In the REAL Journal

My story has been boosted to the print version of the Edmonton Journal, check out page B6 for the scoop.

Godless and proud

A new U of A club is challenging religious groups on campus by preaching the word of atheism

Gilbert A. Bouchard, edmontonjournal.com

Published: Monday, March 24

Engineering student and avowed freethinker Ian Bushfield is still amazed at how quickly his brand-spanking-new University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostic club took off, and how much of an impact the neophyte group is having on the campus’ established religious community.

Officially founded last summer when Bushfield and some of his god-optional friends grew frustrated with the “overbearing” religious groups on campus, the Atheists and Agnostic group took off like wildfire as soon as it was officially unveiled at the September 2007 Club Fair held at the U of A Butterdome.

“We collected over 300 signatures (from students interested in membership and/or looking for more information about the club), which was one of the highest number of the clubs that participated,” says Bushfield, the founding club president.

“We now have probably about 130 members, and have 10 to 12 people show up to our regular meetings.” Not bad, given that Bushfield, 22, says he wouldn’t likely have formed the club at all if there had been “no other religious clubs on campus.”

By comparison, at a recent event hosted by the U of A Chaplains, Lutheran Chaplain Richard Reimer remarked that he was “really bummed” during the club fair when he dropped by the atheists’ booth and discovered that they had already collected 75 names when the Lutherans had managed to collect four.

“Basically, this club is a way to unite non-religious people together and give them a voice and a social group that can be used to do a bit of activism,” Bushfield says.

So far, club-sponsored activities have included screening a documentary about renowned atheist/scientist/author Richard Dawkins (60 people attended), joining in (in a good-natured, oppositional fashion) public discussions about religion, and waving the secular flag during the recent provincial election campaign.

This commitment to reason-based and secular society is a big point for Bushfield and his fellow club members.

“I remember being in elementary school when the Gideons came and gave out Bibles, and thinking to myself that this was stupid, and I didn’t want one,” Bushfield says.

Unlike earlier generations of atheists who had to work hard to shuck a religious upbringing and the constraints of a universally religious society, Bushfield was raised in a diehard irreligious household, and has been inside a church only five times in his life.

Bushfield and his U of A band of non-believers are hardly unique. In fact, it could seem like the group is riding a wave of popular atheism. For example, not only is Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great still ranked number 47 on the Amazon.ca bestsellers list months after its release (at the time of writing), some 20 new atheist groups have been founded on different Canadian campuses over the past year.

“You’re seeing the same thing all across the U.S. as well,” he says. “This is the first generation raised in a secular society that doesn’t feel awkward if it doesn’t go to church.”

A tale of two cities

This past Sunday (Easter), I was riding the Red Arrow from Red Deer to Edmonton, and got a chance to pick up the Calgary Herald.  On the Editoral Page I was surprised (not really in retrospect) to see these articles:

“Cherish freedom of the season“

People who view the state as more important than its people write totalitarian constitutions. Think of Communist parties, for instance, or Louis XIV, who notoriously declared, “L’etat, c’est moi.”

On the other hand, somebody who believes the individual is important because God accepts each one of us on the basis of a personal decision about the resurrection — not because they belong to some favoured class or race — is much more likely to see the state as an instrument of individual empowerment.

and “New breed of atheist treads too much on glib ground“

Besides, the worst atrocities of the last century came not from faith-inspired conflicts, but from Marxism and fascism — atheist replacement creeds for Christianity.

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Pol Pot — atheists all — went on ideological killing sprees which made the religious wars of the distant past look like an afternoon tea party tete-a-tete between bluebloods.

…

In a world absent of God, the most critical condemnation one can offer is that the meanness between humans is unpleasant, akin to watching other animals tear at each other, and that it offends our esthetic sensibilities.

Moral condemnation implies some absolute standard outside of nature which atheism denies by definition.

Now both of these articles (2 of the 3 published that day) mischaracterize and ostrasize the non-religious population, and Calgary, being a city of over a million, is likely to have more than a few atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists.

The first article intends to claim that without belief in God we cannot have democracy, whereas the second denies morals to atheists (while at the same time contradicting itself by saying there are some moral atheists).

Outraged by this blatantly offensive editorial staff, I paid for the Edmonton Journal (usually I can get a free copy on campus) and found no such articles in it’s opinion pages.  In fact, the journal recently featured my group in an article online!

Now both papers are owned by CanWest media, but it’s clear they have entirely different staffs.  I intend to write a couple response letters to the Herald, and shall posts responses here later.

I should also mention that one of the letters to the editor published ended as “anywhere that funds abortion doesn’t fund fertility treatments,” in reference to a previous article about the need to boost Canada’s birth rate.

