Canadian Press

September 19, 2007

TORONTO — The first thing that catches your eye as you walk in the door is the T-shirts hanging on the wall.

For a few dollars, you can own a black one with “Heretic” emblazoned in white on the front, or a white one sporting the word Darwin etched in black inside a fish-like container.

Reason, science and the freedom to question obviously are top dog at the Centre for Inquiry Ontario.

Not far from the T-shirts is the reception desk with a donation box. Visitors are urged to donate $5 to the evening’s affair, an inquiry into “Iran: Prospects for Secular Democracy.”

Or you can immerse yourself in the swirl of ideas at the meeting hall where those who don’t believe in God come to exchange views by buying a membership – $20 for students, $60 for other individuals.

Growing numbers of people are doing so, says Justin Trottier, 24, president of the Toronto-area branch of the Centre for Inquiry, which has its headquarters in Amherst near Buffalo, N.Y.

When the Toronto centre opened in March this year, 20 people joined, Mr. Trottier says. “Now we’re up to about 120.”

When it comes to e-mail, “we have a list of about 1,400 people. That’s grown from about a third of that,” he says.

The centre acts as an umbrella for a host of groups promoting atheism, humanism, secularism, science, reason, free inquiry and planetary ethics.

So why all the interest? Mr. Trottier says several books published recently such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, have brought a lot of people out of the closet.

“There have been very fruitful discussions resulting from the books on the best strategies to employ in terms of atheist PR and what the goals of the movement ought to be,” he says.

Mary Ann Beavis, who teaches theology at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, attributes the heightened interest to a number of influences.

“The rise of fundamentalism, especially Muslim and Christian, has made some people suspicious of any religion – especially those who don’t know much about religion,” she says.

Sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups in the Roman Catholic and other churches have led “to cynicism about the motives and integrity of religious leaders.”

Then, she says, there is the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and U.S. President George W. Bush, “who is highly influenced by evangelical/fundamentalist constituencies.”

At its root, Ms. Beavis says, atheism is a religious philosophy in that it takes a position on the existence of God – “religion is a hot media commodity, ergo so is its rejection….

“Militant atheism is also sensational and gets a rise out of people, since most Canadians are theists of one kind or another.”

Statistics Canada’s 2001 census showed that 16.2 per cent of Canadians categorized themselves as atheists, agnostics, humanists or no religion, up from 12.3 per cent in 1991 and 7.4 per cent in 1981.

But “that 16 per cent includes a lot of people who are not necessarily atheist,” sociologist and pollster Reginald Bibby says.

Mr. Bibby, who has been tracking Canadian religious and societal trends for 30 years, says the number of self-proclaimed atheists has remained steady for decades.

In his most recent study, completed in 2005 and titled Nevers, Nones and Nots, he says 7 per cent of respondents identified themselves as atheists, unchanged from a similar study in 1975.

The survey involved a weighted sample of 1,600 people and had an accuracy level of plus or minus three percentage points 19 times out of 20.

As for the number of atheists, “it’s fair to say they’re a relatively rare species, 2.1 million … in reality we’ve got over 28 million Canadians who are theists,” says Mr. Bibby, who teaches at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.

Atheists, meanwhile, come from a broad spectrum of ages and all walks of life. An exhibit at the Centre for Inquiry Ontario includes pinups of David Cronenberg, June Callwood, Pierre Berton and Donald Sutherland.

In Coming Out Of The Closet

Charles Lewis, National Post

Published: Saturday, July 21, 2007

The Centre for Inquiry Ontario office is on the main floor of an old row house in downtown Toronto, but has the look of a spacious church basement. It has a piano, folding chairs in neat rows, and shelves of books, many with God in the title. But because it is a drop-in centre for atheists, humanists and secularists, the books are entitled, The God Delusion, Can We Be Good Without God? and Road to Reason; the magazines include the Canadian Free Thinker and Skeptical Inquirer; and there are T-shirts for sale emblazoned with “Darwin” and “Heretic.” There is a kitchen in the back to cook the occasional mass spaghetti dinner.

“The church basement was the place where people came on a Saturday night — it wasn’t necessarily religion-related,” says Peter Aruja, a 23-year-old political science student at nearby University of Toronto who volunteers at the centre. “And that’s what we’re trying to build here: the atheist church basement.”

The centre has been open for a year; it has 70 active members, an anonymous donor who pays the rent, and on almost any day, there is a meeting or someone who drops by for advice on how to tell their family they have given up on God.

