Weekly Update: 27-Mar-2021 to 2-Apr-2021

Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for 27-Mar-2021 to 2-Apr-2021.

• [26-Mar-2021] Religion a source of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, according to USask researcher

  It takes a bit of circling around the issue before finally getting to it, but it turns out that there is some measurable amount of vaccine hesitancy that is directly attributable to the Catholic Church’s idiotic proclamations about certain COVID-19 vaccines being evil. It started when Catholic leaders issued a fatwa calling certain COVID-19 vaccines morally tainted because stem cells from aborted fetuses were used in their development. After every scientist, public health official, and reasonable person in the world responded with a disbelieving “what the fuck?!”, the Church quickly walked back its statement and went into “cover-your-ass” mode, coming up with a complicated scheme where vaccines developed with fetal cells were “more eviller” than ones just tested with fetal cells, and saying “oh, but it doesn’t matter, because God will forgive you for taking even the ‘evil’ vaccines, given that it’s a pandemic”. But the damage was done.

• [27-Mar-2021] “Emotion” by Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

  Now I’m really curious about how God experiences lust… and what they do about it.

• [30-Mar-2021] Support for Teaching Creationism in Schools Rises in Canada

  Yikes, I don’t know what the hell happened with this survey. I mean, I knew that ~20–25% of Canadians are creationists of one stripe or another. What I can’t figure is how we get from there to ~44% saying that creationism should be taught in schools. I can’t help but wonder if there’s something else going on here, like maybe there was an organized effort to troll Mario Canseco. I mean, even 12% of atheists—that doesn’t include agnostics or “nones”—said creationism should be taught in schools. Did they misunderstand, and interpret the question asking whether schools should not teach creationism, but teach about creationism—as in, they should teach about the belief, its history, why it is not scientific, and the ways proponents try to sneak it into the classroom? The primary drivers of the pro-creationism vote seem to be the prairies and Québec… which tracks with Canadian (Christian) religiosity in general… so maybe this is legit? I’d need to see a lot more data to be sure, because this is quite the outlier compared to everything else I’ve seen.

• [1-Apr-2021] Webber Academy asks judge to overturn Muslim prayer order

  Ugh, I know I say this every time this story pops back up, but fuck this school already. They just don’t know when to quit. For those who have (justly) forgotten the story: This is the private school that refused to allow a pair of Muslim students to pray on campus. The students had asked for a private space where they could pray out of sight of the other students, and the school said no, claiming the refusal was because they were a “non-denominational” school (despite the fact that they did recognize some religious events… notably Christmas and Easter). Note that the Muslim students weren’t asking for the school to do anything Islam-related—they just wanted a little space where they could do their thing without disrupting the other students—so it’s a little absurd for the school to use its “non-denominational” identity as an excuse. It’s exactly the same situation as if an atheist student at a private Christian school asked to be excused from prayer, and the school refused to excuse them, using the fact that they’re a Christian school as the justification. So the case went to court, and, to absolutely no-one’s surprise, the school lost. But then the ruling was overturned on a technicality… so here we go again.

• [1-Apr-2021] The stars are aligned: It’s time for legislative astrology

  I’m a fan of a well-executed prank, and this year’s April Fool’s posting by the BC Humanist Association is a doozy. Starting with the completely loopy research premise of checking out the astrological signs of all the BC MLAs, the folks at the BCHA have put an amazing amount of effort into the lark. What makes it even funnier is that in addition to being very funny on its face, it is also a very sly, underhanded poke at the idea of legislative prayer in general… and a clever advert for the BCHA’s legitimate research work.

• [1-Apr-2021] Religious Canadians praying for return to in-person worship, but won’t forsake online services in future

  So Angus Reid did a survey of religious Canadians, asking them about their feelings regarding lockdown restrictions on in-person worship, and… well, I guess the only thing surprising about the results are how un surprising they are.

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