Secular Humanism

[St. Even]

The vast majority of immigrants land in a nation to get away from what they came from, not the other way around. If they enjoyed and agreed with what they grew up with, they would still be in their homeland.

I think this is on oversimplification. In my experience, people emigrate to other countries more for economic reasons and less for religious -- but of course no two stories will be the same. If the vast majority of immigrants really wanted to get away from everything they left behind, then I don't think we would have more than 150 languages spoken in this city, and so many cultural festivals and heritage classes, etc -- so many links to the place they left behind. You're probably more likely to find people leaving their homeland for religious reasons among refugee applicants, and less on the immigration list.

This business of prayer in public institutions has irked me for a long time. When I was in Grade 13, (yikes, 20 years ago), I initiated a protest at my public school because of it. Every morning, we would listen to a prayer, the national anthem and announcements as part of morning excercises. And four out of five days we were listening to a Christian prayer -- in a public school. I wrote a letter to the principal and eventually got a meeting with the regional superintendent to discuss the issue. He showed me the part of the Education Act that permitted this. I showed him the part of the act that said it was a public school system. Then I pointed out to him the part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that granted me freedom of religion and asked him which one had more weight?

We got into a lengthy exchange about the place of religion, and then we got into a lengthy discussion about how biased the school prayers were towards Christianity. I told him if I wanted to listen to Christian prayers every morning I would have enrolled in a Catholic school. In the end, I was exempted from morning excercises for the rest of the year and was allowed to arrive to homeroom five minutes later than everybody else -- just to shut me up, but without ever dealing specifically with the issue on a broader level.

Religion has a place -- in people's homes, in their consciousness, in their daily living. It has no place in government, regardless of the diversity of our population. Even if 100 per cent of Canadians were believers of the same faith, it would still have no place in official institutions.

 

[gei]

In my opinion Canada will start trending back towards a religious church-going population. Why? As more immigrants from various religious backgrounds move to Canada and increase their presence (Islam, Hindu, Sikh, RC, etc) the old folks (aka Protestants, RC) will feel threatened and turn to their church in defense of their faith and beliefs. In reaction to today's secularism our grandchildren will be going to church in droves...if my psychic prediction is right

Interesting perspective from an "outsider"

I was born in Canada, but my parents were imimgrants. And the VAST majority of people I was surrounded with growing up as a child (I would say 90+% in school) and the vast majority of my current friends, are 1st generation canadians as welll, and their parents also immigrated from countries of various religious backgrounds (ie islam, hindu, sikh,etc). And their parents all were quite religious.

All these new generation kids however were much less religious, and now that we are all much older, many (if not most) of them are not religious at all. By the time they have kids, they would have forgotten about the whole concept of religion.

In conclusion, you are completely wrong.

 

[Hydrogen]

I don't view people who make references to some vague higher power as being religious. Rather than being a social fact of daily life, many more people today adopt (or hold on to) religion either as a means to emotionally connecting with the past, or adopt it as a reaction to a world they find beyond their comfort or understanding.

Either way, I don't see any emerging trend back-to-church-going on right now.

 

[rpgr]

There's nothing silly about organized religion; after all, how is one supposed to meet a decent girl to marry without religion and a community church?

Since I never belonged to a congregation growing up (I hate group gatherings/group think) and thus have no strong sense of religious identity I find it challenging to get along with people who have certain religious/cultural expectations; on the other hand, those brought up in secular families like mine are also finding it difficult to find Mr/Mrs Right. Interesting.

Maybe I'm old fashioned....?

Don't get me started on this one...

I've tried the above with disastourous results.

Going to Church doesn't really give you any increased opportunity to meet that special someone. If anything it's a gossip group for airing your dirty laundry when things don't go right.

I really don't want to get into the details but the above is something I would stake everything on.

You're better off doing the whole volunteer thing or if you're a guy, just waiting till the biological clock makes girls panic. Otherwise all the normal ones are usually hooked up by the end of Univeristy.