• Big questions have been monopolized by religious institutions,” says Justin Trottier, 24, who has a degree in engineering, comes from a secular Jewish background and is the centre’s executive director. “Atheists are just as interested in questions of meaning, purpose and beginning. Why shouldn’t we have a place where we can chat?”

He says the recent spate of books about atheism, from Christopher Hitchens and others, have helped to attract interest, but he is convinced the movement is built on more than best-sellers. He and others see a confluence of events that have drawn atheists out of the shadows: the rise of fundamentalism, the evangelical politicking of George W. Bush, including his interference in a tragic right-to-life battle, and the anti-religious fallout from 9/11.

“People who are not religious are finding themselves marginalized, and they think it’s time they spoke up and fought back,” says Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. “There is a sense that the pendulum has swung too far.”

A City University of New York survey found the number of non-religious adults grew from 8% to 14.3% between 1990 and 2001, to more than 29 million Americans. The current issue of The Atlantic magazine cites a study that showed 14% of Americans “were distancing themselves from organized religion as a symbolic gesture against the religious right.” A 2006 Pew study found that 20% of today’s 18-to 25-year-olds have no religious affiliation or are atheist or agnostic, up from 11% in the late 1980s.

In Canada, the number of people who categorize themselves as atheists, agnostics, humanists or no-religion rose to 16.2% in the 2001 census, up from 12.3% in 1991, and 7.4% a decade earlier.

There are now dozens of atheist groups in the United States and Canada, under such banners as the Atheist Alliance International, the Secular Coalition for America and the Humanist Association of Canada. Membership in these groups is still relatively small, usually in the several thousands. Most report a leap in interest since the books came out.

 Actual article link for above:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=f1ac5e50-4c6f-4a74-a27b-e828026589a0&k=59599

Man says he was assaulted at Ryerson

CAROLINE ALPHONSO

EDUCATION REPORTER

An atheist group leader says he is the victim of a religious hate crime.

Freethought Association of Canada president Justin Trottier said he was assaulted at Ryerson University earlier this week while he and a colleague were hanging posters for a coming lecture.

“Their motives were clearly premised on the fact that we were atheists [publicizing] an atheist event and that was seen as unacceptable to them,” Mr. Trottier said in an interview yesterday.

“They mocked the nature of the event.”
Mr. Trottier, 24, and his colleague were hanging posters Tuesday night announcing a lecture by Victor Stenger, author of God: The Failed Hypothesis, when they were approached by two men. The men asked for a copy of the poster, mumbled under their breath and tossed it to the ground. Mr. Trottier said he yelled after them, “You could have recycled that.”

Fifteen minutes later, when Mr. Trottier and his colleague were in a more secluded area of the university, he said the two men reappeared and started a verbal argument. One of the men hit him in the face twice, and butted him on his face, causing his nose to bleed, Mr. Trottier said.

He said the two men looked like they were in their early 20s. He didn’t know if they attended the university. “If the incident had been reversed and it had been an atheist that had physically assaulted a theist for postering for a theist event . . . that would easily be considered a hate crime — and it frequently is. This is the exact reverse scenario,” Mr. Trottier said.

“This assault should be taken just as seriously.”

Janet Mowat, a spokeswoman for Ryerson, said security has gone through its files and “they are treating it not as a hate crime, but as a dispute that arose and led to an altercation.”

Toronto police say they are investigating the incident. But Detective Dave Alexander was also hesitant to call it hate-motivated.

“We don’t have anything that suggests that as far as I’m aware of. I know [Mr. Trottier] was talking about that, but certainly from what I see it doesn’t look like it falls within what our policies and procedures define as a hate crime,” Det. Alexander said. “But we’re still looking at that as well to cover all the bases.”

The Freethought Association of Canada grew out of the Toronto Secular Alliance, and its members include student groups such as the University of Toronto Secular Alliance and the Freethinker’s Association of Ryerson. It serves as the youth voice for secularists, playing host to events and engaging in political advocacy.

 From the BBC

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6477177.stm

Nigeria teacher dies ‘over Koran’

Secondary school pupils in north-eastern Nigeria have killed a teacher after apparently accusing her of desecrating the Koran, police say.The teacher, a Christian, was attacked after supervising an exam in Gombe city. It is not clear what she had done to anger the students.

The authorities, concerned that communal unrest could break out, have ordered all the city’s schools to shut.

Similar accusations sparked riots in neighbouring Bauchi State last year.

At least 15,000 people have been killed in religious, communal or political violence since the country returned to civilian rule in 1999.

‘Restored calm’

Nigerian police say students beat the teacher to death outside the school compound after she had been invigilating an exam.

