Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for to .
![[A panel from the Oglaf webcomic, featuring God in the Garden of Eden enraged and shouting: "Aw! Noooo! Come on– that’s just nasty! I… can’t even look at you people. Get out"]](https://www.canadianatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/oglaf-2017-09-18-tasty-figs-panel-6.jpg)
Wait, why don’t you leave? You’re omnipotent; you are not going to suffer outside of the Garden of Eden.
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A caveat about these results: It does not seem that atheists are actually nice people. Rather, it seems that atheists try to appear nicer in order to counter anti-atheist stereotypes.
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Beverley McLachlin is retiring from her position as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court , after the longest Chief Justice tenure ever. She has been a powerful friend to reason in Canada, so everyone is understandably concerned about what the Court might look like after she steps down. This article covers her influence on the Court, and on Canadian law.
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[] Quebec court asked to approve sexual abuse class-action lawsuit against Jehovah’s Witnesses
Just last week we had an item about the Québec police investigating at least 7 potential victims of child sex abuse, with notes about how Jehovah’s Witness elders stonewall investigations. The case mentioned in this item isn’t even one of the cases mentioned in that item; this is yet another one. Here’s hoping this class-action lawsuit gets the go-ahead (in addition to all the criminal cases, of course).
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[] ‘Fear is the greatest factor:’ Survey finds Canadians worry about rise of racism against Muslims
This is pretty good coverage of a ho-hum survey with no really novel information.
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[] LGBT Canadians Purged From Military And Public Service Await Overdue Apology
These stories of LGBT people who were treated like trash by our government are terrible on their own, but what’s worse is when you realize that these aren’t stories from the 1950s or the 1960s. These policies were in place – and actively used – until 1992.
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[] Episode 37 – Antifa & The Far Right in Canada
A few weeks back there was a WU item with a fantastic Canadaland piece on the alt-right in Canada. That piece featured the work done by Evan Balgord, and now he sits down with Eiynah of Nice Mangos to expand on the ideas.
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[] “Tasty Figs” by Doug Bayne & Trudy Cooper (Oglaf)
Oglaf has a characteristically raunchy take on what really happened in the Garden of Eden.
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[] Iqra Khalid urges fellow MPs to take unified approach in Islamophobia study
This article gives a nice summary of events leading up to M-103, and what’s happened since, in advance of the upcoming study.
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[] Portage la Prairie Pride organizers unfazed by protesters
CBC is too cagey to point fingers at who is protesting this LGBT event with pamphlets showing pictures of nooses… but the clues are there. From the story:
the protesters were singing hymns to marchers and were handing out hateful messages
. The key word in there is “hymns”. -
[] Undercover With the Alt-Right
This is an incredible story. A guy ingratiated himself into the alt-right, getting interviews with some of their big names, and wow, they shit they said is just unbelievable.
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[] M-103 study should explore how Islamophobia is a form of racism: Paradkar
This should be required reading for those people who claim that islamophobia can’t be racism because “Islam is not a race”. There are multiple studies linked to, and statistics about the difference in discrimination observed by white Muslims as opposed to non-white Muslims. And yes, “islamophobia” is defined… by pointing to a definition in a 1997 report.
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[] Attacks on Jagmeet Singh’s Sikh faith outrageous in most of Canada, but seen as fair game in Quebec
A decent overview of the situation in Québec, regarding the bigotry against minority religions, and the quote-unquote secular justifications for it.
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You’ll often hear the bigots raging or hand-wringing about “creeping sharia” or “sharia law in Canada”. Few people actually understand what sharia is.
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[] Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds
Oh, snap, this is a damning study. They didn’t just find that religious kids were nastier than nonreligious kids, they actually found that it correlated; the more religious the upbringing, the nastier the kid. The amusing coda is that religious parents were more likely to think their kids were nicer.
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[] Edmonton Catholic trustee won’t run for re-election, cites ‘interference and bullying’
The shenanigans going on in the Edmonton Catholic School Board have featured in several WU items, the most recent of which featured the Board accusing the only two intelligent and principled members with
blatant disrespect
. Now one of those women has had enough of the crap, and sadly won’t run for re-election. The other is going to stick it out and keep trying to fix the backward assholes on the Board… but one wonders how much success she’ll have. -
[] Humanists for International Day of Peace
To mark International Day of Peace, the IHEU asked a diverse group of humanists for their perspectives on peace.
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[] Jehovah’s Witness, 14, ordered to receive blood transfusion despite beliefs
Canadian law generally does not honour parents’ desires to not provide children in their care with life-saving medical treatment for religious reasons… not even when the child agrees.
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[] Pope admits church realized sex abuse problem ‘a bit late’
And I think we’ve found the winner for 2017’s understatement of the year.
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[] How 9/11 created a feedback loop for international jihadism
It’s impossible not to notice that the threat of Islamic terrorism has grown enormously since 9/11 despite the “war on terrorism” that started after that attack.
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[] Why religious belief isn’t a delusion – in psychological terms, at least
This is an absolutely brilliantly written, short and simple summary of why religious belief does not count as delusional to psychologists and doctors… despite obviously being delusional.
Canadian Atheist’s Weekly Update depends on the submissions of readers like you. If you see anything on the Internet that you think might be of interest to CA readers, please take a minute to make a submission.
“why religious belief does not count as delusional”
Very well constructed argument. Religious people are not delusional because they are analysing events according to their beliefs. Their bipolar wife isn’t mentally ill, she just needs to put her trust in Jesus.
Ok, they’re not delusional. They are just hopelessly deluded.
I must say for a Canadian Atheist site I found most articles to be dealing with religion. Not what I was expecting. I will say the articles do speak at least against religion mostly BUT I did start getting the odd sense there was more tolerance for Islam and Sikhism! Why is that? I would have thought an Atheist views would have been 100% for Separation of Church and State and not minimize the issue for “minority” religions.I am all for respecting people’s religious freedoms , even though I disagree with them. But I agree with the people from Quebec, who have learnt from History that our government needs to be neutral ESPECIALLY as we are becoming more and more multicultural and want to include everyone, even the Atheists!
There are several reasons for that, not least being that any atheism news is almost always lumped into the “religion” section of news sites. But the most important reason is that even when an article does directly relate to atheism, atheistic ideas, and atheists, the article is usually written not from the atheists’ perspective, but from the perspective of believers. Because that’s considered the “normal” perspective.
In a single word: nuance.
While you’ll find most articles written or highlighted at CA are very critical of the many, many problems associated with religion, we don’t just blindly hate on religion. We will definitely point out when religion or religious believers are in the wrong… but when there are in the right, we will point that out too. We will vigorously challenge undeserved religious privilege and other religious bullshit… but when people are trying to unjustly take away the rights and freedoms of the religious, we’ll defend them.
We stand for what is right; we don’t stand for merely bashing on religion. And while it is relatively rare, religion and religious people are on the side of right sometimes.
We are 100% in favour of secularism, and make no exceptions for minority religions. The problem here may just be that you don’t understand what secularism really means.
Those two sentences are completely contradictory. What Québec is doing clearly not “neutral”. There is no sane definition of “neutral” that can include Québec’s actions. When you’re taking action specifically to remove visible signs of religion from the public sphere, that’s the opposite of neutral. That’s taking a side.
Also, your definition of “including everyone” is obviously bullshit, because Québec’s actions clearly exclude certain people. I mean, that’s obvious and undeniable; the only thing being debated is whether or not the justification for excluding those people holds up. But the fact is that people are being consciously excluded.