Furthermore, I'd like to reiterate one thing i really hate about Toronto, the dating scene sucks, period. One of the worst in the world.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Really, it's not just organized religion that's a problem. As Dawkins says, any willingness to believe without evidence is potentially dangerous.

But to a religious person, the evidence is everywhere around them.

The rest is indeed faith, but we use faith in many things. For example, how do I know Mars exists? I've got to have faith in scientists, and the education system, or if I'm so able in the folks that make the telescopes that I may peer through.

The priest at my church said it best last week, where she said most people's certainty in the existance of God (as opposed to belief or faith) ranges from 0.01% and 0.99%, since even the most ardert believers admit that they have limited or no evidence, while those who are totally atheistic have no evidence that God does not exist (we could argue that the lack of existance of something does not support its existance, but there, I did it for you already). I think I fall into the middle somewhere.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

But to a religious person, the evidence is everywhere around them.

The rest is indeed faith, but we use faith in many things. For example, how do I know Mars exists? I've got to have faith in scientists, and the education system, or if I'm so able in the folks that make the telescopes that I may peer through.

The priest at my church said it best last week, where she said most people's certainty in the existance of God (as opposed to belief or faith) ranges from 0.01% and 0.99%, since even the most ardert believers admit that they have limited or no evidence, while those who are totally atheistic have no evidence that God does not exist (we could argue that the lack of existance of something does not support its existance, but there, I did it for you already). I think I fall into the middle somewhere.

why base your existence, a nation, the education system on a lack of knowledge/evidence? the belief of one, some or many shouldn't govern the lives of others. when i say beliefs, i mean those things that can't be proven, like that rainbows, nipples on men, the location of the male G spot, the clitoris (a mini penis) on women, the fact that the word gay means happy, etc. all suggest that god might possibly be a homosexual. but not one of those nice gays that you see on the weather channel but one of those hardened prison gays that are only gay because there's no chicks around and ricky's ass will do just fine for now. do you see the problem with monotheism now? maybe if there was another female diety to keep god busy, he wouldn't be fucking us all in the ass.

there. i just rationalized why there is suffering in the world. god is horny.

 

[Admiral Beez]

My thinking is that the creator, call it God if you will (or not), has made our world as like a fish tank, we've got all the stuff we need to live, but what we do with it is up to us.

 

[afransen]

But to a religious person, the evidence is everywhere around them.

That's not evidence.

The rest is indeed faith, but we use faith in many things. For example, how do I know Mars exists? I've got to have faith in scientists, and the education system, or if I'm so able in the folks that make the telescopes that I may peer through.

That's a convenience. It's verifiable, if you are willing to devote enough time. This takes no more faith that believing that the things we see are real. God is in a different class entirely.

The priest at my church said it best last week, where she said most people's certainty in the existance of God (as opposed to belief or faith) ranges from 0.01% and 0.99%, since even the most ardert believers admit that they have limited or no evidence, while those who are totally atheistic have no evidence that God does not exist (we could argue that the lack of existance of something does not support its existance, but there, I did it for you already). I think I fall into the middle somewhere.

Of course it's impossible to prove that god does not exist. A rational examination of history makes it clear that the Judeo-Christian god is essentially an arbitrary god in which to believe. Why should he exist and not Aphrodite?

Essentially it is irrational to believe that something exists in the absence of evidence. We haven't proven that there isn't a hell beneath the earth's crust, and I doubt we ever could 'prove' that this is the case. It's still irrational to believe that one exists. Beyond that, it's just so damned arbitrary to pick to believe some ridiculously unlikely things are true out of the staggering assortment of similarly unlikely things. Scientologists are no crazier sounding than the most liberal Christian.

 

[Mongo]

The priest at my church said it best last week, where she said most people's certainty in the existance of God (as opposed to belief or faith) ranges from 0.01% and 0.99%, since even the most ardert believers admit that they have limited or no evidence, while those who are totally atheistic have no evidence that God does not exist (we could argue that the lack of existance of something does not support its existance, but there, I did it for you already). I think I fall into the middle somewhere.

