Terahertz

Stephen Harper is taking his fundamentalist ideology to a new level by cutting any support for family planning initiatives from the June G8 meeting. The reasoning is flawed, short-sighted and stupid:

Birth control doesn’t fit with saving lives.

On the surface this statement almost makes sense. But when you consider the indirect costs, health risks, and difficulties associated with birth and young children, especially in impoverished areas, you can probably see the need for some initiative.

Even George W. Bush supported birth control projects, albeit he preferred the flawed natural planning method and abstinence and banned money to organizations that provided any services surrounding abortions.

Harper claimed a few months ago that he cared about the women and children of the third world. He’s either a liar or has a really twisted vision of helping.

(h/t Melany)

I submitted another article, and this one got published with a neat little picture. I feel better about my grammar in this one, and I only noticed one mistake that slipped passed the editor (see if you can spot it).

Keep creationism out of the science classroom

By Ian Bushfield

In a story that sounds like it came straight from the Bible belt of the USA, a newly formed group, the Kamloops Centre for Rational Thought, has announced that the Kamloops Christian School is teaching Biblical creationism in their science class, on equal footing with evolution. On the matter of private school, I mostly believe that schools can teach whatever they want. While I disagree with indoctrinating children in one’s personal religious beliefs, people are generally free to raise their children responsibly. My support for this right, however, ends when public funding is extended to such indoctrination, as is the case with Kamloops Christian School.

Don’t get me wrong, pluralism is a commendable goal. Greater school choice sounds great on paper, and increased knowledge of the various religions and beliefs of the world can only help serve to ease many of the religious tensions across the world.

However, this narrow-minded propaganda serves to reinforce an us-versus-them mentality and closes minds. There is a reason Richard Dawkins considers indoctrinating children with religion to be a form of child abuse.

Even worse is the conflation between religion and science that occurs when students are taught pseudo- and anti-scientific beliefs as fact alongside the well-established laws of nature. Science class is the place to develop the tools to view the world methodically and skeptically. Science asserts that evidence is required before we can decide whether an idea has any merit to it.

Meanwhile, creationism starts with the premise that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and then argues that the facts of the world are wrong if they conflict with a narrow interpretation of scripture. Declaring that evolution and creationism are on equal scientific footing is akin to considering astrology to be as accurate as astronomy.

Even if we could accept the Bible is as credible a source of knowledge as the systematic accumulation of evidence to confirm hypotheses, then there are countless other beliefs we ought to be including in science classes across the province. These include the various aboriginal stories of creation, the Hindu story, those of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and even the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Each of these stories has its believers who see it as divinely inspired, and each story has as much evidence for its validity as the Christian Bible.

But mainly, I object to a secular, democratic government, which is supposed to represent all people, religions, creeds, and races, to not push any one religion, belief, or non-belief over any other. Were Christians in the minority and atheists in the majority, Christians would equally be crying foul were publicly funded teachers declaring in science class that science has disproven God, or at the very least, that students ought to take a “critical look” at the evidence of the Bible.

There are countless Christians and theists who have no difficulty with evolution. In fact, they are likely in the majority. A small minority, however, remains committed that the only way they can reconcile their belief in a vengeful Old Testament God is to deny the fundamental basis of all modern biology. Yet the fact that many of them hold influential positions of power, like Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear, or Treasury Board President Stockwell Day, is something that ought to scare all secularists, religious or otherwise.

Religious beliefs and discussions have their place. However, when the state sponsors one religious belief to the exclusion of others, we enter a case of discrimination and forced indoctrination. As the anti-religious adage goes, don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.

I think my next one will focus on the anti-vaccination and naturopathy movements. I still need to check a bunch of facts, so hopefully I can get it pounded out for Wednesday.

I don’t care how you see Rahim Jaffer’s $500 fee for speeding, drunk driving and cocaine possession (actually he got off scotch-free on the last two), but hoping that a large enough Facebook group can overturn the results of our justice system is asking for trouble.

We live under the rule of law, as soon as that rule can be overturned by majority (or sizable minority) opinion, minorities lose their protection, and our basis as a free democracy is threatened.

Take this as a review of a review.

I liked most of Tom Flynn’s review of Greg Epstein’s Good Without God in February/March’s Free Inquiry, but some of it was hypocritical, name-calling nonsense.

