Ex Libris: Jonathan Haidt, “The Righteous Mind” (Part III)
My first and second posts about the American psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion” discussed Haidt’s claims that morality is...
View ArticleGod Says That You – Yes, You – Can Keep And Bear Arms
American news website The Daily Beast notes that “American gun lobbyists” such as Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America have seized on the ructions in Ukraine as an example of the evils of gun control....
View ArticleTell The Government What You Think About Prostitution
Our government is soliciting (so to speak) input from members of the public about the issue of prostitution in Canada. As the relevant website explains: On December 20, 2013, in the case of Bedford v....
View ArticleJustin Trudeau’s Little Joke About Ukraine
Not long ago a gaffe was made in Canadian politics. Yes, gentle reader – a gaffe. The dead in their graves cried out to heaven in bitter outrage, and the sun wept tears of fire upon the wretched Earth....
View ArticleA Sappho Award For Ezra Levant
A couple of weeks ago the indispensable and insufferable Ezra Levant was given a Sappho Award by a Danish organization called, in English, The Free Press Society. The Society proclaims Sappho to be the...
View ArticleA Bit Of St. Patrick’s Day Skepticism
St. Patrick’s Day has some religious significance, according to the Catholic Church, but for the vast majority of celebrants it seems to be much more about wearing some green, raising a pint or two of...
View ArticleKosher Certification Isn’t A Tax, But It’s Surely Worth Discussing
Louise Mailloux, Parti Québécois candidate and professor at Cégep du Vieux Montréal, was criticized earlier this month by the Centre for Israel and Jewish affairs (CIJA) over her past remarks about...
View ArticleCharter Or No Charter, Quebec Will Be Just Fine
Even as the upcoming provincial election in Quebec appears to be slipping away from the Parti Québécois, the PQ’s Quebec Charter of Values continues to fan the flames of controversy within and beyond...
View ArticleA Skeptic Reads the News: Quebec, Ukraine, Voynich and Mozilla
The rocky marriage between Canada’s two great solitudes seems set for a period of relative tranquility now that the Liberals have their majority in Quebec and all this talk of referendums is suddenly...
View ArticleHow We Baptize Terrorists
I love Sarah Palin, the former Governor of Alaska who ran for Vice-President of the United States back in 2008. She’s one of those political figures, like Rob Ford in Canada or George Galloway in the...
View ArticleOur Very Own Mass Extinction
There have been five truly enormous mass extinctions in Earth’s geological history, events in which (as the BBC puts it) “abnormally large numbers of species die out simultaneously or within a limited...
View ArticleUri Geller And The Mighty Spoon-Orilla
Uri Geller, the Israeli self-described “mystifier” who spent decades impressing the credulous with his supposed psychic and telekinetic powers, really likes his spoons. The “short biography” on his...
View ArticleCould Jesus Write In Klingon?
Pope Francis has been traipsing around in the general vicinity of the birthplace of his religion, praying here and there and doing his best to promote peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. This...
View ArticleReligions And Dogmigions
The consistently acerbic, eloquent and interesting Rex Murphy recently had a piece in the National Post on something that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past month or two, namely the idea that...
View ArticleInteresting Times In Iraq
Iraq’s chronic disease of sectarianism has flared up again with the blood-soaked advance of ISIS (“Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham”, meaning Iraq and the Levant) and allied Sunni groups, who have...
View ArticleAlfred Russel Wallace On Dangerous Fruit
I’m slowly reading my way through The Malay Archipelago, by Charles Darwin’s contemporary and colleague Alfred Russel Wallace. I’ll probably have more to say later about this rather magnificent piece...
View ArticleTim Minchin Answers Questions
The Guardian recently hosted a Q & A session with Tim Minchin, the Australian musician, comedian and “affirmed atheist”. In the transcript Minchin has some interesting things to say and comes...
View ArticleSave The Whales (For The Enjoyment Of The Good People Of Vancouver)
Evictions are all the rage in Vancouver these days. The city tried to evict some homeless people from a park, leading “some members of a local First Nation” to try to evict the city from, well, the...
