Peak excerpts: Grad referendum and anti-vax is dangerous

I guess my blog went down over the weekend. I figured out that it had something to do with my database breaking, but a quick repair seemed to have fixed it. Not exactly good timing as I was enjoying my holiday in Edmonton.

So things are back online now and there’s a bunch of new stories from the Peak.

First, we have two articles standing up for The Peak in the upcoming Graduate Student Society referendum that is asking students to discontinue funding to The Peak. “Grads must vote to keep their voice” is by Brian Labore, and “The question is biased” is by one of my friends from SFU orientation Kristen Soo. Meanwhile, Gary Lim submitted the humour/feature article “Support your student paper” which lists three creative uses for The Peak besides actually reading the paper.

The Peak also featured two news articles about the GSS elections, including on the cover page: “GSS 2010: Meet your candidates” and “GSS candidates square off in debate.”

Also on the topic of the referendum, the Teaching and Support Staff Union, which represents all TAs sent out a letter endorsing the No side of the referendum – telling students to vote to continue funding The Peak:

Dear Members,

We are writing in regards to the upcoming GSS election, and specifically the referendum question in regards to The Peak. We are asking that you vote “no” to the question and support the GSS’s continued funding.

At our last general membership meeting, a number of members expressed concerns with the potential of pulling The Peak’s funding. While we all share the GSS’s concerns with the The Peak’s content and decision-making structures, we wanted to see if the staff of The Peak would be willing to work with graduate students to make improvements so that we could continue our relationship.

As such we formed a committee and in the last two weeks, we have engaged in a fairly broad dialogue with The Peak. The main concerns we outlined to them were

1. Issues of accessibility, which included concerns we had around both the transparency and access to information in terms of how the newspaper was run, how articles were vetted, and the process for article submission. We requested that they post far more information on the website about their structures, submission guidelines, etc. and that they begin to open up the process by which students can write and get involved.

2. Graduate Student Involvement, which included our concern that graduate student voices were not being given adequate space in the newspaper or on the board and that graduate student issues were not being discussed. We requested that they create a graduate issues section, a graduate issues position, and that they begin to actively work with graduate organizations (the TSSU and the GSS) to solicit submissions and tackle graduate student issues.

3. Issues of discrimination and/or oppression, which included concerns around questionable content including potentially racist, sexist, or homophobic articles. We requested that they make anti-oppression/facilitation training mandatory for their editorial staff and, ideally through this training, start to effectively and responsibly think about how to better deal with questionable material and how to better run their meetings to ensure there is space for people who are uncomfortable with offensive material (even if it’s humorous) to express concerns and to motivate discussion on how to deal with it with sensitivity and respect.

The Peak has agreed to work with us on creating a more accessible structure, on targeting more graduate students (whether that’s just through increased content or in a dedicated position), and has indicated an openness towards anti-oppression training.

Given that we had less than two weeks to reach an agreement with The Peak, we can obviously not promise any structural change immediately, but we feel that they have taken our concerns seriously and are willing to work with us to move forwards.

In light of their commitment, and in light of our belief in the necessity of graduate students having a connection to the only student newspaper on campus, we ask that you vote “No.” Especially with bargaining coming up, which increases the importance of our continued communication and connection with undergraduate students, we feel that it is necessary to continue working with The Peak and ask that you help us make it a platform that graduate students can use as a tool of information, advocacy, and change.

The Social Justice Committee

Finally, The Peak also published another opinion piece by myself, probably my last until the summer term starts (since I’m not sure how many serious issues are left this term), this one on the anti-vaccination quackery that’s been spreading. I don’t know if any TXT MSGS were left since I haven’t been to campus yet to pick up a print edition; we’ll find out tomorrow I guess.

Anti-vax is dangerous, dishonest
By Ian Bushfield

Nineteen children in the B.C. interior contracted whooping cough in February, and just recently another 14 people in Vancouver were diagnosed with measles. Both of these diseases had been nearly wiped from the developed world by modern medicine and vaccinations; however, almost none of these people had been properly vaccinated.

This negligence can be explained by a growing anti-science sentiment among practitioners of so-called complementary and alternative medicines. This movement is fed by superstition and conspiratorial beliefs. I have little respect for supposedly harmless beliefs in naturopathy since children are getting unnecessarily sick and in some cases dying.