First the good:

Greg M. Epstein is the humanist chaplain of Harvard University and, let’s be frank, a young man on the make. He’s an empire builder, a visionary, a charismatic ambassador.

Well that’s a great endorsement of Mr. Epstein. Let’s hear some more:

He’s on the cusp of taking religious humanism by storm, establishing himself as just the sort of driving figure this particular humanist tribe has long hungered for. (emphasis added)

Wait… religious humanism? Right from the start, Flynn starts by defining Epstein in terms of something other than Free Inquiry’s own brand of secular humanism. But let’s look at some more good stuff before we get into this discussion:

Good without God is friendly, accessible, engaging, breezy when it needs to be, and written more like a rollicking business or how-to book than a typical humanist tome. In other words, it’s the sort of thing that twenty-first-century people just growing curious about religious humanism might read.

But there he goes poisoning the well again by throwing that “religious” word in (he actually uses it once more in that paragraph and emphasizes that Epstein capitalizes the H in Humanism).

So what is Flynn talking about, he finally defines religious humanism about halfway through his review, after using the phrase ten times:

Before I go further, I should attempt to define that amorphous phrase “religious humanism.” Religious humanists are first of all humanists – they attach primary moral and aesthetic interest to human concerns as opposed to those of supposed supernatural beings. Nonetheless, in various ways that don’t always travel together, religious humanists approach their lifestance in a manner that’s distinctively religious. [sic] I have defined religion as a “life stance that includes at minimum a belief in the existence and fundamental importance of a realm transcending that of ordinary experience.”

He goes on to claim that religious humanists demand faith – “assent less than fully compelled by the evidence in hand.” And while Epstein does use phrasing and is more willing to reach out to the liberal religions, he is by no means espousing blind faith in the supernatural. In regards to God, Epstein has the following to say (on pages 12 and 13-14 respectively):

Those who want to convince us that there is a God, and that a certain religion has access to eternal truth, should be expected – just as Humanists should be – to produce serious, credible, testable evidence in support of their claims.

[In response to his question, what do you believe about God?] Here is the Humanist answer: we believe that God is the most important, influential literary character human beings have ever created.

But Flynn isn’t content to pigeon-hole just the faith-based and “spiritual” humanists into his religious humanist slur, he also says,

Another branch of this tribe has no visible attachment to extra-evidential beliefs; these religious humanists are simply enthusiasts for the sort of congregational community life that many traditional believers (not only Christians) experience in more traditional church, temple, or mosque settings.

Flynn, not seeing the hypocrisy in calling declaring himself a secular humanist while participating heavily in the Centre For Inquiry and acting as editor for Free Inquiry – a Humanist organization and a Humanist magazine. He labels Epstein religious for founding communities, yet remains blind to the congregations he has surrounded himself with. CFI is no less of a church than anything that Epstein has been working toward.

Flynn also thinks many secular humanists will disagree with Epstein’s quote “myth doesn’t always need to be a dirty word for the nonreligious.” Well, I have to strongly agree with Epstein, so long as you understand the definition of myth which generally refers to a traditional story told within a community. It can be true or false, and can be seen as such. Santa Claus has become a secular myth that many atheists have no problem telling their children, who later figure out that not all stories are true.

Epstein never states that all Humanists need to attend “Humanist church” or accept “Humanist dogma.” Flynn poisons the discussion of this book, which he still highly recommends (as do I), by inventing a division between so-called religious and secular humanists.

There is a demand for a communal setting for like-minded people, it’s part of why religion has done so well over human history, even secular humanists are organizing for semi-regular meetings.

Let’s save the phrase “religious humanism” for those humanists who remain part of religious congregations, the Unitarians and some United Church members, and reject Flynn’s mischaracterization of Epstein, a man who just happened to put a friendlier, modern face on what was, until recently, a dyeing ideology.

Recent levels of conservative articles in SFU’s student newspaper The Peak prompted me to submit an article which got published today. While this isn’t my best writing (a few awkward sentences survived the editor), I am planning to write a bit more frequently for the weekly paper, so hopefully it improves.

It’s also worth noting that my story was one of the highlights listed on the front page.

My article, appearing on page four is reprinted here:

Conservatives are eroding Canadian values

Stephen Harper hates Canada, or at least he has indicated as much. He and his brand of Reform Party theo-cons have every intention of tearing down the institutions that make our country great.

