The light at the end of the tunnel…
This afternoon I defend my masters thesis, after which I will hopefully have only a few minor corrections and then I will have earned my masters in physics. I also hope to be done school for a while, so if you know of any good job openings…
But the busy life won’t end this afternoon.
This weekend I will be one of the Vancouver-Point Grey delegates to the BC NDP’s 50th Anniversary Convention. I won’t be live-blogging it, but I will try to tweet updates. There’s a federal leadership townhall on Saturday from 4:30-6 PM, so those tweets will be under #ndpldr while general convention tweets will be under #bcndp50. I’ll try to make it to one of Brian Topp’s meet-and-greets at The Lion’s Pub (either Friday or Saturday night) and we’ll see if I can find any other leaders.
After the convention I will have my corrections and then holiday parties begin. Then I head to Alberta for Christmas, but will be back in Vancouver by New Years.
In other words, I will try to get some blogging in next week, but otherwise it might be quiet around here until January.
I guess until now atheists knew to keep their mouths shut in Surrey
Wow I love newspaper titles.
The South Fraser Unitarian Congregation was kind enough to send out a press release for my upcoming talk on humanism. Peace Arch News, based in White Rock, picked up the story under the headline “Atheist to speak in Newton.”
It’s a fine article, but does set the bar for all the things I need to explain:
Organizers say Ian Bushfield is to discuss how humanism…promotes living a good and moral life without the need for divine revelation.
Bushfield will also explain why humanists choose not to rely on immutable words and holy books, but instead find value and purpose in life through reason and science.
Of course, I think I wrote some of those words into the abstract that I sent along, so it may be my own fault.
For more information on the talk, check out the Unitarian’s website.
My BCHA talk: 14 Billion Years in 90 Seconds
I finally got a half-decent video of myself giving a talk. Of course the projector still failed to work with my laptop, so I went slide-less (but it still works I think).
I gave this talk this morning for the BC Humanists at Oakridge Seniors Centre. The TalkOrigins article I referenced can be found here.
Here’s the video, on presenting evidence for the Big Bang in clear and succinct terms.
My November Cafe Inquiry: Humanism and Interfaith
In December I’m going to be doing a sermon for a Unitarian Church in Surrey on Humanism as part of their interfaith series. In preparation for that, I agreed to do a Cafe Inquiry for CFI Vancouver on Humanism.
Realizing that we all (generally) agree that humanism is good, I decided to mix it up a bit and my topic is now more focussed on the continuing spat between Greg Epstein and PZ Myers. Here’s the abstract I threw together this afternoon.
Humanism and Interfaith
Humanism can be described as atheism with a heart. Yet some New Atheists and Humanists have sparred recently over a number of issues. Some of these key issues are how we structure of our communities; the legitimacy of humanist chaplains; and whether secularists should engage in interfaith dialogues with the religious. Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, calls humanism a faith in his 2009 bestseller Good Without God. He has recently announced plans for a new book to serve as a how-to manual to establish groups similar to his Harvard community. On the other side of the debate, many atheists recoil in disgust at terms like interfaith and chaplains. They argue that the unquestionable hierarchy of religion is antithetical to free inquiry. Such structures are to be demolished, not simply rebranded. Amidst the debates on Twitter and the blogosphere, humanist communities are thriving in cities and on campuses around the world. Progressive theists are also actively starting to seek out humanist representatives for interfaith panels.
In this discussion, I will attempt to weave our way through the arguments and concerns raised by both camps. What does a humanist community look like? Are humanists trying to create church for the unchurched? Is there a need for humanist chaplains and officiants? Is humanism a faith? And can, or should, atheists participate in interfaith events?
Some related reading and viewing:
Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement? Christ Stedman, 15 June 2011
Transfaith, The New Atheist Interfaith, Ed Clint – Secular Student Alliance, 18 August 2011
Nonbelievers striving for humanist connection, Boston Globe, 17 October 2011
Atheist church? NO THANK YOU. Pharyngula, 17 October 2011
Just don’t call it church then, Canadian Atheist, 17 October 2011
A Successful Humanist Community in Boston, Friendly Atheist, 18 October 2011
Just call me a Quaker, I guess, Pharyngula, 18 October 2011
What #HumanistComunity? Pharyngula, 19 October 2011
#HumanistCommunity, Twitter, ongoing
The event is scheduled for Saturday, November 19th at 11:00 am at SFU Harbour Centre and there should be coffee and donuts.
I haven’t written the talk yet (that has to wait for the 18th of course), so I’m open to any and all suggestions.