Despite some legitimate complaints about the unscrupulous behaviour of many pharmaceutical companies, the basic scientific fact remains that modern medicine and vaccinations work. You can thank modern medicine for life spans past 40, child mortality rates below 20 per cent, and many more advances. Our government is not out to poison us; vaccines are tested and drugs are regulated for a reason.

This backlash tends to be due to ignorance. For example, one pseudoscience specialist in the whooping cough outbreak claimed that vaccines contain “muck.”

Her argument is basically that it is okay not to vaccinate children from deadly diseases that we know exist because modern medicine involves spooky chemicals. I am not sure where on the periodic table muck is or from what molecule it is derived, but I will take my chances with it over whooping cough, cholera, tuberculosis, and any number of other diseases that we have essentially defeated through the use of vaccines.

Many of these naturopathic “doctors” further subscribe to homeopathy — the idea that diluting a toxic substance until you just have water will make it more effective in curing the disease that it would normally cause in full dosage. For example, if you got bit by a rattle snake; the homeopath would bring out a vial of water that represents the dilution of snake venom.

The water you drink is supposed to have a memory that recalls having snake venom in it and will therefore purify your body.

Never mind that homeopathy has never been shown to be more than a placebo effect or that most mixtures are so diluted as to not contain a single molecule of the active ingredient; the question is, why would you waste your money on something that shows no efficacy?

Now consider the hypocrisy of the natural medicine movement. They claim that their potions of herbs and supplements are on par or better than evidenced-based medicines. Further, natural medicine is supposedly more pure than what the supposedly evil pharmaceutical companies are selling.

Yet when the government introduces modest legislation to regulate alternative medicines, to ensure that they live up to the claims they make, Big-Natura gets up in arms and claims that government agents are going to break into your house if you give your children ginseng. If their drugs do what they say they do, they ought to have nothing to fear from rules that protect consumers from crooked practices.

It is worth remembering though, that nothing spells profit like sugar pills and snake oil. It is no surprise then that major pharmaceutical companies have already moved into the under-regulated naturopathy market, looking to score a quick dollar off the hippies who try to boycott them.

Modern, science-based medicine brought us out of the dark ages. To make ignorant assertions that witchcraft and sorcery can take us forward borders on the absurd. If there were actual evidence supporting many of the claims being made, doctors would have no quarrel with prescribing homeopathy, acupuncture, and Reiki; however, real doctors are not in the business of giving false hope.

When evidence supports an alternative medicine, it’s just called medicine.

Update: I also just noticed that The Peak picked up an Opinion piece from The Manitoban on Simon Singh winning some ground in the libel suit filed against him by the British Chiropractors Association.

Two more Peak excerpts

A great double-feature in The Peak this week. First almost two-thirds of a page was dedicated to letters defending evolution and rebutting Isaac Seo’s poor arguments for creationism. Give it a full read.

The following TXT MSGS were also submitted in response to my article last week:

Poor Ignorant Ian Bushfield

I’m a committed atheist and even I found the skeptic’s banner offensive and tacky.

I’m not totally sure if this one was pointed at me, but either way:

Go study world religions bro, christianity ain’t the only worldview with ideas about sin.

Next, I submitted the following piece defending The Peak against the upcoming GSS referendum to cut student funding to the paper. I enjoy that they listed me as an “Associate Staff Contributor” in the issue, but I’m not sure if that’s a typo or if the job requirements are merely having x number of articles published. Either way, I’ll take it.

Grads need The Peak
By Ian Bushfield

I like being published as much as the next person. Most people enjoy seeing their words in ink. Perhaps the only thing better than having your own words published is having someone else quote you or report news about your mundane life. And yet, these are the exact privileges that graduate students at SFU are now in the position to give up.

The relatively new Graduate Student Society is holding a referendum with their upcoming elections that asks their constituents if they would like to remove their per-semester funding for The Peak, and thereby lose, not only their voice at the campus level, but also any chance to promote their views to their community.

There are several reasons that some graduate students feel they should no longer support The Peak. The first is that it currently does not represent their views. Very rarely in the past year has the GSS been mentioned in the news, although this may have more to do with the lack of controversy or scandal surrounding the organization. Also, little press has been given to all the various forms of research that is being done on campus. Few graduate students publish comics or editorials, and even fewer write specifically on topics relating to graduates.

Naturally, much of the blame for this graduate neglect rests on the shoulders of graduate students themselves. It is not difficult to get an article published in The Peak. Much like those who find it to be too “right-wing” or poorly written, the best way to change the paper is to fire up your computer and send in an article. The big challenge that is facing every graduate student’s involvement in The Peak is very simple: time.