The most recent evidence of this is Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s personal interventions to remove references to homosexual rights from Canada’s latest immigration brochures. Rather than have new immigrants know that Canada was among the first countries in the world to extend the right of marriage to same-sex couples, the Conservatives would rather paint a picture of Canada as they want to see it. Similarly, the brochure also omits any reference to health care and feminism, and plays up our history of armed conflict while downplaying our role as world peacekeepers.

Yet these Conservatives’ pasts haunts them. In 2003, as a member of the neoconservative group, Civitas, Harper stated that to achieve the goal of a conservative social policy, the Conservatives must win over immigrants and make “incremental” movements to the right, knowing full well that an abrupt change of course toward their true goals would scare most Canadians.

So after six years as leader of a minority government, we have watched Harper make deep cuts to our federal income streams. Lowered income from the GST, as well as corporate and personal income taxes has put the country in a deficit, to which the only available answer for the neoconservative is an attack on the foundations of our modern Canadian society – the welfare state.

In a similar vein, to reform our society, we have witnessed massive cuts and legislation changes to cripple several decades of progress fought for by this nation’s feminists. Status of Women Canada is a shell of its former self, and, after the 2009 budget, it is now harder for women to achieve equal pay for equal work.

Even our democratic systems suffer as our prime minister is in contempt of the will of Parliament, and thereby the will of the majority of Canadians, who are demanding documents that will confirm the claims of whistleblower Richard Colvin or clear the names of our soldiers. Rather than provide these documents, Harper again dishonestly shut the door on democracy and hid behind claims that the opposition hates our troops. If Harper truly cared about our troops he would present the documents that clear their names of what must be wrongful accusations. At least, they must be wrongful as that is what the government keeps saying.

But we don’t have to look as far as Ottawa to see the anti-progressives at work. Mirroring tactics that were used by Ontario campus conservative groups to destroy their Public Interest Research Groups; campus conservatives here have taken up a crusade against SFPIRG under the banners of “democracy” and “accountability.” The argument is that SFPIRG needs improvement, and few would disagree, yet the claim that they are arbitrarily appointing people to their board is absurd. Have these conservatives attempted to join SFPIRG and reform the group from the inside?

As was pointed out, if there are too few candidates for the board, acclamations are granted to those few who step forward to actually do the work. Otherwise you have shit disturbers who lobby the SFSS and student body to destroy a group that they have the ability to opt-out of.

But it is too easy to write these actions off as a grand right-wing conspiracy. Rather, we have a minority subset of society that hates the institutions we have fought for in this country, and is working incrementally at various levels to take away many of the things we take for granted.

Most of my future articles will be on skepticism / atheism / Humanism, and I’m hoping to have something to submit most weeks (I may post here even if it ends up on the digital floor of the Peak).

Dear Ivy Ash,

I read your article vilifying atheism [Leave religions alone, February 8] and I had to comment. Perhaps it is cowardly of me, but I chose to copy most your letter because you express unoriginal thoughts on a subject that is far more simple than you think. You’ll find I make no apologies.

There is a certain truth to what you’re saying. Graham Templeton is as bigoted as your postmodern relativism. His article reads as a blind attack at people. And there are Christians, Muslims, Jews, and even Wiccan atrocities. Yet there is actual substance to the critiques of religion that are being provided, and ad hominen attacks back and forth solve little. And it’s easy to conflate an attack on blind, irrational faith with one directed at the believers themselves.

There’s more to atheism, Ms. Ivy Ash (a funny name for a fundamentalist Wiccan – see that, we can all use useless ad hominens and oxymoronic terms to emotionally bias our readers) than just bigotry. There’s love, for one thing, and tragedy (those exist in every human). There’s critical thinking. There’s understanding that, as Richard Dawkins points out, without an understanding of the Bible, “you can’t understand English literature and culture.” But there’s also a greater subtlety to atheists critiques then you seem to comprehend. These include realizing that the Bible is a myth that was written and rewritten by human beings over long periods of time. It’s realizing that the ethnography of the Bible is more likely a fictitious myth, as no actual evidence that the events of Exodus exists. But you can throw a few more ad hominens in to ensure that if your shoddy arguments aren’t enough, you can at least make fun of us.

