No, I don’t

Look at this photo.

What do you see?

I see the moon, some clouds, a tree, and an over-exposed light post in the foreground.

The Calgary Herald wants to know if you’re as pareidolia-susceptible as their reader L. Wolanski and see Jesus in the clouds.

Nevermind how angry this story about the supermoon will make Phil Plait, if anything the face in the clouds (which I didn’t even see at first), reminds me not so much of a mythical Jewish carpenter as a different famous face.

I’m continually amazed at the religious pandering that the Calgary Herald will succumb to.

CFI Canada skips critical thinking

Last week a story broke from Nova Scotia that a high school student was suspended for wearing a t-shirt that said “Life is wasted without Jesus”.

The story went that the student wore the same shirt several days in a row (let’s assume he washed it or had multiple ones and wasn’t suspended for stinking up the place) and was suspended when he refused to obey a demand by the school’s principal that he no longer wear the shirt.

Quick to stand up for free speech and religious freedom, Centre for Inquiry Canada released a press release condemning the school.

"While CFI sponsored the Atheist Bus Campaign, we are a strong champion of freedom of speech and freedom of religion," said National Communications Director Justin Trottier. "This shirt causes no harm and is a perfectly acceptable contribution to the marketplace of ideas."

I could point out again how CFI did not sponsor the Atheist Bus Campaign (except in Kelowna) – the Freethought Association of Canada did – but that’s not my point here.

With any sensational news story, I think we all ought to put our skeptic hats and try to figure out what is really going on before we rush to comment. And in this case, it turns out there’s quite a bit more there.

Students said William Swinimer has been preaching and making them feel uncomfortable, and the shirt was the last straw so they complained.

"He’s told kids they’ll burn in hell if they don’t confess themselves to Jesus," student Riley Gibb-Smith said.

Katelyn Hiltz, student council vice-president, agreed the controversy didn’t begin with the T-shirt.

"It started with him preaching his religion to kids and then telling them to go to hell. A lot of kids don’t want to deal with this anymore," she said.

Furthermore, the students father has begun pulling William from any class beyond the basics.

"He will not attend this school unless they are having reading, writing and arithmetic — good old-fashioned academics," he said, waving a New Testament bible. "When they’re having forums, when they’re having other extra-curricular activity, he will not attend that school."

I guess that means no evolution, sex-ed, or critical thinking for poor William.

This background doesn’t change the fact that suspended a student for wearing a t-shirt is wrong, but it does give the context of why such a seemingly disproportionate measure was taken. The school was fed up with an obnoxious Jesus freak shoving his religion down everyone’s throats. The school administrators have a duty to ensure that all students feel welcome and safe at the school and are able to learn, if one student is compromising that security, then they’re bound to find a way to deal with it.

If anyone else had worn that t-shirt, they would have been fine, but couple it to a continued campaign of disruptions, and I can understand and potentially support the school’s actions.

Of course, we likely still don’t have a complete story. We don’t know the extent that William pushed his religion on others and we don’t know how many people complained about it. We likely never will.

But this is precisely why organizations that want to maintain some semblance of credibility on these issues ought to hesitate before crying wolf. It’s nice to be the first to comment, but without the full context, one can come off as ignorant and closed-minded.

Friendly Atheist and high school math teach Hemant Mehta was also generally supportive of the suspension.

Alberta Education: An election bomb?

Alberta is ramping up for an election and while busty buses and money-for-nothing schemes are dominating the scandals, the new Education Act may be the thing that pisses enough people off to actually care about how this election turns out.

Alberta’s education laws haven’t been updated in decades and given last year’s slow resolution of bring secular schooling to Morinville, it’s long overdue. Yet the proposed act is drawing criticism on all sides.

The Catholic School Trustees Association fears that this is the first step to destroying their century-long privilege. Specifically, the act will allow the government to force secular and Catholic schools to share space when necessary and to amalgamate school boards.

Meanwhile, homeschoolers rallied 1500 people for a protest because they don’t want to have to teach they’re children to obey the Alberta Human Rights Act (seriously). To placate these religious homeschooling extremists, the education minister caved and “offered an amendment on Monday to the preamble of the bill, recognizing parents’ right to raise their children within their ethical and religious traditions.” This was not enough to satisfy those who believe we can simply put two words like parents and rights together and suddenly have a codified law.

Nevertheless, the Alberta Liberal Party (who are the fourth party in terms of the number of candidates nominated) is skeptical of the government and fears it will further surrender to the Religious Right.

Kent Hehr, MLA for Calgary Buffalo, asked the education minister , Tom Lukaszuk, whether the province would soon provide “public funding of a school of Scientology or Druids or a school for witches and Wiccans?” Lukaszuk parroted the standard lines of “choice in education” in response.