The students had apparently accused her of desecrating the Koran, though it is not clear exactly what she had done.

The police arrived at the scene to restore calm and say their intervention stopped a riot.

The BBC’s Alex Last in Lagos says violence based on such accusations is not new.

Last year, in Bauchi State, a rumour swept the city that a Christian teacher had also desecrated the Koran, which prompted riots in which at least five people were killed.

In fact, the teacher had confiscated the Koran from a pupil who was reading it in class.

Religious differences have long been used to justify all kinds of violence in Nigeria, our reporter says.

In reality it is often fuelled by ethnic or political conflicts and competition for resources, which can be fierce, given that so many people live in poverty, he says.

]]> http://cdrh.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/nigeria-teacher-dies-over-koran/feed/ 0 cdrh map http://cdrh.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/when-the-aints-go-marching-in/ http://cdrh.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/when-the-aints-go-marching-in/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:39:31 +0000 cdrh http://cdrh.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/when-the-aints-go-marching-in/ Continue reading →]]> by Christopher Dreher, Globe and Mail

If there really is a Supreme Being who is concerned about how His name is worshipped on Earth, these days He may be wishing he had put a caveat in His scriptures: Please don’t irritate the scientists. In the past year or two, a clutch of high-decibel books by scientists has ignited the passions of non-believers. Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, the best-known battle cry of unrepentant atheism, has been No. 1 on The Globe and Mail’s non-fiction bestseller list for the past seven weeks. He joins past anti-deist bestsellers such as
U.S. neurologist Sam Harris and Canadian cancer specialist Robert Buckman.The books’ popularity is partly due to their timing, which coincides with popular anxiety about the worldwide growth in both Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, which has arguably resulted in increased terrorism and war. There is also a backlash against evangelical campaigns opposing gay marriage, stem-cell research and teaching evolution. A range of people are frustrated by the religious influence in politics, including among Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

Yet while this renewed discussion has made non-religious people feel freer to proclaim their unbelief, they haven’t exactly explained what to do with that knowledge. As American atheist Don Hirschberg once wrote, “Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair colour.”

Religious faith helps bind people in communities — a trait some researchers say explains its widespread persistence — but apostasy has tended to be a more isolating, non-conformist experience. In the movies, including recent Oscar nominee Little Miss Sunshine, any character who admires Friedrich Nietzsche(who famously sounded God’s death knell in 1882) is sure to be a depressive or criminal in need of redemption.

But the new wave of non-belief might be different. It’s occasioned an organizing drive by groups that want to gather in the unfaithful and offer some secular equivalents of the communal and ritual functions that churches traditionally provide — not to mention the political strength found in numbers.

The largest international secular-humanist organization, based in Amherst, N.Y., is the Centre for Inquiry, with branches across the U.S., South America, Africa, Europe and

Asia. Its first Canadian centre is having its official opening in Ontario this weekend, with a CFI in
Vancouver planned for later in the year.”The Dawkins thing has gotten a lot of play because it’s brash and bold and a little disquieting, but atheism is only part of the story,” explained Austin Dacey, executive director of the CFI in

New York and the group’s representative to the United Nations.The CFI is intended to be a place not just for lectures, but for an eclectic list of activities, from a science book club to less-cerebral pursuits such as yoga for freethinkers and “magic for skeptics.”

There’s a Sunday-morning meeting to discuss different aspects of humanism, and a monthly spaghetti dinner — where, instead of a traditional grace, the lauded deity is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a lampoon concocted a few years ago in response to the Intelligent Design movement’s attempts to derail evolutionary teaching in Kansas schools.

The centre is also organizing social services, such as a regular meeting of Secular Organizations for Sobriety, which is an alternative to Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous. Another program, Religious Recovery, tries to ease the transition for people who are leaving organized religion.

According to 2001 census figures, nearly five million Canadians identify as having “no religious affiliation,” compared with 13 million Catholics and eight million Protestants. That’s a 44-per-cent increase since the 1991 census figures. In 1971, less than 1 per cent of the population claimed no religion.

Yet organized groups of skeptics and humanists generally haven’t been popular in

Canada. The movement arrived in the early 20th century, but the first major group was the Humanist Fellowship of Montreal in the 1950s. Its patrons were the eminent atheist and philosopher Bertrand Russell — the Richard Dawkins of his day — and Brock Chisholm, a Canadian psychiatrist who was the first director of the World Health Organization.In 1968, a new group formed, the Humanist Association of Canada (HAC), with abortion activist Henry Morgentaler as its first president.