I’m in the Journal

For starting a club I made the online version of the Edmonton Journal, Ed Magazine.  It’s good to have some press.

Op-ed exposes lack of choice

The big issue for secularists in Alberta right now is the fact that our province is dumping large sums of money into public and private religious schools.  Scott Rowed, of the Society for Secular Humanists in Calgary, soon to be CFI-Alberta, has written a great op-ed piece which appeared in the Edmonton Journal on the issue surrounding faith-based schooling.  He reports the unreported stats, that are quite disturbing:

The religious schools in Alberta fall into three categories: separate (Catholic), private and alternative. The private schools are about 60 per cent funded by the taxpayers, have their own boards and are able to discriminate on religious grounds for both hiring staff and admitting students.

To have this choice of placing their children into a faith school, parents must obtain a letter from a preacher praising their church devotion and sign a statement of faith. This quote, from the constitution and bylaws of Fort McMurray Christian School Society, is typical: “We believe the Genesis account of creation is to be understood literally; that man was created in God’s own image and after His own likeness; that man’s creation was not by evolution or change of species or development through interminable periods of time from lower to higher form.”

The UofA Atheists and Agnostics will be engaging this issue more as time rolls by.  Attempts to bring this up as an election issue were mainly waived off by politicians (using the excuse of “choice”), however, the issue is far from dead.

The uncut interviews

After posting the FSM Expelled video, it was obvious to some (and hopefully all) that several quotes were taken out of context, and certain views were shown in a biased way.

This was all intentional!  The point of the video was satire, and the target was Ben Stein and the Discovery Institute’s upcoming Expelled trailer.  They take clips from leading”darwinists” and show nice long interviews from IDers.  In the spirit of satire I chose to do the same, giving pro-FSMers a long speech and quote-mining the “darwinistic” supporters.

However, I choose to do one more thing to poke at Expelled - I’ve now released all the interviews to YouTube completely UNCUT!  Let’s see the Discover Institute’s full interviews online (with the false premises exposed).

So here they are (in order of most to least misrepresentation):

Dr. Denis Lamoureux

Dr. Warren Gallin and Dr. Brad Magor

Dr. Zbigniew Gortel

Dr. Michael Caldwell 

FSM Expelled!

With the UofA Atheists and Agnostics, I worked for the past bit and created the following parody trailer to the upcoming film Expelled:

Wilfred Laurier Bans Freethought Alliance

Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario has decided to reject the application of several students who were hoping to start a “Freethought Alliance” which had the goals “to promote science, freedom of inquiry, skepticism, and a good life without the need for superstition or religious belief.” These goals are very much similar to the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics here.

The fact that they rejected this group (on the grounds that the goals “are not compatible with the guidelines of what may be approved and incorporated into our department”) is downright ridiculous and shows a heavy bias against their secular goals in their administration.

The group is currently attempting to work around the administration and to get approval in some way.

I’m very thankful to all the support I’ve received from the UofA’s Students’ Union (especially to Student Group Services), and to the many professors who also have helped.

**UPDATE**

They have since received recognized student group status. They were required to adjust their constitution as follows:

Adding two lines, one stating that we would be inclusive to any religious person who would want to have meaningful religious discourse (not a problem, our stance all along), and two, stating that we would not engage in any vindictive assaults on religion - only logical critique (again, not a problem).

An Angry Atheist

Greta Christina posted a great article which pretty much sums up what one can be upset about when being atheist/agnostic/non-religious.  Many of these are reasons organizations like our UofA Atheists and Agnostics have come into existance.

An update from the club

So the UofA Atheists and Agnostics is well on it’s way already.  Our first event was on 12 September - The Immaculate Conception Mixer - where we showed The Root of All Evil.  The event was well received and we filled our classroom with about 60 attendees.  The next events that we’re keeping our eyes on are a talk about to be given by a professor of Christian Theology at the University entitled “Beyond the Creation vs. Evolution Debate” which should be interesting.  We are also hoping to present the Crystal Clear Atheism Conference from Washington, D.C. on next Friday.

Our club membership is soaring and we’ve received many words of praise from new members.

It looks to be a good year for our group.

Starting a club

Last Wednesday I met up with some interested people and we set the foundation for the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics, a new student group to represent exactly what it sounds like. The meeting was surprisingly productive, and I ended up getting nominated as the inaugural president for the organization. Since then I have polished off the constitution, a website, created a forum, and typed up the minutes from that meeting.

This is an exciting time and hopefully all the paperwork can be finished very shortly, and this club can really start to take off.

Update: the club’s website is at: http://www.ualberta.ca/~atheists/