Almost every graduate student is strapped for time. Between work ing their thesis, TA-ships, courses, and other work they are committed to, finding the time to write an editorial, let alone research and write a full article, is almost inconceivable. In undergrad, it is possible to extend one’s degree from one to an infinite number of years, so as to spend a bit more time writing for a student newspaper; whereas in graduate school the pressure is on to finish one’s degree and get on with your life.

With so little time on their hands, it is somewhat ironic that some have suggested that graduate students could instead publish their own newsletter in place of funding The Peak. It makes little sense that if students are unable to commit the time to write for The Peak that they would instead write for a newsletter with a much smaller audience. Every paper needs a minimal readership to stay interesting and viable; The Peak has those numbers, and I highly doubt that graduate students would be able to achieve anything similar.

Many graduate students, regardless of the upcoming referendum, will continue to read The Peak week after week. Rather than essentially stealing the paper, the honourable thing for graduate students to do is to vote to continue supporting the independent voice on campus, so that we can continue to have our issues discussed and represented.

The Peak may not be the greatest newspaper ever written, but it remains a strong link between all the constituents of the greater Simon Fraser community. We should vote to keep it that way.

I’m still trying to decide if I want to submit a piece on humanist ethics, homeopathy and anti-vaxxers or something else for next week. Any preferences?

Update:

I almost forgot that SFU Skeptic member Chris Lonergan got a photo of our banner published in the Community Photos section, with the title “Conflicting perspectives.”

conflicting_perspectives

Update-2:

I just noticed that The Peak also reposted the above article on their “Since 1965” blog. This blog has lots of links challenging the GSS referendum.

Getting the run-around

In my continual efforts to air my grievance about the upcoming SFU graduate student referendum over funding to the student newspaper, The Peak, I have a few more pieces of (mis?)information.

I left off having asked the president of the GSS why the question is phrased in the negative (“Do you agree that the Society discontinue collecting…”) to which he replied:

Hi Ian,
It was decided that we would use the same referendum question as the 2007 referendum that asked the same question.  This question is identical to that one.
I hope that clears it up.
Josh

However, such questions tend to be documented and the GSS, being a relatively open organization, has all of its minutes on its website for the perusal. A quick search finds two references to this 2007 referendum. The first, in September 2007 [pdf] states:

11. New business

a. Referendum endorsement

MOVED that council endorse “yes” votes for referendum questions on membership fees and levies for the Society’s general membership fee, capital levy, health & benefit plan levy, UPass levy, Peak fee, SFPIRG fee, CJSF fee, Student Refugee Program fee, and First Nations Student Association fee.

CARRIED (Schroeder opposed)

And the results are reported in the February 2009 AGM [pdf] (see page 15/16):

October 2007: Referendum to set all initial membership fees of the Gss, including… Peak fee… Council endorsed a “yes” vote for all of these fees. Polling occurred online on October 29th and 30th. Between 584 and 591 votes were cast for each referendum question and all referendum questions passed.

Both of these quotes imply to me that the referendum of 2007 was not worded the same as this current one at all. I’ve sent these notes and the questions they raise back to Joshua Newman, in dwindling hopes of discovering much more from him.

Meanwhile, my council rep reported to me that most of the council discussion revolved around whether to have a referendum, and 40% of council was against any Peak referendum. Also, one of my friends on Facebook has taken to this issue too and reports from her rep a similar vote but “quite a bit of discussion regarding the wording” occurred.

While I’m pessimistic that this question will be changed, I think some noise needs to be heard so we can demand better from our council and that people realize that they need to read the questions before instinctively voting yes (especially if they read “Do you agree… the Peak funding”).

On the positive, I will have another article in the Peak on Monday that deals explicitly with this referendum, however I didn’t indulge the phrasing issue so my conclusion was to endorse voting to continue funding the Peak.

Changing questions

Not too long after I sent my grievance to the GSS elections committee, I got a reply letting me know that the referendum is under sole control of the President and GSS council, so my letter was forwarded to Joshua Newman. Here’s his reply, which also came very quickly:

Hi Ian,
The referendum question regarding The Peak was developed by the GSS Council, an elected body of 35 grad students representing every department at SFU.  Council determined that this was the most fair way to ask this question.
Thanks for your concern.
Joshua Newman
President
Graduate Student Society at SFU

To which I just replied,

Thanks for the quick reply Joshua,

I noticed that the agenda for the 6 March council meeting [pdf, see page 15] indicate that the proposed question was:

"Do you want to continue paying $4.90 per student per semester to support The Peak?"