Hehr pressed further asking if Lukaszuk was “comfortable with parents teaching that homosexuality is a sin or that evolution is not real?” Sadly, the education minister either dodged the question at best or admitted that parents have a right to poison the minds of their children.

Please, listen to the answer. I am comfortable with the fact that parents have the right of teaching their children and passing on their family values, their religious beliefs, and their morality. This is what we do as parents. Whether my daughter comes from a public school or whether she stays at home all day long, I still take responsibility for teaching her what is right and what is wrong, so that aspect has nothing to do with homeschooling. That is what we all as parents have the primary right to do, and we continue doing that.

Choice in education is a smokescreen for wasting money on inefficient two-tiered school systems. Alberta (and BC) currently grant ridiculous amounts of money to private schools, which can discriminate in enrolment and hiring under this absurd system. Furthermore, the United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned the separate school system in Alberta, Saksatchewan, and Ontario as discriminatory and called for the ending of separated school funding.

It will be interesting to see if the majority of Albertans (represented by neither the Homeschoolers or Catholic schools Associations) will stand up for secular, adequately funded education. Hell, it will be interesting alone to see if any party is that brave – the Alberta Party already missed that boat with their platform [pdf].

Religions taking advantage of children

It’s an easy topic to write about and these three articles speak for themselves mostly, so I’m only going to give limited commentary on three pieces from the past couple days that definitely classify as religions taking advantage of (if not abusing) children.

First, the Vancouver Sun mistakenly takes the view that science and Christian lobby groups deserve equal weight when presenting research. Their article titled “Research mixed on whether parents should be banned from spanking” does a solid job of presenting the scientific evidence of the harms of corporal punishment of children, but then goes and quotes the homophobic Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (at least it identifies it as a Christian right group spun off of Focus on the Family) who want the right to beat their kids. It’s telling that the following day this article was republished on the Ottawa Citizen under the more accurate title, “Time for parents to disarm.”

Next, we have a good news-bad news story, also from the Vancouver Sun. The good news is that the Delta school board has kicked religious proselytizers out of its classrooms, while the bad news is that many volunteer evangelicals remain in schools across the province – including in Kitsilano Secondary School (near my home). The BC school act makes it explicitly clear that our schools are to be secular, so any move from volunteering to preaching will hopefully be rooted by our teachers and school administrators.

Finally, the British Humanist Association has highlighted some research undertaken by the Guardian which showed that publicly funded faith schools are discriminating against poor students. This research is quite relevant in Canada where several provinces provide funding to private schools (BC and Alberta) and others provide full funding to separate Catholic school boards (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario). It would be interesting to do a similar study here to try to prove if such systemic discrimination exists here as well.

Has Martin Singh compromised a Gurdwara’s charitable status? #ndpldr

I posted this morning about Martin Singh’s interesting release about hosting polls for the NDP leadership race.

I noted that it didn’t seem like it violated any of the NDP or Canada Election rules, but one further recollection I realized that the rules being broken weren’t by Martin Singh’s campaign but by the Malton Gurdwara.

Continue reading Has Martin Singh compromised a Gurdwara’s charitable status? #ndpldr

Students get an A in anti-abortion activism

I was going to post this on Canadian Atheist, but I was beaten to the punch by one of my co-authors. It lives here instead.

Canada’s biggest secular battlefield is over the publicly-funded Catholic school districts in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, but a number of provinces also fund private religious schools to varying amounts.

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, a private Catholic school receives 50% of the funding compared to a neighbouring public school. The school can then inject as much religious education as they want (typically so long as they meet the basic curriculum requirements).

It’s little wonder then why Christ the King School (yes, it’s that unapologetic) is brewing up controversy, given its latest stunt:

Children at a private Catholic school in Winnipeg who attend anti-abortion vigils outside the city’s Health Sciences Centre are receiving community service credits for their participation.

Principal Dave Hood of Christ the King School said Tuesday that joining the vigils is a voluntary and family decision. But he’s considering it as an official school activity as early as next year.

And before you ask, this isn’t a high school, or even middle/junior high. It’s an elementary school for 200 students from K-8.

The principal emphasizes that “We’re not there to block anyone,” but did advise parents of the daily anti-abortion vigils outside the hospital.

At least the paper adds a voice of reason to the debate:

Lori Johnson, executive director of the Klinic Community Health Centre and the Sexuality Education Research Centre, calls the vigils a political lobby and argued any school receiving public funding should not be allowed to involve children.

