Canada taking steps forward in race discussion

Every now and then I spot a news item that makes me optimistic that my vision of Canada as a model of multiculturalism might actually come to pass. As I’ve said, I think that Canada is in a unique position to host people from all over the world without forcing them to comply to an overwhelming and jealously-guarded national identity. And things like this are maybe a step in that direction:

A shared concern to preserve their distinct languages and culture by first nations in British Columbia and minority ethnic groups in China have brought representatives from the two groups together. Following discussions between the groups, aboriginal people here feel there is a need for language protection legislation, which is already in place in China. The Chinese delegation learned new ideas on how to implement projects within smaller communities, said Tracey Herbert, the executive director of the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Cultural Council.

I’m a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The show explores some themes that, if they hadn’t been already universal, would have been almost prophetic. One of the characters that I found particularly compelling was that of The Borg – a collectivist civilization that had completely abandoned individual autonomy in favour of a hierarchical regimented existence. It would go from place to place, swallowing up entire civilizations into their hive-mind.

The fear experienced by the crew of The Enterprise when confronting such overwhelming obliteration of individuality is certainly akin to that felt by new immigrant Canadians. In order to prevent traditions that they see as valuable from being completely swallowed up by the lure of conformity, the Chinese community has sought allies in the First Nations community. Amazingly, this was not an example of a post-industrial civilization engaging in one-sided exploitation of a minority group, but an equitable sharing and exchange of ideas.

Now I will be the first to admit that this kind of co-operation threatens me as a rich, English-speaking, privileged male Canadian. I am acutely aware of the fact that the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I see two groups with which I do not identify work together to change the status quo that puts me at the top of the heap, but that’s my own problem to deal with. I can tamp down that fear somewhat by recognizing that whether you were born somewhere else, or your parents were, or it’s been hundreds of generations since your people came to this land, we are all Canadians. As long as our focus is to make this country stronger and more just, I’m fine being knocked down a couple of pegs.

Of course, in order to take steps forward, we need to acknowledge our own history:

Saint John’s black community is appealing directly to the Queen Elizabeth for an apology for a 1785 decree that severely restricted where they could live or fish. Saint John is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the royal charter that created the southern New Brunswick city. But that same charter made white loyalists the only free citizens of the city and black loyalists, who fought for King George III in the American Revolution, with few exceptions, were denied the right to live or set up businesses within city boundaries.

This is an interesting bit of history that I wasn’t aware of. Apparently under the charter that created the city of St. John, its black inhabitants were not granted the rights of citizens. They were barred from living within the city’s walls or fishing in the outlying rivers. Even though they helped build the city, they were disallowed from reaping the fruits of their labour – not because of systematic, subtle racism, but because of an official decree.

Pop quiz time! What is the subtext of the following comments?

“Just think though , if it wasn’t for the British and American slavery practices most of the North American black population would still be living in some oppressive, 3rd world, war torn African country trying to get refugee status to live here in Canada.”

“Why would someone apologize for something they had no control over? Better call Ghosthunters to call the dead.”

“Get a life people of the St. John’s Black Community !!! What happened in 1785 happened. That’s it. And you don’t deserve an apology from someones great great great great great grand daughter for something that happened to your great great great great great grand parents.”

If you guessed “Get over it, black people!”, you’re right!

There’s a pernicious lie that you’ll see pop up in any discussion of immigration or minority civil rights – “the white man built this country, and if you don’t like it you can leave!” At least part of the reason this lie gets repeated so much is because we fail to recognize the history that underlies (and directly causes) our present-day realities. Africa isn’t war-torn because Africans are dispositionally warlike – it’s because it was financially exploited by Europeans, beginning with slavery. The apology is not to appease some ghosts, it’s to force present-day Canadians to own up to our history. We did these things – ignoring them is to lose the lessons they can teach. The white man didn’t build this country, he just wrote the history books and the laws.

If you’re not interested in improving the racial climate in Canada that’s your right. However, sitting on the sidelines and sniping at those who are actually putting in the work makes you look like an asshole at best, and a racist asshole at worst.

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Attention liberals: you’re racist too

I pride myself on being a liberal progressive. There’s a great line I heard in response to this Tea Party nonsense that’s been dominating the political scene recently:

Conservatives want their country back. Progressives want their country forward

I am proud to claim membership in a group that wants to adapt to the reality of the world we live in, rather than obstinately cling to ideology as a substitute for evidence. If the evidence says “privatize health care”, then we should do it; if it says “shut down welfare”, then we should do it; if it says “religion is a sufficient and useful basis upon which to build a society”, then by all means let’s have more of it. However, the evidence repeatedly comes down on the side of the progressive agenda, forcing conservatives to embrace positions that are more and more to the bizarre fringe.