This is an invalid argument. I could just as easily claim that because there is no proof of the lack of 50-foot-tall purple ostriches, they must exist.

In any case, even if a god exists, who is to say it's the Judeo-Christian god? Isn't it cause for concern that the god a given person believes in is primarily determined by which god is believed in by their immediate family? How fortunate (thinks a believer) that I happened to be born in a culture which believes in the One True God -- whereas all those other people, in other parts of the world, are wrong.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

50-foot-tall purple ostriches

blasphemy! god is a 50' 7& 1/64" orange ostrich!

 

[DENTROBATE54]

In any case, even if a god exists, who is to say it's the Judeo-Christian god? Isn't it cause for concern that the god a given person believes in is primarily determined by which god is believed in by their immediate family? How fortunate (thinks a believer) that I happened to be born in a culture which believes in the One True God -- whereas all those other people, in other parts of the world, are wrong.

There is no God. I wrote a scathing letter...er essay, purporting this claim with referential evidence to my philosophy TA a couple years ago. Something I said must've rang true because I received an A+ !

 

[MisterF]

This is an invalid argument. I could just as easily claim that because there is no proof of the lack of 50-foot-tall purple ostriches, they must exist.

I believe this argument is called the appeal from ignorance - the arguement that something must be true simply because it hasn't been proven false. In this case, that God must exist because nobody's proven that he doesn't. It's a logical fallacy that religious people use all the time, usually when trying to explain the ridiculous notion that it takes faith to not believe in God.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Guys, I've already covered this when I said above...

"we could argue that the lack of existance of something does not support its existance, but there, I did it for you already"

But regardless you all piled on the same position I've just stated.

Obviously, in this forum, populated mostly by current or recent university students with the expected leftish bias, you're not going to get many who support or embrace any sort of religious faith. I was certainly with you all when I was in university, full of "show me the evidence", "religious people are suckers", "there's no God" arguments, so I know where you're coming from. My feelings began to change when my kids were born, and then went from there.

I'd say, do whatever makes you happy.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Um, Ritalin's about behaviour modification, it doesn't make you smarter. If it causes one to be more focused in class, all it's doing is affording the hyperactive student the same chances at excelling as everyone else. You wouldn't tell the amputeed kid who beat you in a sprint race that he cheated because he has an artificial leg would you ?

Ritalin is being prescribed in far greater numbers that ever before, not only to hard-core ADHD cases, but also to kids who simply fall within the normal range of those who concentrate as well or worse than others. There is growing evidence that most people benefit from Ritalin, since it helps everyone focus better, and yes, that would be cheating the system.

School and life isn't always about making sure everyone has an equal start or performance or potential, but is instead about embracing and/or working with our life-given differences. Not, I'm not saying the hard-core ADHD kid should be sentenced to a terrible life, so he needs his meds. But, perhaps that kid who is struggling in math because he can't sit still will become a great musician or sportsman, etc. Look, say my kid and your kid are competing for top honours or university entrances, my kid is sometimes a little scatter brained, but otherwise normal (the perfect Ritalin candidate today). Meanwhile your kid is outperforming my kid in most test scores. So I have my GP prescribe Ritalin, and he then trounces your kid, and gets the prize. Is that fairness?

As for your sports analogy, if the amputeed kid's artificial leg delivers superior performance than if he'd had a real leg, then yes, that would not be a fair competition. In this case, we'd be using science and technology to win over human limitation, reaching almost the level of the cyborg, generally defined per wiki as an organism (in this case a person) that has enhanced abilities due to technology. How is this different, beyond warm feelings for the kid, than a sprinter who's body will not allow him to win the races, from taking steroids, and then beating everyone who otherwise would've won? This is likely why we have special Olympics for amputees, as their technology in some cases would beat the able-bodied athletes.

 

[urbandreamer]

Any Quakers in the house?

Anyone else interested in studying religious groups? I am studying the Palatines right now: aka, the German Baptists/Dunkers, Amish, Mennonites, Old Order River Brethern, etc. (They live close to the town where I spent some of my early days: Chambersburg PA