May I ask, since the minutes aren’t available online yet (I assume they won’t be until after they are approved at the next council meeting at the end of April, well after the election), what discussion took place around changing the wording?

Ian Bushfield
MSc. Physics Student at SFU

I continue to urge all concerned graduate students to email Joshua Newman at [email protected] and also contact their caucus reps to find out why the question was changed.

Vote NO to discontinuing funding from the Peak!

Is the GSS trying to kill The Peak?

Obviously, I’m biased in the upcoming SFU Graduate Student Society elections regarding the referendum question that asks whether grad students want to continue funding the Peak, but I think anyone has to consider the following referendum phrasing to be misleading and biased against continued support:

Do you agree that the Society discontinue collecting the special membership fee for the Peak Publication Society, effective Fall 2010, resulting in a reduction of $4.90 per full-time student and $2.45 per part-time student per term in the Graduate Student Society Activity fee?

Notice the negative phrasing, i.e. to support the Peak you have to vote “No,” and the unnecessary inclusion of the cost per term in the question.

So, I submitted the following grievance to the GSS election committee, except their provided email address [email protected] is a dead link and instead I had to type in the proper email [email protected]. I advise you to do the same if you’re an SFU graduate student and care about honest and fair elections. Feel free to copy my letter verbatim or modify it as you see fit:

Graduate Student Society Election Committee,

I would like to submit a grievance with the wording of referendum question 3:

"3.Do you agree that the Society discontinue collecting the special membership fee for the Peak Publication Society, effective Fall 2010, resulting in a reduction of $4.90 per full-time student and $2.45 per part-time student per term in the Graduate Student Society Activity fee?"

I feel it is dishonest and unfair to phrase the question in the negative and biases the referendum against continued support of the Peak. I further feel that the discussion of the cost per term is unnecessary and further meant to bias respondents against the Peak. Can the election committee explain the rationale behind this phrasing? Further, will the committee rephrase the question in a more neutral stance such as:

"Do you support the continuation of the Society collecting the special membership fee from every graduate student for the Peak Publication Society beyond Fall 2010?"

Ian Bushfield

Treasurer, Physics Graduate Caucus
MSc. Physics Student at SFU

Update:

I got a reply from the GSS Election Committee, and the wording of referenda fall under the control of the GSS President and Council. Email you concerns to Josh Newman at [email protected], also email your councillor.

The Peak explodes

Lots of controversy in this week’s issue of the SFU weekly newspaper, The Peak.

After my column last week attacking creationism, I sparked two text responses:

Hey Bushfield: know before you speak.

Well said Ian Bushfield!!!

Opinion editor Graham Templeton attempted to defend his editorial record over the past couple terms, trying to emphasize that he had published more left than right wing articles, but he included this nifty quote that will likely incite some responses.

Not everything can be published, of course, and I have certainly received well-written articles that I’ve refused to publish due to the utter inanity of their thesis. This is called editorial discretion, and its inherently arbitrary nature is what leads to these sorts of controversies. I have turned away some creationist articles which are simply full of falsehoods, while I have published others (see: this week’s opinions section,) with which I simply disagree strongly, but which do not contain outright lies. [emphasis added]

Speaking of creationist articles, here’s Isaac Seo’s, international piano-e-competition champion, rant responding to my last article. I won’t respond to it in print (paper’s rarely publish a back and forth between two authors), and his arguments are repetitive and lame so I won’t respond here unless there’s demand in the comments.

There’s also an article by Dan McPeake (yes that’s his real name) about secularism and the burqa in France. I have to grant his thesis to him, although he glazes over the fact that many Islamic women are not making a choice and that it is rather being made for them, but it’s a fine line between secularism and defending an egalitarian society.

Finally, my latest piece is in regards to recent minor vandalism of the SFU Skeptics’ “There’s probably no God…” banner.

Only cowards censor
By Ian Bushfield

The SFU Skeptics have had a banner hanging around campus in various locations for the past month, but on the evening of March 11, someone decided that this banner was so offensive that they had to attempt to censor the student group. The banner was found crumpled under a railing the next morning.