However, liberals can be just as guilty of becoming mired in ideology. We’re not better people; we just have better ideas. However, occasionally we’ll do something so boneheadedly stupid as to make me question my allegience:

US broadcaster National Public Radio has fired news analyst Juan Williams for saying on Fox News that he gets nervous if he sees Muslims on a plane. Williams, who has written several books on the US civil rights movement, made the remarks last week on chat show The O’Reilly Factor. NPR said in a statement that Williams’s contract had been ended on Wednesday.

I’m sure some of you think that I’m referring to what Mr. Williams said as an example of liberals being racist. I’m not. It’s arch-liberal NPR that I’m disgusted by:

Williams: “But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said before Mr Williams was sacked that such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups would not be tolerated. In its statement, NPR said Mr Williams’s comments “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR”.

Here’s what I see – I see a guy who is openly and honestly recognizing his race biases and the prejudice that he sees within himself. I see a guy who is doing exactly what we are supposed to do, which is to confront our own privilege and investigate how much it plays into our decision making. I see a guy who said something impolitic, but in a self-reflective rather than hateful way.

What does NPR see? Someone saying something that isn’t puppies and rainbows about their interactions with a minority group! And as everyone knows, liberals aren’t racist at all. Therefore, he must be fired immediately.

The sad thing is not only the fact that a guy was fired in a Shirley Sherrod-like flurry of left-wing idiocy, it’s that the right (and particularly Fox News) is trumpeting to the skies that this is somehow some kind of vindication:

By midafternoon Thursday, more than 4,900 comments had been posted on NPR.org, including many from people who said the media organization was bowing to political correctness and unfairly punishing Williams for expressing his personal opinions.

“In one arrogant move the NPR exposed itself for the leftist thought police they really are,” read one typical post. “After this November elections I hope one of the first things the new Congress does is to defund this poor excuse for public radio.”

Okay, everyone write this down: Having idiots for opponents does not mean you are correct. Don’t get me wrong – it makes the process of demonstrating that your position is correct a hell of a lot easier, but you still have to explain why your ideas have validity. Yes, NPR was stupid, that doesn’t mean that Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin have somehow magically become smarter.

This is how left-wing ideological obstinacy manifests itself – nobody can say anything that even sounds remotely racist. Ignore the point that he was trying to make – he said something that sounded mean, so he’s got to go. I would completely understand if they demanded that Williams clarify his position on air, as it is fraught with potential grounds for misinterpretation. They didn’t do that though, they fired him, driving him into the arms of Fox News and giving conservatives more ammunition to claim that the real racists are liberals.

Racism is a plague on both of our houses, folks. We just show our symptoms differently.

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Sweden doesn’t have a race problem

When I originally talked about Geert Wilders, the racist fuckhead who is on trial for being a racist fuckhead (which, while extremely objectionable, should not be a crime), I made a passing comment about Scandinavian socialist utopias. While it is undeniable that the quality of life is much better in those countries – due in no small part to the wide variety of the social programs available to the citizenry – they are not immune to the same brand of racist bullshit that is a problem everywhere else in the world:

Swedish police fear a lone gunman may be behind a spate of racially-motivated shootings in the southern city of Malmo. Detectives say they are linking up to 15 gun attacks in the city over the past year that have targeted people of immigrant background. The investigation comes amid growing tension in Sweden over immigration.

It appears as though Sweden is caught in the same fear-grip that allowed an asshole like Geert Wilders to gain political power in The Netherlands. And of course once you stoke fear to  a fevered level, and move the entire zeitgeist toward an anti-immigrant sentiment, eventually the nuts who were at the far right before find themselves embraced in the mainstream. With mainstream acceptance for stupid ideas comes a new re-drawing of where the fringe is. All of sudden, picking up a rifle and picking off a few members of the feared group no longer seems like such an unreasonable idea?

Don’t believe me? Ask Byron Williams, the so-called “progressive hunter“, who drew his inspiration to murder employees of an environmentalist philanthropic group from the implicit support of Fox News. When you stoke the fires of fear in the populace under the guise of “just asking questions”, you invite people to draw their own conclusions based on shitty evidence and innuendo. Invariably, people come to believe that they alone have pierced the veil of secrecy, and that violence is the only answer. That’s undoubtedly what’s happening in Sweden, a country that I otherwise have positive feelings about.

