Weekly Update: to

by | January 20, 2018

Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for to .

[Cartoon showing a man near an open window, with the divine light of God just outside. The caption reads: “When God closes a door, he opens a window."”

This is also the story of how I became an atheist. “No thanks, God,” I said, booting up Linux. “I don’t use Windows.”

  • [] Georgian College adds eight new programs in 2018 to meet local demand

    At first glance, this seems like a fairly mundane announcement from a college… but look a little closer. The eight new programs include business management… sure… community development… fine… homeopathy… uh huh, whatever… flight serv― wait… back up a step there… homeopathy?! That’s right, Georgian College will be offering a course in homeopathy: This three-year advanced diploma teaches students the theoretical knowledge, clinical skills and professional competencies to become a regulated health professional. And that’s not all! In addition to their diploma in highly-watered-down bullshittery, they’re also going to be offering: Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner: This one-year graduate certificate teaches students the knowledge, skills and competencies to become a regulated health professional in this popular field of natural medicine. I am trembling with curiosity to know why it takes three years to get a degree in dilution, but only a year to learn all there is to know about the entire field of traditional Chinese medicine… maybe the homeopathy course is really just one minute of teaching mixed diluted three full years of nothing but memory of the single molecule of teaching you got! By the way, if you’re thinking that these bullshit courses are a sign of the quality of education at Georgian College, submitter Janice reassures us that they’re already starting from a pretty low bar: they offer an advanced diploma in acupuncture.

    h/t Janice

  • [] Is the War on Christmas Really a Proxy War for White Supremacy?

    The question in the title is actually the least interesting thing in this interview. It’s focus is on America (and, as with everything American these days, Trump), but there are a lot of interesting observations made about modern conservativism.

  • [] 37 Albertans transferred after faith-based facilities refused medically assisted deaths

    Real numbers at last on the issue of assisted dying in Canada – or at least in Alberta – and they show that 14% of people who were approved for an assisted death were blocked by a religious institution.

  • [] Charities get antsy as Liberal government remains silent on reform plans

    Recently we’ve been cheering the Liberals’ principled stance on refusing to provide summer camp grant money to organizations that oppose human rights. But the Liberals are fundamentally incapable of doing something good without also ruining it somehow with something bad. So here’s a reminder that the Trudeau government still hasn’t followed through on its promise to free the charities muzzled by the Harper government’s CRA blitz.

  • [] “A Window” by Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

    Yet another brilliant deconstruction of a religious platitude by SMBC.

  • [] Eye on Hate: False reports of hate crime fuel anti-Muslim sentiment

    Balgord’s concerns were borne out repeatedly on CA’s Facebook posts. We had bigots spinning conspiracy theories about this 11 year-old girl being part of some nefarious conspiracy that she was put up to by her mother (a nefarious conspiracy that was unravelled within hours, natch), crying “taqiyyah”, and suggesting that this single incident being a hoax means that all anti-Muslim incidents are false. The comments by Bernie Farber (in the article) ring true.

  • [] White racial resentment has been gaining political power for decades

    American data, but it illustrates a striking trend that sure feels like it’s being mirrored in Canada. They’re too coy to come right out and say it, but what they’ve effectively shown is that bigotry is becoming increasingly partisan… or in plain English: the Republican Party is now more than ever specifically the party of racism.

  • [] Trudeau Draws Wrath Of U.S. Right Wing With Latest Abortion Comments

    This is amusing. While Trudeau’s decision to deny funding to groups that oppose abortion and LGBTQ rights has been broadly met with approval in Canada – except from religious groups, of course – the Americans are apparently losing their shit over it. (Love the opening paragraph of the article poking fun at how little interest the Americans have in us normally, too.) Sorry, America! I guess because we’re just another one of those shit hole countries serious about allowing women to control their own bodies, not like Norway.

  • [] Should anti-abortion groups be allowed to register as charities?

    As usual, when a news article title asks a question, the answer is almost always “no”. But there’s a lot more in this article worth checking out. In particular, it highlights the gross disparity between anti-abortion groups registered as charities (216⁄282 or 77%) versus pro-choice groups registered as charities (3⁄14 or 21%). And those anti-abortion groups are getting thousands of dollars of public money.

  • [] Blame tough lives of priests’ victims on economy, not abuse, says church

    I don’t get to say this very often, but the Catholic Church has proved me wrong. I didn’t think the level of assholery of the Archdiocese of Moncton could get any worse. I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong.

  • [] Family offers ‘sincere apologies’ for 11-year-old girl’s false hijab-cutting story

    Last week’s Weekly Update included an item about an 11 year-old girl who was allegedly attacked on her way to school by a man who tried to cut her hijab off with scissors. That story only came up barely in time to make the WU, and hours after WU went live, police were reporting that the whole thing was a hoax – the girl made up the story. All week anti-Muslim bigots have been crowing – this single hoax case apparently provided proof that all anti-Muslim attacks are hoaxes – and speculating about bizarre conspiratorial motives behind it all: either the mother was coaching the child to lie for something something whatever Islam, or the hoax was really the child’s cry for help because she is being forced to wear a hijab. And there were, and still are, legitimate questions about how the affair was handled – such as why the child was identified to the media (some irresponsible news outlets continue to print her name). But all the important questions have been answered. What really happened? A child made up a story. Children do that. Yes, bigots, even Muslim children do that. The teachers and parents took the story seriously, because, if it was true, it was a serious issue, and it would be irresponsible to dismiss a story like that without serious investigation. They called a press conference out of fear that there was someone out there assaulting 11 year-old girls in public in broad daylight – a perfectly reasonable thing to do if the story was true; it never occurred to them to doubt the kid’s story, or wait for a police investigation (indeed, by going to the media they probably thought they were helping the police investigation). The poor kid found herself swept up in this thing… in a matter of mere hours, she went from an ordinary kid telling a story to make herself special to the subject of a news blitz and even getting the attention of world leaders. It didn’t take long for the story to fall apart. Now the family understandably just wants to get out of the media spotlight.

  • [] New study shows prevalence of unreported Islamaphobic incidents against Muslim women in GTA

    It seems like a case of comically bad timing for this report to come out in the wake of the hijab scissor attack hoax, but this report actually explains why the hoax was so believable: because attacks happen all the time.

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One thought on “Weekly Update: to

  1. steve oberski

    I’m sure the Archdiocese of Moncton is just taking their cue from their scumbag in chief Jorge Mario Bergoglio (affectionately referred to as “Pope Francis” by other members of that criminal cartel) who is busy doing damage control in South America.

    I guess it’s not much of a stretch to be able to simultaneously pretend to be concerned for the victims while protecting your paedophile buddies given a thorough grounding in abstruse, incoherent and batshit crazy concepts such as virgin birth, immaculate conception and transubstantiation.

    Reply

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