Yet it was not until the late 1990s, for example, that humanist groups were granted the right to perform legally recognized wedding ceremonies. (Other non-believers remain critical of this right being restricted in some provinces to certified Humanists, and not more generally available.)

Another win came in 2004, when Revenue

Canada reversed an earlier decision and decided to give the HAC the same charity status enjoyed by religious groups.Despite that progress, organized humanism has remained marginal. Among the “no religious affiliation” group in the 2001 census, although there was a 37-per-cent increase in the number of atheists and a 67-per-cent increase in declared humanists, the totals amounted to only 18,605 and 2,105 people respectively.

But according to Christopher diCarlo, an instructor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Ont., who often lectures about humanism around

Canada, Canadians are showing more interest.”The conferences and lectures are becoming more and more well-attended,” he said. “One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the spread of secular humanism is that it just hasn’t been promoted or recognized.”

To change that, many long-standing Canadian freethinking organizations are significantly revamping their outreach.

On Jan. 1, English-speaking Canada saw the establishment of the first official office of Skeptics Canada, a 20-year-old organization that, according to chairman Eric McMillan, will soon hire its first executive director to work in their new

Toronto office. Eventually the group hopes to open an

Institute of
Critical Inquiry and other centres around the country.”Skeptics’ organizations have always been entirely voluntary, and that’s good when you have individuals who are all fired up and organized. But that model relies too heavily on the individuals involved,” Mr. McMillan said. “We’re trying to professionalize the organization so we’re no longer working in basements and rec rooms.”

The CFI echoes that sentiment. “We’re aggressively eager to expand our efforts to Canada and we’re devoting considerable efforts to that end,” said D.J. Grothe, program director at the CFI in

Amherst. “We’ve identified Canadian leaders and we’re matching that leadership with financial and promotional resources.”The new centre is an important moment for Canadian humanism, according to Gary Bauslaugh, who is the current HAC president and editor of Humanist Perspectives magazine.

He said the group “has been well-meaning but not terribly effective in the past,” noting it was historically oriented toward debate rather than action. “We want to appeal much more widely to critical-thinking Canadians and across

North America. There are literally millions of people in
Canada who think like we do but don’t label themselves humanists. We think there’s common cause.”At the forefront is a relatively new group of humanist activists — university students. Until a few years ago, humanist groups tended to comprise mostly older individuals, but it’s starting to pick up momentum with a younger crowd. In the non-religiously affiliated population in the 2001 census, 40 per cent were 24 years old or younger.

“More younger people are joining, people who have a more ‘let’s get it done’ attitude instead of ‘let’s debate this,’ ” said HAC vice-president Pat O’Brien.

In fact, the new executive director of CFI-Ontario, Justin Trottier, founded the first secular humanist group at the

University of
Toronto just 18 months ago. Since then, he and other student activists (including his sister, Alex) have founded CFI affiliates at campuses across the country, including Carlton, McGill and
Waterloo — a dozen new groups in all over the past year.The CFI emerged in the 1970s out of smaller groups organized around its Skeptical Inquirer magazine and other publications. It grew into a secular think tank in the early 1990s and now has more than 100 employees in more than a dozen countries. Its publications reach 100,000 readers worldwide.

On its website, the organization describes itself as dedicated to “science, reason, free inquiry, secularism and planetary ethics” and “developing communities where like-minded individuals can meet and share experiences.”

But its members did not necessarily begin as like-minded humanists. Mr. Grothe grew up an evangelical Christian. He heard about the CFI while in Bible college and got involved with the organization during graduate school.

“We’re really experiencing a growth spurt now, more now than ever before in our history” he said. “More and more people coming out of the woodwork in

North America, asking what they can do. It’s a result of looking around and seeing what happens when people are motivated by untested religious dogmas as opposed to prizing science and its outlook.”That belief in the primacy of science is one of the things that led Paul Kurtz to found the Centre for Inquiry, of which he remains chairman. “There’s a great vacuum out there,” he said about the surge in interest. “People feel beleaguered, alone, isolated and surrounded by a kind of theocratic culture. The rational and humanistic alternatives resonate with a lot of people.”

And not just in the Western world. Mr. Kurtz pointed out that a decade ago there were two humanist groups in

Africa, while today there are 54. The newest CFI was established in April in
Beijing, which will also be the site of CFI’s annual international gathering this fall.Yet all such organizations still face obstacles. People who claim no deity to guide them are often suspected of lacking a moral or ethical code — exactly the problem a humanist expression of values is meant to remedy.