I have no such feelings about the Czech Republic, another country that clearly doesn’t have a race problem:

Four right-wing extremists in the Czech Republic have been jailed for an arson attack on a Roma family. The court in the eastern city of Ostrava handed down sentences of up to 22 years for racially motivated attempted murder. Three people were hurt when three Molotov cocktails were thrown into a Roma house in Vitkov on 19 April, 2009. One of the victims was a toddler who barely survived, suffering 80% burns on her body.

When we allow racist ideologies to take hold in our society, we pave the way for atrocities like this. When we soothe ourselves with the lie that racism isn’t a problem anymore, and that anti-racists are just whining about nothing, we lend tacit acceptance to those who think that there needs to be some kind of reprisal against racial minorities. The world has a race problem, and the longer we pretend it doesn’t, the worse it will get.

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Conservative bloggers call for Campbell soup boycott fearing Islamic terrorism

What would you do if you saw someone homeless, legless, begging for help or at least understanding? Obviously your human compassion would kick in and you’d go to that person’s aid.

Not me – I’d plant a swift kick and walk away laughing.

Well… not really, but sometimes it feels like that.

Conservative bloggers in the United States — the same ones behind opposition to the Islamic centre near Ground Zero in New York — are calling for a boycott of Campbell’s Canadian-made soups, alleging Islamic terrorists are linked to both. Pamela Geller, who runs a widely read anti-Muslim site called Atlas Shrugs, is calling for a boycott of some 15 soups made by the Canadian subsidiary of New Jersey-based Campbell Soup Co.

This story is just too delicious (or should I say ‘Mmm, mmm, good’) to pass by without mocking. It has all the ingredients for a hilarious level of crapitalism: conservatism, Ayn Rand worship, completely ridiculous accusations of terror links, religion, and underlying the whole thing is soup. To conservatives: when you complain that the “elitist liberals” think that you’re all a bunch of troglodyte morons, this is why we think that. Every time you see a clownish buffoon rail against supposed connections between international terror and a friggin’ soup company, or something equally ludicrous, it’s some “family values” or “small government” nutbag right-wing group.

By the way, for those of you who didn’t read the story – the reason they think Campbell’s is connected to terror isn’t based on any deals with shady companies or foreign sources of funding. No no no, nothing so superficially reasonable:

Sold in Canada, the soups are certified by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which has been certifying halal foods since 1988. But Geller claims ISNA has ties to terrorist groups, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The other children on the playground are right to make fun of you, Ms. Geller – you’re a moron.

But my mean-spirited mockery doesn’t stop there; oh no, not even close:

“The Simpsons” just got a blessing from the Vatican. The official Vatican newspaper has declared that beer-swilling, doughnut-loving Homer Simpson and son Bart are Catholics — and what’s more, it says that parents should not be afraid to let their children watch “the adventures of the little guys in yellow.” “Few people know it, and he does everything to hide it. But it’s true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic”, the Osservatore Romano newspaper said in an article on Sunday headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics.”

The evidence for the assertion: prayer before meals, believing in God.

The evidence against the assertion: regular attendance at a “Presbylutheran” church, complete lack of Catholic doctrine, open mockery of Catholicism.

Ah yes, I keep forgetting. Using evidence with the Catholic Church is like trying to stop a buffalo stampede with road signs – they don’t understand it, and will completely ignore it. The Osservatore Romano based this on an analysis of a Simpsons episode in which God is discussed, the conclusion of which is that The Simpsons is the only kid’s show that discusses Christian faith and religion. Of course The Simpsons isn’t a kid’s show, it’s a cartoon sitcom for adults. Peter Griffin from Family Guy actually is Catholic, and is another popular cartoon sitcom that discusses Christian faith and religion on a regular basis, but almost never in a positive light. Hmm, wonder how they missed that? It’s the good old fashioned religious way of reasoning – come up with your conclusion first, then back-fill your explanation. Convenient!

Of course these are funny and light-hearted instances of when religious stupidity runs rampant. Sometimes it’s not a joke:

Sikh groups have urged US President Barack Obama not to avoid visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar during his India trip next month, amid reports he is now unlikely to go there. A US official told the BBC there were “logistical” issues. Mr Obama would need to cover his head to enter the temple and there are reported concerns opponents would use this to show he is a closet Muslim.

