Free Press on opening legislature with prayer

[trevor]

Groovy. If you can't acquire a scanner, I have one if you can part with it for a few days.

[X]

One last thought:

Instead of:

"Humanists believe that we should strive to do good not because of the teachings of a supernatural being or a two thousand year old book, but because we are all in this world together and should strive to make life better for all of us.",

how about:

"Humanists believe that we should strive to do good not because of the threat of damnation or the teachings of a two thousand year old book, but because we are all in this world together and should strive to make life better for all of us.".


Or does that sound a little too snarky?

[brian]

I think that sounds better

[trevor]

Agreed.

[Steven]

Groovy. If you can't acquire a scanner, I have one if you can part with it for a few days.

If memory serves me right, I think the scanner attached to my family's computer doesn't work for some reason (I haven't used it in a very long time), but I will give it a try.

If not, I will give the article to you at some point.

[brian]

speaking of stuff to put up, put up the pics from Darwin Day and recruitment week!

[trevor]

Oh, right. I should get ons that.

[brian]

the letters have been sent earlier this morning.  I am also thinking of sending in a personal letter in response to one of todays in the Sun.

I did not realize that we had so many fundies in Canada... hopefully that is only representative of the type of people who read the Sun though.

[trevor]

If you do, still try to get a digital copy that we can put on the website.

In response to what letter, out of curiosity?

[brian]

The second one, about the "weirdos".  It is rather frustrating to see that atheists and wiccans are considered acceptable targets by major newspapers.  Imagine if they printed a letter calling Jews and Muslims weirdos and fools.

Also, it is frustrating to see people who think Canada is a Christian nation.  Last time I checked, we were supposed to be secular and freedom from religion is in the Charter.  Yes, the majority of Canada's founders were Christian, but that is only because the majority of people in Canada (well, white property owners who have all the power) were Christian.  And even if we were "founded on Christianity", that doesn't mean anything.  Canada was also founded on principles of stealing land from indigenous people and super-exploiting Asian workers, but most of us still don't believe in that these days.

[trevor]

Jesus fucking christ, that is some crazy shit. The worst part being that the Sun's opinion person is agreeing with that shit: "Bringing God to residential school students sure seemed to work wonders." Where's the evidence to back any of that up?

I get the feeling that we could argue ad nauseum with these people and I wonder if it's a productive course of action. I definitely think that we need to do something about this, but perhaps we should be more proactive rather than reactive. There's no point refuting their arguments day after day.

[brian]

I just got a call from the Free Press.  It looks like they are going to publish our letter, except I had to put my name on it (they have a form on their website, unlike the Sun where you just email it in)

I think that they were being sarcastic about the residential schools.  At least, I hope they were because I can't imagine anyone thinking anything about residential schools were a good idea.

Do you have any ideas as to what we can do that is more productive?  It seems to me like there isn't much because we are up against a lot of people who are very strong in their beliefs about people of other religions (especially atheists and some of the less traditional religions such as Wicca).

Although I don't think legal tactics are the right idea, I am curious about hate speech laws in Canada.  Time to google...

Edit:  Although religion is one of the protected classes (curiously, sex isn't a protected class), apparently hate speech does not apply to people who base it off religion

[trevor]

Groovy, we shall be published. It'd be nice if they put your affiliation as well, but I guess we'll see.

Ah, sarcasm. Well, that would calm me a bit; I guess that kind of thing doesn't always come across very well in print.

As far as being productive, perhaps we can start compiling a list of common misconceptions about various religions - we can see lots of misconceptions in these letters, so whenever you read something like that, you can just add it to the list. I'd say just add anything that seems like it should be investigated, and someone will either know about it or read up on it in response. I'll start a thread somewhere... debate & discourse, I suppose. I'm sure similar lists already exist, so we can use much of that.

By the way, if anyone is thinking of reading parts of the bible to find crazy shit, the funnest way to read such tripe is in illustrated form. Illustrated by LEGO: http://www.thebricktestament.com/

[Steven]

By the way, if anyone is thinking of reading parts of the bible to find crazy shit, the funnest way to read such tripe is in illustrated form. Illustrated by LEGO: http://www.thebricktestament.com/

That site is actually very well done. It must have taken a long time to put all those scenes together. Nothing like Lego to illustrate the sheer absurdity of the bible.

Trevor: It doesn't look like my scanner is going to work, so I'll have to give you the Sun article at some point.

[trevor]

Okey dokey. Once we get back to school, I imagine. Actually, there's a bunch of scanners in Dafoe, maybe we should just use those instead.