Now, lest you think I may be an atheist, I’ll tell you right now, I am. But I’m also more than that. I’m a humanist, a person who finds inherent worth in every person.I’m a naturalist, someone who accepts the scientific method as our greatest source of knowledge, and that method has yet to reveal any evidence of something beyond this world. And I’m a skeptic, someone who only accepts claims that are backed up by objective evidence. Our views have also survived Roman Catholicism’s widespread eradication efforts of the past, and present. And yet to this day, religious bigotry still targets atheists as immoral and subhuman.

Now we need to talk about the truth. Since you seem to believe in a postmodern, relativistic form of truth, in that whatever works for you is true, I think I ought to take a second to explain what’s behind the apparent aggravation of atheists (alliterations are always awesome). Atheists, in general, arrive at their worldview via a critical evaluation of the claims that are made by various proponents of the true faith. Similarly, when new evidence is presented, atheists are generally open to evaluating that evidence to see if there’s an inconsistency within their worldview. To date, there hasn’t been enough evidence for the vast majority of us to require supernatural explanations. If there’s anything the success of the sceptical scientific method has taught us, it’s that an objective truth does exist outside our minds (this keyboard I type on exists). Yet postmodernists are making intellectual war on the existence of objective truths in an attempt to destroy several hundred years of scientific progress. That is, progress that has led to the ability for you to write an article on your computer, email it to the Peak, and for it to appear within the hands of tens of readers within a week.

Now, I’ll be honest. I don’t have the highest esteem for theists. In fact, since most theists rank atheists the least trustworthy demographic, there’s evidence of a deep seated, and in this case hypocritical, bigotry. Why? Apparently in your case it’s partly daddy issues. Or as you admit more likely, you were raised with a bigoted view that sees belief in a god as necessary for a meaningful and moral life. Both of which are demonstrably false by the growing number of happy, fulfilled atheists across the world. Of course, we can all get annoyed by fools with whiny diatribes, but that by no means gives you the right to write off all atheists as assholes. I’m not about to declare all Wiccans as overly-sensitive hypocrites because of your piece.

Finally, who is it that you think you’re talking about? Who, exactly, are you preaching to? Obviously you are writing to Mr. Templeton and trying to publicly chastise him for writing such tripe, but 90% of the articles in The Peak are crap. More likely you feel you need a stage to showcase how progressive and accepting your Wiccan beliefs are. You try to save yourself a little at the end, by admitting there are “fine upstanding atheists who aren’t bigoted at all.” And I will agree that Graham’s (suddenly you’re on first name basis?) article was offensive, but you failed to define it as either hate-filled or hypocritical. Clearly, the only hate literature that’s appropriate in Canada is anti-atheist hate literature. Or perhaps, you might want to understand that free speech is still allowed in Canada, but hate literature, defined as literature that incites and advocates violence, is properly regulated.

Most sincerely, Ian Bushfield

P.S. Because you couldn’t fit enough ad hominens in the actual 958 word letter, you had to give us a pointless post-script.

I noted a week ago that an anti-choice group in Kelowna had gotten approved to show their graphic and misleading ad to local TV viewers.

It turns out that CHBC-TV has blocked the ad for being too offensive for some of their viewers.

I have to agree with Unrepentant Old Hippie on this one:

Other than that, I’d actually be against pulling it — the fetus fetishists have as much right as organizations like PETA to flog their cause.  And they sometimes get more mileage (not to mention the persecution high they’re forever chasing) from being “censored” than they do when their campaigns run themselves out and die quiet and unremarkable little deaths.

While you may not like what they say, they still have a right to say it.

A few quick stories of note recently:

• A whooping cough outbreak is occurring in the BC West Kootenay region because woo-woo parents think vaccines are evil and now their children are at risk of dying. And some people ask what’s the harm in letting people believe in alternative medicine.
• Speaking of unfounded woo, NDP MP Denise Savoie has claimed that evil “toxins” are to blame for NDP Leader Jack Layton’s recently diagnosed prostate cancer. Throw out the fact she doesn’t state what specific toxins cause cancer and implies all chemicals are evil. Perhaps cancer is more frequent now because we’re living longer and are better at detecting it.
• Further to the Jack Layton story, it’s commendable to see everyone setting aside partisanship to wish him the best for a speedy recovery.
• The BC Civil Liberties Association is rightly backing the right of University of Victoria’s Your Protecting Youth pro-life student group. While I disagree with the groups stance, they do have a right to exist and organize and pushing them aside is the wrong thing to do. If the group crosses the lines of civil discourse and propagates falsehoods, then there may be a case for disbanding them, but the same ought to apply to any and all campus groups.
• The Kamloops Atheists report that the local “Daily News” paper refused to publish any atheist material in their religion page since “the rest of the paper was for atheist material.” They subsequently didn’t publish the request article anywhere in the paper. Further they note that the Kamloops Christian School is teaching Biblical Creationism with equal time to the “theory” of evolution.
• Finally, to end on a positive note, the Centre for Inquiry Vancouver has just hired Radio Freethinker co-host Ethan Clow as their new Executive Director, making him the third paid CFI employee in Canada. I look forward to see continued success for CFI and wish Ethan the best of luck. Further to that, I’ve accepted a position as CFI Canada’s Campus Outreach Director, and hope to continue the success of the dozens of student groups across the country.