It’s a sad reflection on all of us when we let the actions of idiots influence foreign policy. I mean, it’s bad enough that we play ‘accommodationist’ with these idiots, elevating their idiocy to the level of reasoned debate in some misguided attempt to appease people who have been left behind by the last century, but to allow people who can’t tell the difference between Sikhism and Islam, or even the difference between showing respect for another culture’s traditions and being a secret member of that culture… to allow these kinds of people to derail diplomacy with a potentially huge trading partner is an unbelievable tragedy.

So yes, I kick the homeless amputee, and walk away laughing. Religion deserves nothing but mockery when it pretentiously draws itself up and masquerades as something deserving of respect. Doing otherwise is to falsely pretend that it has some sort of merit and is above criticism.

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The joy of the godless (parte the seconde)

Last week I began a lengthy response to a commenter who accused me of having a dishonest brand of atheism because I am not a nihilist. Despite the fact that the accusation is wrong almost to the point of banality, I found thinking about it yielded some interesting fruit that I’d like to share with you.

When we last left our hero, he was in the throes of deep, soul-penetrating and unremitting existential angst, brought about by holding a cognitive dissonance closely to his chest. I could not seem to reconcile the facts of the world to the articles of my faith, a faith which warped and mutated wildly as I struggled valiantly to find books or movies or plays or songs to prop up the rapidly crumbling scaffolding of my belief in God.

Giving up my faith outright wasn’t an option for me. I was not lured by a siren song of atheism – there was no appeal to pretensions of godhood. To be completely honest, I didn’t know the first thing about the atheist or skeptic movement. I had no idea there was an entire community of people who had faced down the same demons I had. In my youthful arrogance I imagined myself uniquely plagued by questions of faith – those who believed were simplistic and naive, whereas those who disbelieved had never really believed in the first place.

After many years of failing to find spiritual satisfaction in any type of religious belief (I briefly toyed with the idea of converting to Judaism or going to an evangelical church, but quickly realized that I would only be trying to drown the doubts with noise rather than addressing the issue), I took a different tack. I remember vividly sitting in church in Toronto with my parents on Christmas Day, being berated by a priest for not being faithful enough – not me personally, but the handful of people who got up early on Christmas morning to go to church. I remember thinking “if there’s a God out there, this asshole definitely doesn’t speak for him.”

All of a sudden, the voices of doubt immediately quieted. The reason why there were no answers in religion or the Bible is because they are products of humankind! Of course we couldn’t know anything about the nature of God by looking at things that human hands had crafted – we could only learn about humans that way. This happy thought comforted me for a few seconds, until I thought about its implications. If we don’t know anything about God, if God is fundamentally unknowable, then all attempts to placate Him or curry His favour are a shocking waste of time and perfectly good treasure (yarr). Since God is, to all appearances, completely unmoved by prayers or other attempts to bribe Him, we should stop trying those methods – they just don’t work.

In a flash I realized that the existence of God was a completely unimportant question. If He does exist, then he’s clearly uninterested in helping anyone or making life tolerable, in which case worship is a foolish endeavour. If He doesn’t exist, then worship is equally meaningless. Spending years of my life wrestling with the question had been, sadly, a waste of those years and the emotional resources consumed in the attempt.

I felt a bit like Dorothy pulling back the curtain of the Great and Powerful Oz. But instead of finding a man who would guiltily admit to perpetrating the hoax, I instead found the man had recently fled. Some people looked at the absence of someone behind the curtain as evidence that Oz is real, but the existence of machinery that moves the head, the microphone that made the head speak, and the lingering odor of pipe smoke (suggesting that someone was recently behind that curtain) was sufficient evidence for me to become an a-Oz-ist.

Of course, this happened in church, sitting next to my parents. I didn’t bother sharing this insight with them. While I might spout off some rhetoric about being respectful of their right to believe what they want, my primary concern was that I might get browbeat back into the faith camp and lose the threads of what seemed like a very promising resolution to my problem. I wasn’t ready yet to defend the position, having arrived at it so recently. However, it was then that I was ready to start exploring the issue.

What you’re reading here isn’t the product of that exploration so much as it is a window of insight into the ongoing process. I’ve honestly and earnestly explored the multitude of so-called “reasons” why YahwAlladdha exists, and found them to be completely lacking in merit. They’re inevitably some combination of arguments from ignorance, garnished with varying degrees of linguistic sophistry. My reaction to these now is similar to when I was young and realized that I was a head taller than the school bully – all of a sudden the thing I had been so worried about seemed so petty and unimpressive that I was disgusted with myself for fearing it in the first place.