So what phrase was so objectionable that it needed to be suppressed? Simply, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

This is the same slogan that Richard Dawkins plastered across buses in London,which subsequently run in cities across the world from Barcelona to Christchurch. Many other transit authorities and city councils attempted to ban the upbeat message, as though the phrase was as objectionable as “fuck Jesus.” But by trying to block the message, the censors unwittingly gave the atheists a platform to cry foul in the media.

It is almost hard to imagine this phrase as being so offensive. Having an enjoyable life should not be that offensive of an idea, so it must be the fact that there are some of us who are willing to state publicly that we do not believe in a higher power.

Yet we even admit that we may not be right by using the “probably” qualifier; you won’t get honesty like that in a Sunday morning sermon.

Perhaps people take offense to the concept that you can be moral without God. This should be an absurd notion, as countless atheists around the world, including myself, are not constantly murdering and raping. The fact that some theists believe that this is what would happen if they did not have a cosmic babysitter ought to tell you far more about their own personal morality than anything else.

Regardless of how offensive you find the banner or the justification for that offense, it does not change the fact that the banner was approved and sponsored by the Simon Fraser Student Society with a student group grant. The SFSS obviously believes in the right to free speech, and that every sanctioned group has the right to put a message across campus.

The right not to be offended does not exist in this country. The proper response to a message that you disagree with is dialogue, not censorship. This banner serves as a response to the countless religious clubs who are pervasive at this school and in society. It seeks to counter the notion that you cannot be good without God.

Alternatively, when your ideological adversaries are increasingly vulgar, sometimes the proper response is ridicule. My favourite counter-protests to Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps’s picketing of funerals are the ones with absurdist signs with phrases such as “I like donuts,” “God hates shrimp,” or “I have a sign too!”

The only other approach to take with such content is to simply ignore it. Had there been no fatwa against the Danish cartoonist for his portrayal of Mohammed, almost no one would have seen the relatively humourless depictions.

If we permit the silencing of someone’s right to free speech, we risk threatening the core of the democratic ideal. Only when ideas can compete with one another on fair footing do we have any hope of discovering which ones are closer to the truth.

Tearing down posters and crumpling banners is downright cowardly. Most of us come to university with an open-mind, ready to learn new things and hear different ideas. I guess some of us are just not ready for that intellectual challenge.

So to the miscreant who crumpled the banner I ask one thing: would Jesus vandalize?

While I keep saying that I’ll write one thing and then end up submitting another, for next week I had thought of submitting a piece about humanistic ethics to respond indirectly to Isaac’s article and general misconceptions, but instead I’ll likely be hoping to publish a piece defending The Peak from the upcoming graduate student referendum that seeks to cut all graduate funding from the Peak, which would thereby end my writing days as grad students wouldn’t get to publish if they weren’t paying for the paper.

Also, this Wednesday, as a multi-published writer I have the fortune to vote for the Peak’s editorial staff for this summer, so basically this summer I’ll have a hand in the blame if it isn’t remarkable. Leave a comment or email me if there’s any considerations I should be taking into account on this vote (since most SFU students who pay for the Peak don’t get a vote, I’m willing to take any opinions into account that have no influence).

The Peak – Keep creationism out of science classroom

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.

Published in The Peak

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).

Wiccan for Jesus?

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.

If no one attended, it’s not news

Oh the SFU Peak. So thin on content that they still publish stuff by Sam Reynolds (who a few weeks ago tried to argue that torture’s cool as long as it’s called “enhanced interrogation”), like today’s “Campus News” piece entitled “Pro-life demonstration draws few supporters.”

Of course titles are generally chosen by the section editors, so we don’t know what Sam’s first choice title would have been.

The article focuses on a recent event by SFU Students for Life (they’re anti-choicers, not perpetual students I think) that tried to use the shock value of the abortion-Holocaust comparison. The article spends about 2/3s of its length to explain what happened at the event, where only 17 actual human beings were (likely including Sam Reynolds, the speaker, and SFU SFL president).

Think about this: Almost no one attended the event (I had noticed the posters which were lacklustre white pieces of paper posted inconspicuously around campus), yet they now have the opportunity to use the News section (i.e. not the opinions) to spread their comparison.

Now, campus apathy makes a good story in regards to student politics and perhaps lacklustre student life, but picking a single event that tried to push an agenda almost everyone on campus hates and then making it our to be headline news? I call bias.

And notice that I choose to publish this here on my blog as opposed to sending anything in to the Peak, since there’s no reason to give this “debate” any more voice than it’s already received.