They’re also stereotyped as self-righteous and bitter, perhaps all too eager to trample on others’ supposedly benign religious or sentimental illusions. On that level, atheists may not be so well served by finding their current figurehead in the notoriously acerbic Dr. Dawkins.

A recent two-part episode of the satirical cartoon

South
Park paid tribute to his profile, but not his personality. One character explained the scientist’s success this way: “He learned that using logic and reason isn’t enough — you have to be a dick to everyone who doesn’t think like you.”Similarly, Canadian humanist pioneer Brock Chisholm faced public scandal in the 1940s when he espoused the view that children should not be exposed to myths such as Santa Claus, leading one glib critic to title him “Canada’s most famously articulate angry man.”

“Unless you have the skill of H.L. Mencken, railing against religion is just boring,” remarked Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a non-profit watchdog group that tracks right-wing networks.

More particularly in Canada, social custom used to discourage individuals from detailing their spiritual beliefs in public — even if they were religious, said Robert Buckman, a professor in medicine at the University of Toronto, former president of the HAC and occasional contributor to The Globe and Mail.

“In the past, you could only talk about religion generally or objectively. It was much more private than sexuality,” said Dr. Buckman, who last year was featured in the documentary Without God on CBC television. “I think what’s happened is, one, we’re slightly easier about talking about personal beliefs, and, two, people are much more allowed to admit that they don’t believe in the supernatural or a divine source.”

Humanists are quick to point out the anti-authoritarian character of many non-believers, which doesn’t make them joiners. What’s more, many are unfamiliar with humanism or any reasons they might wish to participate.

“Very few people know what humanism is,” said HAC vice-president Pat O’Brien. “They think that we pick up stray dogs on the streets or something like that.” Mr. O’Brien himself was introduced to humanism only in 2001, when he got some work on a documentary film on the subject.

“There are a lot of people who . . . didn’t know that there are organizations of like-minded people out there,” Mr. diCarlo said. For that reason, he said, when he takes part in debates with creationists and supporters of so-called Intelligent Design, he focuses more on context and promotion than on argument.

“I’m not up there as much to preach or convert the unconverted,” Mr. diCarlo said.

“I get up there and show a physical demonstration of a decent guy who makes solid arguments and has a nice family. I’m there saying, ‘Here I am, and I’m really okay without your God.’ I’m sure the other side is wondering, ‘Hey, how come he’s not eating children and setting kittens on fire?’ “

Mr. Dacey, the CFI director, said the biases against non-believers are distortions that have been filtered through a religious prism.

The core values of secular humanism “are really mainstream values,” he said.

Ultimately, the Canadian humanists say, they are seeking acceptance. They want to be able to stand up for their beliefs in public, and hope to be more included in public debate — for example, to be asked to comment on issues in the media, the way religious figures are. But they have a long way left to go.

“If we want to influence Canadian public policy,” said HAC’s Mr. Bauslaugh, “we need to be bigger than we are now.”

Christopher Dreher is a New York-based writer.

Secular huma-who?

If you’re unfamiliar with the various labels non-religious people take — atheist, agnostic, humanist, rationalist, skeptic, secularist, post-humanist, freethinker — they may seem more confusing than the distinctions between Sunni, Shia and Sufi Muslims. Humanism and secular humanism are perhaps the two most prominent.

According to the Council for Secular Humanism’s website: “Secular Humanism is a way of thinking and living that aims to bring out the best in people so that all people can have the best in life.

“Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs. They affirm that we must take responsibility for our own lives and the communities and world in which we live. Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and co-operation.”

The definition at the Humanist Association of Canada is a bit more particular: “Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.”

One widely emphasized tenet is the separation of church and state. “I don’t object to people’s personal beliefs, but I don’t want them to try to impose them on public business,” said Gary Bauslaugh, the current president of the Humanist Association of Canada. “Many religious people agree with that. It’s mostly the fundamentalists that try to do that.”

– Christopher Dreher

and Interview with One of the HAC members who Heads the Niagara Secular Humanists

In an arcticle titled “Reason Over Dogma”

Horst Klaus Interview

Feb 24 2007

Great Job Horst!

Elka Ruth Enola, Oakville

the Toronto Star

 Mar 06, 2007 04:30 AM

If one chooses to adhere to a belief system that requires females to wear such a cloth, it would seem to me that it would be up to the religion to excuse females from wearing that attire when playing soccer. Religions are known to excuse people from certain requirements, such as fasting in order to take medication.

As Muslim females integrate into the greater society, Islam should make changes that will facilitate their involvement.