This is why I am so impatient with the faithful – not because I think they are stupid per se, but because they have compartmentalized their minds and refused to address the irrationality at the core of belief in God. The only honest form of belief I have found is that of Katie Kish, who says that she recognizes that it doesn’t make any sense, but she likes how it makes her feel – while this stance annoys me, that’s really my problem and not hers.

To return momentarily to the assertion, or rather accusation, that my atheism is dishonestly come by, or that atheists can only be happy if they delude themselves into believing themselves to be gods, it is (hopefully) abundantly evident from the above story that there is no merit to this view. It is a silly, spurious lie borne by a combination of ignorance and ready acceptance of propaganda. I am finally, after years of struggle, able to live a fulfilling and happy life without having to lie to myself, or hold beliefs that are contradicted by evidence in multitude. My mind can rest easy in moments of quiet reflection, no longer plagued by the need to find some kind of explanation of my place in the universe. I can develop personal moral positions and defend them without having to rely on faith-based beliefs that I do not really believe in.

Far from making me a nihilist, my divestiture of God was the most honest and liberating thing I’ve ever done.

TL/DR: After being haunted for years with the contradictions inherent in religious faith, I finally figured out that the question of the existence of God was meaningless either way. At that point I was ready to explore the issue without guilt, eventually granting me freedom from the question at all. Nihilism is far from the only or ‘most honest’ reaction to atheism.

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CFI Skeptics ‘welcome’ creationist Jonathan Sarfati, PhD

Once again thumbing my nose at the publishing guidelines for Canadian Atheist, I am cross-posting the summary I wrote on this event here. Readers should be aware that I was not present at any of the described events. What follows is my amalgamation of the impressions of a diverse group of skeptics working in different cities.

This past week, British Columbia was host to creationist lecturer Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, a PhD in chemistry who gave a series of lectures entitled “Evolution: The Greatest Hoax on Earth.” The title, while pithy enough on its own, is based on the title of the international bestselling book The Greatest Show on Earth by British biologist, professor and novelist Richard Dawkins.

Dr. Sarfati, founder of Creation Ministries International, asserts that evolution is a hoax based on his literal interpretation of the story of Genesis – in which God created the universe in 7 days about 10,000 years ago. One must admire the courage and temerity of a man who looks at pre-human fossils dated orders of magnitude older than that; rock formations dated billions of years old; and abundant cosmological evidence putting the age of the universe even older than the rocks; and says “nope, ten thousand – book says so.” Maybe ‘admire’ isn’t the right word…

What did we do?

Upon hearing that we would be paid a visit by such a luminary figure, British Columbia skeptics decided that if creationist propaganda was going to be spread around our fair province then audience members deserved to hear what the scientific evidence had to say. After all, forewarned is forearmed. Centre for Inquiry (CFI) Vancouver, in partnership with our colleagues at CFI Okanagan, the University of British Columbia (UBC) biology department, UBC Okanagan (UBCO), the UBC Freethinkers and the UBCO Skeptics contacted the venues where Sarfati was scheduled to speak – UBC’s Vancouver campus, The Pacific Academy in Surrey, and UBC’s Okanagan campus – and requested permission to set up an information table in the lobby.

The Pacific Academy, a privately owned venue attached to a Pentacostal Christian school (K-12) in Surrey, declined our request to set up a table. While we were understandably disappointed – especially given CFI’s past willingness to allow creationists to push their propaganda (usually in the form of “if there’s no God, how did all this stuff get here? Therefore, God.”) at our events – we recognized that private businesses have every right to hold whatever events they like. The Surrey event was attended by around 800 people of all ages.

We were able to prevail upon UBC to allow the presence of science within the morass of apologetics by reminding them of their obligation to present information that is consistent with the policies of the university. While creationism might be entertaining, evolution is a fact. We were lucky to be able to borrow on the heft and credibility of our colleagues within the UBC biology department.

The Vancouver lecture was not quite as well-attended, perhaps due to the fact that people in a university environment know a bit more about science than the general public. Many of the students we encountered there attended out of sheer curiosity – having heard about the evolution vs. creation “controversy” (only controversial to those within the creationist camp). They thanked us for being there to present the evidence, rather than… well, we’ll get to that later.

