Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for to .
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[] Religious Freedom is a Progressive Value
It’s depressing that so many secularist Canadians think that religious freedom is some kind of hoax; a scam played on secularism just for the sake of protecting religious privilege. The reality is that religious freedom is one of the most fundamental aspects of freedom – or rather, that it is a perhaps unfortunate name for a very important right.
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[] S-201: NDP Blasts Liberals For Trying To Gut Genetic Discrimination Bill
Bill S-201 is the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, a bill intended to prevent employers and insurance companies from requiring employees to get genetic tests and then disclose the results to them, and using that info to discriminate. Seems a slam dunk right? Nope, this one’s been in the pipes for over a year, and it’s been a fight. Just last week, Randy Boissonnault (Edmonton Centre, Lib.) tried to gut the bill.
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[] The Rebel Claims They Moved Their Rally Due To Threats. The Original Venue Says That’s False.
The claims of threats and intimidation made by organizers of the M-103 rally for “free speech” seem to have been bullshit.
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[] I Went to a Pro-Islamophobia Rally Hosted by Canada’s Breitbart in My Hijab
Opponents of M-103 like to paint themselves as defenders of free speech, but the reality just doesn’t bear it out. There was a lot of noise about whether people were doing the Nazi salute at the anti-M-103 rally, but that just covered up the fact the speakers flat out said they were opposed to M-103 because it interfered with their “right to hate”.
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[] “Anti-Theodicy” by Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
Recently there’s been a spate of “reverse problem of evil” arguments popping up, where instead of asking why there’s evil in in the universe if a just god exists, you ask why there’s good in the universe if an evil god exists. The idea is that whatever arguments believers use to dismiss one, they could just as well be used for the other. Weinersmith takes the idea on in characteristic form.
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[] Herd Immunity: Why your vaccinations help others
A striking animation shows the effect of herd immunity on the spread of contagious diseases.
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[] “Gifts from God” by Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
Weinersmith strikes twice this week! (Actually, he had a pretty brilliant week. I also recommend “Citations Needed” and “On the Etiology of Fuckers”.)
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[] Make Questionnaires Great Again
ARI frequently publishes some dodgy overviews of decent surveys, but here we have Shachi Kurl critiquing a Donald Trump survey. It’s pretty awesome, but aside from its comedy value, it also gives insight into the challenges of doing surveys.
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[] France and Canada: 58th and 59th Countries to Endorse Safe Schools Declaration
The Safe Schools Declaration is an agreement to not use schools for military purposes, so they won’t be attacked, but more importantly (from Canada’s perspective), to restore access to education when it has been disrupted by war or fighting. (See also here. HRW also made a video thanking Canadians.)
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[] Columnists painting Stephen Harper as Mr. Inclusive are falsifying history
Right-wing writers are trying to rewrite history and paint the Harper government as inclusive and tolerant, with the left being the problem because of “identity politics”.
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[] A bounty on my head, I’m a virtual prisoner in Delhi
An anonymous reader picked up this tip via Fatah’s daughter. Tarek Fatah has been criticizing Islamists on his show फतह का फतवा (Fatah ka Fatwa, “Fatah’s Fatwa”), and now a cleric has put a bounty on his head.
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[] Vancouver Christians Are Pushing Back Against Evangelist Franklin Graham’s Upcoming Appearance
Let’s give credit where credit is due.
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[] On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right
A brilliantly written piece gives a behind-the-scenes portrait of provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos’s troll campaign, and the effect of the backlash he’s now facing from his own side.
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[] Education director dispels myths around Friday prayer in schools
This is a pretty decent overview of the rationale behind the Peel District School Board’s position in the matter of Muslim students praying. The PDSB is so fed up with the ignorance and misinformation, they’ve actually banned talking about it in their next meeting.
h/t Derek Gray
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[] Timothy C. Sullivan, Ontario Teacher Who Pushed Anti-Vaxx Views On Students, Guilty Of Misconduct
This asshole not only disrupted vaccination efforts at his school and lied to students, he was actually warned shortly before the incident that his anti-vaxx bullshit was affecting his teaching.
