Category: Atheism

BC Secularists who aren’t white men

Inspired by similar lists of diverse secular thinkers, I thought I’d put out there a compilation of some rising secularists – both thinkers and activists – who break the mould in British Columbia.

My criteria:

  • Alive
  • Does not identify as white (i.e. Caucasian/European) and male
  • Is either an active atheist/skeptic/humanist or their work demonstrates a commitment to human rights and secular values
  • Was born in, lived in, or presently lives in British Columbia

Feel free to add your own in the comments. Names are alphabetical by last name. Not all of the below are officially atheist/humanist but they do show a commitment to secular values.

If you see your name below and would rather not be on this list, please email me.

Continue reading BC Secularists who aren’t white men

“Not believing in devil leading cause of atheism”

I know mocking the Catholic Church is like shooting fish in a barrel but this is just to absurd to pass up.

The Pope’s exorcism is a splendid sign because one of the main causes of today’s atheism is that people don’t believe in the Devil any more. But Jesus said: ‘Who is not with me is with Satan.’ If you don’t believe in Satan, Satan has got you in his pocket.

Those are the words of Father Gabriel Amorth, the Vatican’s leading exorcist who claims to have performed 160,000 exorcisms.

After seeing a video in which he claims Pope Francis performs an exorcism, he is calling on the Pope to allow all priests to perform exorcisms, citing growing demand for the practice.

His thinking is that by performing more exorcisms, the Church will suddenly become relevant to the billion people with no religion because apparently it’s Satan’s fault.

I see no flaw in this plan. When in doubt, double down on the crazy.

Just for the record: not believing in god is the main (and only) cause of atheism.

There are more than 50,000 atheists in Canada

The first bit National Household Survey is out, and aside from it’s methodological issues, there’s still lots of data to pour through.

Over the next few days I’ll be looking at lots of it in prep for a presentation to the BC Humanist’s Vancouver meeting this Sunday on this data and our recent poll. Details

But one myth I want to quickly debunk is the tendency to report Canada having a tiny fraction of atheists based on these numbers. Based on the NHS data, Statistics Canada estimates that there are 48,675 atheists in the country, a number that is utter rubbish.

The Survey asks what religion a person is, to which the answer “atheist” is illogical (unless you are religious about your atheism).

We also can’t claim that the “No religion” responses are uniformly atheist – the BCHA poll found about half of those who don’t practice a particular religion or faith do not believe in a higher power, or about 20% of BC. While people may not self-identify as atheist when asked ill-formed questions, they’re still out there not believing in god(s).

Religion, Politics, and Rex Murphy

Tomorrow, the Canadian polysyllabic pontificator Rex Murphy will be in Vancouver recording a live episode of Cross Country Checkup on religion in public life..

The Checkup is a long-time Canadian radio talk show, designed to spark dialogue across the country.

To arrange my thoughts for the discussion, I sat down for a Google+ Hangout with Mavaddat and discussed some of the issues that might come up. You can watch the discussion below the fold.

Continue reading Religion, Politics, and Rex Murphy

Why read when you can watch and listen?

A bunch of shameless self promotion.

Back in August I was invited to join Don McLenaghen on Radio Freethinker, the skeptical podcast of CiTR radio (the UBC radio station). Ethan was away that week, so we spent the entire hour talking about Humanism.

You can listen to that interview here (mp3).

Last week, I took a road trip to Edmonton, via Kamloops.

While in Kamloops I dropped by a meeting of the Kamloops Centre for Rational Thought and gave a (somewhat impromptu) short speech on Humanism before going into an extended discussion. I posted my brief presentation on YouTube:

Then, in Edmonton I gave my speech on communicating evidence for the Big Bang, entitled 13.7 Billion Years in 90 Seconds for my old group, the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics.

Religion isn’t the problem

I’ve been toying around an idea in my head for a few days or weeks now and I want to flesh it out here, so bear with me.

The New Atheism is generally focused on the idea that religion is the root of all evil or religion poisons everything. It’s defined by it’s take-no-prisoners approach to religion as one of the largest sources of pain, suffering, and intellectual stagnation of the human species.

It occurs to me though that this approach may be wrong.

Not wrong in the religion is actually a good thing kind of way, but wrong in the these statements are vacuous kind of way. Let me explain.

Religion is a really poorly defined concept. It has an academic definition from sociologist Durkheim: “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred thing” and a colloquial definition “belief in, or the worship of, a god or gods.” The New Atheism is squarely aimed at the latter definition, but it’s very disingenuous to argue that it is the only or even the correct definition.

One only needs to consider Buddhism and the rational religions of the 18th century to question the idea that religion requires a belief in the supernatural.

Declaring religion is the root of all evil makes as much sense as saying politics is the root of all evil. It doesn’t actually make any sense. There are good politics and toxic politics.

What I would argue is that we need to focus our debate not on religion, but on irrational dogma and authoritarian ideologies.

The problem with religion is that far too many of them promote dangerous beliefs. The beliefs are the issue, religion is merely one conduit for these ideas.

Expanding our criticism lets us tackle issues like Communism, Fascism, Apartheid, and Libertarianism. Each comes with unquestionable core beliefs, and each can be responsible for great suffering.