The UBC Okanagan lecture was again not quite as popular as the one held by the Pentecostal Church in Surrey. Our volunteers were present to provide some information to those who might not have a background in biology. Feeling a bit cheeky, some of us wore t-shirts that said “Creationism: a Philosophy of Ignorance”, referring to the argument from ignorance that Creationism is based on (“I don’t know how this works, therefore it must be God’s doing”). Our esteemed presenter wasn’t particularly pleased about that, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Overall, our presence was welcomed by audience members. We were careful not to force information on people, preferring instead to wait for curious parties to come to us. We were not there to sell anything or to force an agenda, merely to make information available and give people a chance to pre-empt some of the more egregious lies inherent to creationism.

What happened at the lecture?

While the bar for creationist lecturers isn’t set particularly high, either in terms of evidence or persuasive arguments, Dr. Sarfati did his utmost not to clear it. Instead of presenting evidence for the truth of creation (which would be impressive, because there isn’t any), he instead presented a series of shallow, recycled and easily- (and oft-) refuted arguments. Some of the highlights:

  • The second law of thermodynamics says that organization can’t increase in a closed system, therefore beneficial mutations cannot happen and evolution cannot occur. Never mind that the Earth is not a closed system, gets regular energy from the sun, and beneficial mutations have been observed to occur (a PhD in Chemistry really should know this)…
  • Science comes from Christianity (therefore… God?). Never mind that the Christian church repeatedly blocked scientific progress that was contrary to dogma, that science has explained many things that were supposedly divine “mysteries”, and that during the Dark Ages – when the church was at its height of power – it was the Muslim world that made the greatest contributions to science…
  • Noah’s flood explains everything, from the Grand Canyon to the divergence of species. Never mind the fact that contemporary floods don’t seem to have the magical properties of Noah’s flood, that building a ship capable of holding 2 of every animal in the world would require a level of technology we don’t even have today, and that there is no evidence anywhere of a flood that covered the entire world and then carefully planted specific types of animals only in certain places…
  • Fish float when they die, therefore they can’t fossilize, therefore fish fossils are evidence of being buried by mud slides from Noah’s flood. Never mind the fact that you do not need Noah’s flood to create mud slides that bury fish. It happens all the time. Never mind the fact that fish sink after their air bladders lose integrity, or that fish without bladders sink right away, or that fossil records are not the only – or even the strongest – evidence we have for evolution…
  • If you put a frog in a blender and turn it on, you’ll never see a live frog be reassembled. I’m not even sure if this one is worth taking on, and someone should probably call the SPCA.

After the lecture there was a Q&A session. Dr. Safarti wasn’t too pleased to see our volunteers in the first place (someone put a copy of Biology for Dummies on the podium – perhaps not polite, but certainly funny), and mentioned our insouciant t-shirts a few times in Kelowna. He became even more hostile when we pointed out some of the more egregious fallacies in his argument, interrupting the questioners, accusing us of trying to convert people to atheism (a big scary deal to Dr. Safarti), and assuring us that the answers were in one of his books, but he couldn’t answer it right now. The Vancouver event was attended predominantly by students and evolutionists, who did not respond well to these evasive tactics and cheered on those who took the creationist presenter to task for them.

Our reception was somewhat frostier in Kelowna, where the crowd was not quite as pro-science as in Vancouver. Our questions, rather than being met with tacit approval, were the cause of some consternation to the audience. One attendee, a professor of philosophy, attempted to demonstrate some of the logical problems with Sarfati’s arguments – an audience member threatened to put the professor in a head lock. Perhaps it goes without saying that we didn’t win any popularity contests there. Hopefully we got mentioned in a few church sermons the following Sunday.

Needless to say, Dr. Sarfati was not pleased to have people present who are aware of history, science, and basic logic. His hostility was not saved for skeptics either: he made many disparaging comments about atheists, Muslims, and made disparaging remarks about other Christians who believed in evolution. Perhaps being a jerk and a buffoon isn’t relevant to the fact that his presentation was frankly a big steamy pile of BS, but it certainly didn’t help his cause.

What did we learn?

The British Columbia branches of CFI are working on our “skeptivist” approach – bringing the tools of skepticism out into the open and engaging the public. We were lucky to have partners at UBC, as well as the support of the national branch of CFI. We were once again received positively by most of the audience at the event we attended – a reception we can at least partially attribute to being polite and non-pushy (being a good-looking group of ladies and gents probably didn’t hurt either).

