the church’s year.

Unfortunately, I doubt St. Patrick would appreciate being celebrated on the Ides of March – namely the day Caesar was murdered.

This story comes on the heels of the pope’s new seven deadly sins (since people weren’t listening to the old ones):

The seven new sins are practising birth control, biochemical experimentation, drug abuse, pollution of the environment, widening divisions between rich and poor, excessive wealth and creating poverty.

It’s as though the goal of the church is to embarrass itself, as though its beliefs don’t do that already.

Regardless of bishop’s declarations, I’m going to be getting Green this Monday, not today.

Op-ed exposes lack of choice

Links, Religion, School, UofA Atheists and Agnostics

The big issue for secularists in Alberta right now is the fact that our province is dumping large sums of money into public and private religious schools.  Scott Rowed, of the Society for Secular Humanists in Calgary, soon to be CFI-Alberta, has written a great op-ed piece which appeared in the Edmonton Journal on the issue surrounding faith-based schooling.  He reports the unreported stats, that are quite disturbing:

The religious schools in Alberta fall into three categories: separate (Catholic), private and alternative. The private schools are about 60 per cent funded by the taxpayers, have their own boards and are able to discriminate on religious grounds for both hiring staff and admitting students.

To have this choice of placing their children into a faith school, parents must obtain a letter from a preacher praising their church devotion and sign a statement of faith. This quote, from the constitution and bylaws of Fort McMurray Christian School Society, is typical: “We believe the Genesis account of creation is to be understood literally; that man was created in God’s own image and after His own likeness; that man’s creation was not by evolution or change of species or development through interminable periods of time from lower to higher form.”

The UofA Atheists and Agnostics will be engaging this issue more as time rolls by.  Attempts to bring this up as an election issue were mainly waived off by politicians (using the excuse of “choice”), however, the issue is far from dead.

On why today isn’t a day for pi

Fun, Parody, Science

Many around the world spent today celebrating the widest known mathematical constant, that share’s it’s name with a tasty treat:

?

The celebrate today because as March 14, or 3.14, it is a representation of ?.

However this is wrong.

? in decimal (base-10) is 3.14159…, however, the calendar is not based on a base-10 system. So when is the real “pi day?”

We could consider a year to be like a circle, in that at the end (December) it connects right back to the start (January). In this representation we could represent the total number of days in a year (365.25) equal to the total angle of a circle (360 degrees, or 2? radians). This system would make “pi-day” to be approximately June 1st (or 2nd on a leap year, which also helps deal with rounding errors). This would also give us a 2? day on New Year’s Eve.

Or perhaps we should use the year’s total number of days as a base of counting, in which case ? would have to be converted to that base and that would be the date. (Check my math perhaps) I think this date works out to April 24th or 25th (depending on leap years again).

However, explaining to people why you’re calling April 25th, or June 1st pi day and eating pie (which I did indulge in today), might take longer than the brief amusement provided by the idea.

On why today isn’t a day for pi

Fun, Parody, Science

Many around the world spent today celebrating the widest known mathematical constant, that share’s it’s name with a tasty treat:

?

The celebrate today because as March 14, or 3.14, it is a representation of ?.

However this is wrong.

? in decimal (base-10) is 3.14159…, however, the calendar is not based on a base-10 system. So when is the real “pi day?”

We could consider a year to be like a circle, in that at the end (December) it connects right back to the start (January). In this representation we could represent the total number of days in a year (365.25) equal to the total angle of a circle (360 degrees, or 2? radians). This system would make “pi-day” to be approximately June 1st (or 2nd on a leap year, which also helps deal with rounding errors). This would also give us a 2? day on New Year’s Eve.

Or perhaps we should use the year’s total number of days as a base of counting, in which case ? would have to be converted to that base and that would be the date. (Check my math perhaps) I think this date works out to April 24th or 25th (depending on leap years again).

However, explaining to people why you’re calling April 25th, or June 1st pi day and eating pie (which I did indulge in today), might take longer than the brief amusement provided by the idea.

On why today isn’t a day for pi

Fun, Parody, Science

Many around the world spent today celebrating the widest known mathematical constant, that share’s it’s name with a tasty treat:

π

The celebrate today because as March 14, or 3.14, it is a representation of ?.

However this is wrong.

π in decimal (base-10) is 3.14159…, however, the calendar is not based on a base-10 system. So when is the real “pi day?”

We could consider a year to be like a circle, in that at the end (December) it connects right back to the start (January). In this representation we could represent the total number of days in a year (365.25) equal to the total angle of a circle (360 degrees, or 2π radians). This system would make “pi-day” to be approximately July 1st (or 2nd on a leap year, which also helps deal with rounding errors). This would also give us a 2π day on New Year’s Eve.

Or perhaps we should use the year’s total number of days as a base of counting, in which case π would have to be converted to that base and that would be the date. (Check my math perhaps) I think this date works out to April 24th or 25th (depending on leap years again).

However, explaining to people why you’re calling April 25th, or June 1st pi day and eating pie (which I did indulge in today), might take longer than the brief amusement provided by the idea.