A neocon tool who uses SFUs student newspaper, The Peak, to spout his views alerted me (and the 5 other readers of the Peak) that populist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is blaming the Haitian earthquake on a secret US weapon test before they turn the weapon on Iran.

Not feeling like I can trust Van Maren’s fact-checking ability, I ran a source check to see how many news articles “chavez earthquake” returns. A mere 700 if you were wondering. And most of those are because Chavez is a president of a nearby country.

But what about “chavez earthquake weapon”? Now you only get 70 hits, with such great sources as “World Press Review,” “NowPublic,” and FOXNews.

Ah, FOXNews, what a reputable source. They of course jump on the chance to blast a socialist leader as a crazy wackaloon and state the following:

The United States apparently possesses an "earthquake weapon" that set off the catastrophic quake in Haiti and killed 200,000 innocents. Don’t believe it’s true? Just ask Hugo Chavez. [emphasis theirs]

They claim the story originated on “the Venezuelan strongman’s state mouthpiece ViVe TV” (does that make FOXNews the Republican party’s mouthpiece?) but was taken down recently. They try linking to the Google cached pages which aren’t all too damning.

The only other source for this story seems to be a YouTube channel called “RussiaToday” which has this video:

This is supposedly the YouTube arm of the Russian state run RT TV station. They quote Spanish Newspaper ABC, and you can find the translated article here. It quotes the Venezuelan TV station as well.

These claims fly on the heels of the substantiated reports that Chavez claimed that the US was “taking [military] advantage of the tragedy” and moving to occupy Haiti.

Here’s the facts:

• Chavez distrusts the USA and claimed they were invading Haiti
• FOXNews is not known for portraying Chavez (or any other socialists) in a positive light
• Someone (either ViVe TV or RT or FOXNews) published a story claiming the Haitian earthquake was caused by a secret US weapon test
• That story no longer exists (or never did) as a primary source
• People will believe most of the crap they read if it fits their agenda

Could Chavez had said crazy things? Probably. While I am more of a socialist than the average North American, I’m not going to march behind everything a socialist leader says (as blindly following generally ends badly), and I don’t think the USA is trying to invade Haiti (it makes no strategic sense, do they need more sweatshops in Haiti?).

But at the same time, FOXNews isn’t the bastion of unbiased press, hell there’s a whole freakin’ Wikipedia Page on FOXNews Controversies.

So perhaps this is one of those mystical reporting times when the truth actually does lie somewhere in the middle, with Chavez a bit crazy, and FOXNews a bit loose with their journalistic integrity.

Groundhog Day is one of the weirdest traditions that we have retained from yesteryear.

I think it mainly has to do with rural towns that don’t have much else going for them, but lets them get news at least once per year.

Really, what else do you know about Wiarton, Punxsutawney, or even Balzac (my own hometown) than the fact that an obese rodent lives in each of those cities?

Anecdotally, I know that regardless of what Balzac Billy told me about the end of winter, February and March are usually really cold in Southern Alberta, so it was mostly for a laugh if the mammal suggested that winter was ending.

More empirically, groundhogs have an average that’s actually below 50%, which you might expect if shooting in the dark, however, I think in most of North America, winter tends to stretch about 6 weeks from today regardless of what the animals predict.

Even this year, you have 7 predictions of early Spring, and 4 of continued winter, with some predicting the opposite, within the same state!

Since Groundhogs aren’t worth listening too, here’s my prediction (with no meteorological or climatological training): Vancouver will be warm and rainy right through the Olympics with partial breaks in the clouds, the rest of Canada will be chilly but improving over the next 6 weeks.