People are understandably curious when someone tells them “the thing you’ve been taught is a hoax”. I’m sure that many of the attendees were either confirmed creationists for whom science is blasphemy, and more than a few were science-literate skeptics present at the lecture for a chuckle. Our mission was not and has not been, to convert the whole audience to one way of thinking; it was to present the actual evidence and allow people to make their own decisions. We are confident that after hearing “both sides” of the creation/evolution issue, reasonable people will choose the side with the evidence on its side over the one that relies on distortions and outright falsehoods to make its point.

Our information tables were visited predominantly by the people we were hoping to attract – science-weak university students who were there out of curiosity. They thanked us for being there, knowing that evolution is embraced by the scientific community but not being too sure about why. While skeptics and atheists are often accused of “preaching to the converted”, we were glad to have an opportunity to “preach” to those whose understanding of biology is less than full.

Dr. Sarfati is perhaps not the greatest challenge facing us in the creationist camp. While folks like Ken Ham at least have some kind of charisma, Dr. Sarfati has pictures of blended frogs and slander against non-believers. However, it is important to counter pseudoscience and fraud whenever it appears, particularly when it’s on our university campuses, no matter how unimpressive the speaker may be. We are happy to have been a part of this, and optimistic that we may have given people some things to think about.

Movie Friday: Spooooooky ghoooooosts!

Because it’s almost Hallowe’en, I thought I’d take a bit of a side-trip from my usual topics and talk about some good old-fashioned non-religious superstitious nonsense.

Yep, I’m talking about ghosts:

Part 2/6
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Part 6/6

Many of you probably don’t know Derren Brown. I say this because up until a couple months ago I’d never heard of him either. Maybe you’ve all heard of him and I’m just a nincompoop. Whatever the story, Derren is a British skeptic who has taken up the mantle of James Randi and who shows how so-called “supernatural” phenomena are actually (and without exception) easily explained as either cons, tricks, or other misinterpretation of natural phenomena. In this particular episode, he’s following around self-proclaimed “ghost busters” who claim to be able to detect and communicate with dead people.

Of course, the idea of ghosts presupposes that there is a soul that is distinct from the body, that this soul can take on semi-corporeal form after the body dies, and that this semi-corporeal form sticks around to move around pots and pans and fuck with recording devices. Throw some religious mumbo-jumbo into the mix and you’ve got a party. The “exorcist” priest in part 3 spells it right out:

“Sometimes he has people who can really do with a good psychiatrist; and then he’s got the people who have got the explainable happening inside their homes, and that’s when he calls me.”

Yep, when something happens that you can’t explain, don’t bother looking for evidence. Call a priest! He’ll give you all the “explanations” you could ever want. Pretty weird how Christian people are always possessed by Christian demons. Just once I want to see a Muslim demon, or a voodoo demon, or even a deist secular humanist demon. Oddly though, they all seem to be susceptible to prayers from the belief system of the “possessed” person. Also kind of weird that God just sits on his ass and doesn’t do anything to help the “possessed” until some chubby guy with a dubious relic and a bunch of rituals comes into the picture, then all of a sudden he’s your best pal, driving out all the demons.

The larger point to be drawn here is the same one I brought up yesterday, which is that when we let our imaginations run wild, and use arguments from ignorance to explain real-life phenomena we don’t fully understand, we end up believing absolutely absurd shit, like ghosts. Of course when we throw religion into the mix, we get people believing in ghosts and demons and evil spirits. It’s really not that challenging to explain, as long as we’re willing to set aside kid’s stories and look for evidence.

None of the people in these videos are particularly stupid, I’m sure, at least not relatively to the general population. However, when we adopt an attitude of “well maybe it’s true” rather than “well maybe it’s false”, we end up giving license to the most ridiculous ideas our brains can come up with. It is for this reason that it’s a good idea to be skeptical.

Then again, if we’re too skeptical, we might miss out on meeting Gozer:

Happy Hallowe’en!

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Priestly abuse not unique to RCC

I sat on this story for a while, because I was hoping to find something to connect it to. Unfortunately, nothing appeared in the past couple of weeks, so I present it here on its own:

An archbishop who has held positions in a number of Canadian communities has stepped down amid allegations of sexual abuse involving pre-teen boys. In a statement released on the website of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), church officials said Archbishop Seraphim Storheim, 66, of Ottawa is on a leave of absence as police in Canada investigate abuse claims.