"It would certainly not be allowed in the public sector," said Johnson, a registered nurse and former longtime school trustee with the Winnipeg School Division board. "That is ill-considered by any school, public or private. It should be at the cost of losing their public funding."

So congrats Manitobans, a part of your tax dollars are going to promote a religious agenda through young children.

Of course this is also in the province that recently returned the NDP to a fourth majority government. It is also the province that has had some issues with the Lord’s Prayer being pushed on students in public schools.

While I am glad that Manitobans didn’t opt for the regressive Conservatives, democracy doesn’t end with election day.

Secular progressives (I think I need to write a book detailing this position) in Manitoba need to get involved in the provincial NDP and push for the end of this two-tier education system. I’ll discuss this further in a coming post though.

Next week Kelowna celebrates the fetus

I spent Labour Day weekend camping near Vernon, touring wineries, and enjoying the good life. I highly recommend Arrowleaf Cellars.

The trip left me with a longing to live in such a warm, beautiful area, surrounded by delicious food, drinks, and beautiful lakes.

Then I read about things like this and the reality of small town BC comes back to me.

For the forth [sic] year in a row the mayor of Kelowna, British Columbia, Sharon Shepherd, has issued a proclamation recognizing Protect Human Life Week, at the request of the Kelowna Right to Life Society.

“It is the intention of this proclamation to promote respect and protection to all human life, especially the infirm, the aged, the handicapped and the unborn,” the Protect Human Life Week proclamation states.

…

Kelowna Right to Life is urging supporters of Protect Human Life Week to thank Mayor Shepherd personally for proclaiming the pro-life week.

“Aside from year one when she received a considerable amount of backlash from those who believe killing unborn babies is a good thing, she has largely escaped criticism of her show of tolerance toward the pro life community in the Central Okanagan. Supporters are encouraged to drop Mayor a Shepherd a quick note thanking her for respecting our mission,” the pro-life group said.

Four years straight.

This is four years of a mayor putting a creepy religious attachment to their warped morality ahead of the interests of women, seniors, and the terminally ill.

They even plan to show Ben Stein’s horrendous movie Expelled. I’m not sure what that affront to human dignity has to do with respecting life, if anything I want the bit of my life back that I wasted watching it.

Their week officially kicks off next Saturday, the 24th. Perhaps by then we can increase that criticism.

Mayor Shepherd’s email address is conveniently given in the article: [email protected]

Let’s send her some backlash.

I’m going to try to craft something on behalf of the BC Humanists and encourage as many people as possible to write their own letters.

And if the mayor refuses to back down, perhaps we can get CFI Okanagan to host their own week. Either something civil like a Separation of Church and State day or perhaps more provocative like abortion and blasphemy rights week. If she goes ahead with this week under the guise of “tolerance” then she’ll have to “tolerate” our viewpoints too.

On the Oslo blasts

By now you’re probably aware of the explosion and subsequent shooting that happened today (yesterday there?) in Oslo, Norway. If not, go read then come back.

Going off the details that are undisputed as of now, a bomb was set off in downtown Oslo, near the government buildings and later a man dressed as a police officer opened fire on delegates of a Labour Party youth camp. (Real) Police believe the two events are linked and the death toll is still rising and is at least 10.

The New York Times had initially reported that an Islamic fundamentalist group had taken credit for the bombing, but the paper was quick to note that such claims are often false.

Any time a terrorist attack (and I define this as a terrorist attack since it was an attack that inspired terror) occurs, it’s almost instinct now to blame Muslims. Hopefully most people take a second and realize it’s not any or even a sizable number of Muslims who could commit such atrocities (can anyone picture Mayor Nenshi doing anything so atrocious?). Finally, we actually realize that in situations like this, we need to wait until some facts come out before posting our favourite violent sections of the Koran in relation to this attack.

Almost ironically, some reports are starting to come out now, and they’re worthy of the same skepticism as the initial reports, that the gunmen was a blonde Norwegian and has no links to any Islamic group. The irony comes from the fact that this man may prove to have ties to ultra-right organizations that strongly oppose the left-leaning governing Labour party and Muslim immigration.

Rather than Islamo-Fascists it may prove to be just old fashioned Western Fascists.

Of course if a xenophobic right-wing group had escaped without being caught, they could have pinned the blame on Muslims and immigrants, potentially swinging popular opinion over to some of their more extremist policies.

But now I’m into idle speculation.

I wish the best for the investigators and Norwegian people. Norway holds a soft-spot in my heart as the place Alberta (and Canada) could be if we actually worked together.