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[] Milo’s very bad week exposes the right’s hypocrisy on free speech
After being called a
young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens
by Bill Maher, Milo’s week quickly went downhill. One of the most interest side effects of Yiannopoulos’s flame-out is how sharply it highlighted the hypocrisy of the “freeze peach” crowd, who pretend that they’re free speech heroes merely for saying offensive things. -
[] Prosecutors in Denmark charge man with ‘blasphemy’
We’re in the middle of a fight to end our own blasphemy law, and this might be a useful fact in that fight. Denmark’s blasphemy law hadn’t been used in 46 years, before this.
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[] Religious Clothing Ban Would Only Widen Divide In Quebec Society
One of the more ridiculous claims of veil ban proponents is that it would make every feel more united, as all part of one big group rather than multiple groups. I know, even writing that much stupid made my fingers hurt. This article actually points to some research debunking that idea.
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[] Sweden rejects asylum application for threatened Bangladeshi blogger
Two years ago, facing threats from Muslim extremists, Bangladeshi Ananta Bijoy Das applied for a visa to visit Sweden, to speak at a conference. He was denied; a few weeks later he was murdered. Now fellow blogger Mishu Dhar, already in Sweden on a student visa, has applied for asylum because his visa expired. You think Sweden learned from their mistake? No. Dhar has been rejected, and now faces deportation.
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“They hate us; they’ll always hate us. It’s nothing new.”
Again, this is an interfaith issue. The anti-anti imagine they are protecting baby Jesus from the antichrist hordes.
At Canadian Atheists we are not in a position to be interfaith referees. As for studying the Koran to develop a better understanding of Muslim psychology: this may turn out to have the opposite effect. I know from studying Christianity, it doesn’t endear the student to Christian pro-slavery, pro-servitude, totalitarian tainted worship.
It’s hardly just an interfaith issue. There are plenty of atheists on Levant’s side.
“right to hate”
If people are actually advocating a right to hate (despite the fact that there plainly IS and OUGHT to be a right to hate) that would be sad.
But we must never overlook, particularly in the same context, that the hijab itself is a bold statement of hatred against men (as rapists) and non-hijabi women (as sluts deserving of rape).
How interesting that the article brings up Canada’s only proven Islamophobe, at the exact same time that we allow back into the country a Muslim who led or at least participated in a 3000-strong armed mob attack on a mosque in Pakistan, because those Muslims at the mosque weren’t doing Islam right. How very interesting indeed.
I’ve already detailed previously why every Canadian is right to fear Islam, and those who push it. Islam is in serious need of the kinds of reforms that neutered Christianity centuries ago. It hasn’t happened, and it isn’t happening. And when people try to do it, SPLC labels THEM extremists.
“the left being the problem”
The Trudeau government is the first is nearly a century to appoint a cabinet explicitly based on sexist policy. Case closed.
“how sharply it highlighted the hypocrisy of the ‘freeze peach’ crowd”
Aww, aren’t you so cute. Frozen peaches! Muh haw! Muh Haw haw haw!
But, no. Rather, it simply showed that the authoritarians on the right, the old establishment who Milo was fighting against and was about to publicly lambaste at CPAC, haven’t gone anywhere just because Trump won. It’s a shot across the bow to Trump. “First we take your court jester. You’re next.”
As many on the actual left have noted, the disdain with which those who have hijacked our movement regard free speech is terribly dangerous. Without free speech, no other rights have any basis.
“Denmark’s blasphemy law
But… but… muh freeze peach!
Your hypocrisy is astounding.
“This article actually points to some research debunking that idea”
That’s fine. What they’re really referring to is the loss of privilege (a word rarely used correctly). So long as the law is applied to all groups equally (i.e. Christians), I have no problem with it.
Don’t forget there is also the problem of muslims using our own liberal laws against us. As they are so successfully doing, and, in fact, seems to be their only successful maneouvering to date.
Classic catch-22 on our traditional liberal laws of equality, freedom, and justice.
The solution may be for the West to unite in defence of our tradition of liberal laws against misuse by people seeking to use them to bring down our system of traditional liberal laws.
So, if you are trying to use our liberal laws, to bring down our liberal laws, then your use of our liberal laws should be limited.