In my last post about this ongoing priestly abuse, I said there were some important questions to ask. One of those is whether or not it is a uniquely Catholic phenomenon, this practice of abuse and subsequent coverup. This story suggests to me that there is nothing in Roman Catholic doctrine that leads priests to abuse children. Instead, it suggests to me that when human beings are given positions of power, power that is by its very nature uncontrollable with no checks or balances against abuse, and when those same people are given a mechanism to suppress any evidence of wrongdoing, they will commit atrocities. We see it in government scandals, we see it with corporate financial illegalities, and we see it with the churches.

Clohessy charged that church officials have known about the abuse claims for years but were slow to act. The recent announcement of the internal probe and vow of co-operation with police comes as a relief, he said. Clohessy added he hopes people with any information pick up the phone and share what they know with authorities. He admitted being disappointed that Storheim was allowed to take a leave of absence instead of being removed.

And just like in the Roman Catholic Church, the coverups and shifting around of abusive priests happened in this case. The hypocrisy of claiming the moral authority of Christianity, while at the same time committing shocking crimes against humanity is dumbfounding. Or at least it should be. Sadly, it seems to be the rule rather than the exception that those who claim superiority without evidence are the smallest, meanest, and most morally bankrupt among us.

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Some Hallowe’en crapitalism

So I realize it’s not actually Hallowe’en, but I don’t care.

I’ve explained before why it’s important to fight against belief in superstition – in order to co-operate with each other we need to use transparent and reality-based mechanisms. If we instead rely on dewy-eyed “respect” for each other’s ridiculous beliefs, we can end up doing damage to each other and ourselves. When the stakes are low, it’s entirely practical to ignore the more weird things that those around us think are true. Case in point: a close friend of mine believes in ghosts – while I think it’s weird to think that dead people have “spirits” that stick around and appear to random people, but cannot be detected except by the flawed human eye/brain, it’s really not worth it to try and change his mind. After all our friendship is not based on ghosts, and it’s only come up once in the hundreds of conversations we’ve had.

However, sometimes people believe in ridiculous shit and it absolutely does matter:

Eighty mainly elderly people recently jailed in Malawi for up to six years for practising witchcraft should be freed, campaigners say. George Thindwa from the Association of Secular Humanism told the BBC the convictions were illegal as there was no law against witchcraft. He said the problem was that many officials were “witchcraft believers”. The justice minister disputed the allegations, saying the justice system was “reputable”.

Regular long-time readers will remember Malawi from previous posts about religious vs. secular values, the stupidity of sodomy laws, and of course their ass-backwards stance on women’s rights and polygamy. Basically, I’m not a fan. Well now they’ve been caught putting people in jail for being witches.

And then of course, there’s the absolutely ridiculous claim from the justice minister that the system is “reputable”. Yes, it has a consistent reputation for being full of shit. That’s not the same as being reputable.

Justice Minister George Chaponda told the BBC that a person could only be found guilty of practising witchcraft if they confessed to being a witch. But our reporter says the records showed all the suspects had pleaded not guilty. “We are intervening in this matter because we are concerned we still have prisons in Malawi [with] people being accused of being witches,” Mr Thindwa told the BBC’s Network Africa programme. “The courts were wrong 100%, [and] the police, to actually accommodate cases.” Most of those recently sentenced were women usually accused by children of teaching them witchcraft.

I don’t think the people of Malawi are inherently evil, or inherently stupid. They are however held captive to inherently stupid and evil ideologies, by which measles vaccinations are tools of the devil, polygamy is the right of every woman to be protected by a man, and the accusation of a child carries the same weight (in fact more weight) as any sort of evidence. This is why I am completely unashamed to call out bullshit in as loud a voice as possible – to do otherwise would be to grant assent and respectability to all kinds of crazy half-cocked hypotheses, like the existence of witchcraft.

But luckily we live in the enlightened West, where we’ve outgrown such idiocy, right?

A self-described witch in Moose Jaw, Sask., says she’s outraged that religious groups have pressured a local museum to cancel a Halloween seance. The Western Development Museum had been planning to hold a fundraiser on Oct. 29 called Ghosts of the Past, at which, for a $30 entry fee, adult participants could learn about ouija boards and “attempt to make contact with the spirits.” The event was cancelled, however, following complaints from religious leaders and residents, some of whom expressed fears the seance would conjure up evil spirits.

Good grief. If you want to see some medieval stupidity writ large in public, look no further than your religious communities. Of course, these are the good, moderate Christians who are all about tolerance and acceptance. Not those crazy fundamentalists who believe in weirdo nonsense. It’s a good thing there aren’t any of those types of crazies around.

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