And I’ll post something about the Unitarian event closer to that date.
Did I mention I’m running for School Board?
If you’re not following me on Facebook or my personal blog, you may have missed my initial announcement that I’m running for one of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) nominations for Vancouver School Board.
You can follow all my campaign updates at my other site: http://ian.bushfield.ca
The nomination meeting’s on September 18th, and until then I still need your help to raise my $500 nomination fee, so click the widget below and chip in a few bucks:
Where have I been?
Damn, no posts here in over a month. Did not mean for that to happen.
This is not to say I haven’t been blogging. Most of my writing has just been shifted to Canadian Atheist, where I’ve tried to consistently get at least a couple posts per week there. Of course it’s mostly on atheism/freethought/skepticism but there are still a lot of political opinions I have but time is always short, so they’ve fallen by the wayside.
It makes me tempted to advocate for splitting CA up a bit into more of a blog aggregator like Science Blogs where each author gets their own space to talk about anything they want and the front page simply highlights the different topics/authors. Then I could basically park this blog over there and say everything I want. However, ideas always seem to come with work in the volunteer sector, so unless I work on the implementation it may not happen. And maybe it is just better to keep these blogs separate for now.
In terms of politics, I’ve been quite busy launching Reason Vancouver, and after this past weekend where I attended a productive Olympic Dialogue (which I’ll try to write up later), I think may be the right thing at the right time for this city.
I also have to admit that after my initial scepticism of the “Big Listen” project, I’m really starting to like the direction the Alberta Party is headed and with the potential success evidenced by Naheed Nenshi’s win in Calgary, I think they’re really on to something. Although I may never come around to using the buzz phrase “post-partisan politics,” I do think they are on to something (which is another post I need to write up).
As for graduate studies, despite my committee meeting being thrice rescheduled, things are progressing well, and I was happy to receive the second place award (first for visuals) for student seminar talks this term (out of 10 talks) in my department, losing only to my fiancée. Perhaps if I really feel like I have too much time on my hands I’ll write that talk up with the slides so there can at least be a text-representation of it (I won’t just post the slides since they are almost meaningless without a dialogue to follow).
So don’t take this as a pledge that I’ll write more often here, since bloggers often make the false promise of “I’m going to post here more often” and then you don’t hear from them for another 6 months, but merely take this as a “I’m still alive, writing and busy, and if possible I may post some more here, but no promises.”
I’m a Canadian Atheist
I’ll probably be posting a lot less on religion/atheism here (unless I want to get really defamatory), since over the past week I have joined the new Canadian Atheist group blog.
I can’t promise how much more I’ll post here, since I like the communal, grassroots nature of this new project, and it' pays off with more page hits than my own site. I also have my personal blog, which covers more mundane aspects of my life which leaves little space for this site, although I may still do the occasional overtly partisan rant here.
So check out the new site, it has a lot of great writers, and I have a series of posts coming up on the intersection of politics and atheism in anticipation of the VanSecular Party meeting on Tuesday.
Calm before the storm
I won’t be posting much here (or at my other site) till next week since I’m off to Victoria this weekend with some of the Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub people. We’ll hopefully be meeting up with some fine island-folk while we’re out there.
The other reason for a bit of calm is that I’ve been recruited into a group blog that I’m hoping to have a bit of content filled in for Monday when we publicly announce it. It should be good, so stay tuned for the announcement.
CFI Vancouver on-track
A small crowd of about 8 people showed up for the CFI Vancouver volunteer meeting that was held this morning, but a lot of great ideas and plans were generated.
A few key committees and positions were formed, including my new role as secretary (which now has me taking minutes at both BCHA and CFI now).
There’s some great speakers coming up including PZ Myers, Christopher diCarlo and Harriet Hall.
Further, Sonia and I will be launching our freethinker book club on August 14th at The Grind Cafe on Main St. We’ll be discussing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s first book Infidel, so grab a copy from a bookstore or the library soon. We’ll follow this up with Nomad in the future, but Physics of Star Trek (spare copies available through CFI Vancouver) will likely be for September and potentially The Armageddon Factor in October leading up to a potential talk by author and journalist Marci McDonald.
Things are definitely looking promising.
Fixed my personal site
I’ve rebuilt my personal website at http://ian.bushfield.ca since I’ve finally given up on Drupal and am now a WordPress-only junkie.
This blog will keep going as a place for me to rant about science/religion/politics while that blog will deal with my personal activities, including my goal to develop a business plan for a freethought cafe. I probably won’t cross-post anything, so if you follow both you won’t get overwhelmed.
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