I’m a “McCarthyite on the War Path”

Tim Bloedow, original founder of website Christian Governance, believes that there is a “secular-humanist assault on Christianity in Canada” and posted a comment here (and carbon-copied on Canadian Atheist),

Canada’s secularists – mostly atheists/humanists – are at war with Canada’s foundational principles of justice and liberty: equality before the law, the rule of law and division of powers – distinctively Christian principles.
In order to distract Canadians from their scurrilous behavior, they have directed their militant "McCarthyite" rage against Canada’s Christian MPs, as this article reveals – as well as a French Le Devoir article published today. The atheists are showing their fangs. Nice to see the key role that Canada’s Christian-hating mainstream media are playing in this warfare strategy.

He has even gone so far as to repost (I’m sure that violates both my, and PostMedia’s copyrights) my religion and politics article on his website No Apologies with the paranoid title “ATHEIST MCCARTHYITES ON THE WAR PATH’.”

The Le Devoir article he references is found here, and one of my friends with more French literacy translates and summarizes it:

1. In the first part of the article, they talk about a liberal female MP who went into anaphylactic shock because she was eating at a restaurant earlier in the day that serves seafood (which she’s allergic to) and the scent later caused the reaction. Three CPC MPs, instead of administering any kind of aid to her, got down on their knees and did something that looked like they were giving her a religious blessing. The people on the plane did not want to call them out on it, because they were afraid they would be labelled as intolerant.
2. Another CPC MP was talking about adoption and that how he too was "adopted"; he had his biological family and his adopted family, which turns out to be Jesus and company. In the end, he basically says divine adoption takes precedence over real adoption.
3. Faytene Kryskow, a religious militant (their words, not mine), was given a laissez-passer certificate (basically let them go through without question) for the Parliament building from a Conservative MP. Kryskow is apparently the director of 4MyCanada, an organization that wants to return traditional family values to our country.
4. Last but not least, the good Minister Kenney. While at SFU, a group of young women were handing out pamphlets on abortion, but the University said no and so they (the young women) threatened to take it to the courts. The University backed off and adopted a code which said what was tolerated in terms of expression.
Kenney said that the code was stupid and basically went on to say that now anyone could go on campus to spread their message, from the Ku Klux Klan to pedophiles. He then wrote to the Catholic Church asking them to revoke the Catholic status of the University (in summation, he cried like a little bitch).

Some of which is found in Marci McDonald’s The Armageddon Factor, which references Tim Bloedow 6 different times, among them:

He wrote a 132-page book called “Environmentalism and the Death of Science: Exposing the Lie of Eco-Religion” where he argues that there is no environmental crisis and that we should let Jesus and the free market save us. This received praise from national columnist Lorne Gunter and he worked for Saskatoon-Wanuskewin Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott. (p. 117)
Vellacott issued an invitation on behalf of Christian nationalist Charles McVety to all MPs to watch Ben Stein’s Expelled. McDonald notes that both McVety and Bloedow attack the environmental movement. (p. 206)
Backers of Bloedow’s website include a number of wealthy Canadian businessmen – Hamilton’s Al Schutten and Martinrea chair Rob Wildeboer – the latter of whom was appointed by Harper to the “Science, Technology and Innovation Council.” Bloedow was also appointed as chair of the “Equipping Christians for the Public Square (ECP) Centre,” which defended homophobic Christians who got in legal trouble for their words. (p. 276)
Bloedow sees the Supreme Court as the major obstacle for the “re-Christianization” of Canada and called for dismantling the courts. Bloedow has an odd mix of Libertarian –Christianity where local governments could handle justice issues. He’s failed to explain how this would work in a fair or reasonable way (i.e. not just tribal vendettas and bigotry ruling). (p. 280)

But what strikes me most is the blatant ignorance of throwing out terms like “McCarthyism” without understanding the underlying irony of a Christian levelling such a claim against an atheist. During the Red Scare, Senator Joe McCarthy fear-mongered about the atheist communist threat to America, and subsequently the USA passed many pro-Christian signs of support, including adopting “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The McCarthyism of the day was based on fear and lies. Atheists are not trying to repress Christianity using the state, but instead to recognize that in a multicultural, pluralistic country, we can no longer continue making laws that recognize only one sub-sect of society. All people are equal.

The Canada.com comments

Commenting on my Canada.com article has trickled down, with 107 comments to date, so now I think I’ll repost some of my favourites and respond to any worthy of my attention.

Surprisingly, for PostMedia (which owns the Calgary Herald which routinely bashes atheists in its editorials), the comments were roughly split between pro and anti-secularists, although both sides featured numerous ineloquent trolls. Some like this are a bit troubling to me [all quotes are exact and any emphasis is my own]:

Continue reading The Canada.com comments