View ArticleSusan Blackmore Talks About Memes
Various atheist blogs recently drew attention to British intellectual Susan Blackmore’s account of giving a lecture at an Oxford-based institution that “hosts groups of several hundred 17-18 year-olds...
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Atheism By The Books
I don’t have the artistic ability or the subtle wit to create the next Jesus and Mo, but I put together a silly little comic and I thought I’d share it here. The term “Dictionary Atheist” was coined by...
View ArticleFurther Thoughts On Dictionary Atheism
In my last post I presented a silly little comic based on “dictionary atheism”, a term coined by PZ Myers to refer to a brand of atheism that rejects the idea that disbelief in gods has any inescapable...
View ArticlePankaj Mishra Takes On The Eschatology Of Liberal Democracy
The expectation of a fairly imminent Second Coming persists in certain quarters. In other quarters, it was replaced in the last century by almost equally millenarian notions about an imminent global...
View ArticleTowards A Proper Theology
I suspect the question only popped into my head because I’ve been reading too much Borges lately, but it occurred to me to wonder if it would be possible in principle to develop a worthwhile,...
View ArticleFortunately, The Thought Police Have No Badges
I’ve been something of a fan of Richard Dawkins ever since I picked up a copy of his book The Selfish Gene when I was a graduate student. I think he’s a good writer, an incisive and creative scientific...
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A Giant Statue
I’m pretty much neutral in the Apple vs. Windows debates that flare up now and then in various venues. Both kinds of computer have more or less similar capabilities, and I don’t mind using either....
View ArticleThe Fairly Extraordinary Claim That Torture “Doesn’t Work”
As if public “die-ins” weren’t sufficiently incongruous with the peace and goodwill of the Christmas season, our American neighbours have been indulging in a ferocious spasm of recrimination over the...
View ArticleThe Gods Are Atheist
When I was a child I liked to browse the bookshelves in the family home. I knew that many of the books were “for adults”, meaning that they were likely to be prolix, pointlessly obscure, and perversely...
View ArticleGreece’s New Godless Prime Minister
I’m encouraged by the victory of Syriza, a “far-left” party with very real communist roots, in the recent elections in Greece. Syriza took nearly half the seats in the unicameral Hellenic Parliament,...
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Black Hat And Scraggly Hair: How Did You Get Her So Wrong?
There really is, it turns out, a Christian networking site called Faithbook. It appears to be a project of the Fellowship of World Christians (FOWC), whose Statement of Faith assures us of their...
View ArticleRecommended Reading: Graeme Wood On The Islamic State
The best article I’ve read so far about the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, ISIS or Daesh, is a long but very worthwhile piece by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic. Wood not only delved into the State’s...
View ArticleA Chinese Joke
Despite having lived in China for years, I don’t speak more than a smattering of Mandarin. I’m not one of those people who can “pick up” foreign languages as if by osmosis – I don’t have the ear for...
View ArticleThere’s Never Been A Miracle Like The Airport Up In Knock
Considering that Ireland is a traditionally Catholic and traditionally very musical country, it’s surprising how little the Emerald Isle’s traditional Catholicism has impinged on its traditional music....
View ArticleAlfred Russel Wallace And The Origin Of “The Origin Of Species”
In 1858, Charles Darwin was a well-regarded English naturalist sitting on one of the most important ideas in the history of Western thought, namely evolution by natural selection. He had been gathering...
View ArticleGarry Trudeau N’est Pas Charlie
I’ve never found Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip to be either laugh-out-loud funny or brilliantly incisive, and it’s been years since I read it at all regularly, but I do appreciate the strip’s...
View ArticleIreland Says No, Yes, And To Hell With The Church
Last week, the Republic of Ireland held a referendum in which voters stood up for tradition and overwhelmingly rejected an unprecedented change to an important and long-standing institution. The...
View ArticleThe Veritable Superpower Of Super-Recognition
The BBC has been impressing me lately with a series of articles called BBC Future. They’re well-written, seemingly well-informed explanations of topics in science and technology, many of which should...
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The Meaning Of Atheism, Part 1: Clearing The Air
Atheists tend to be a gloriously disputatious bunch, which is not surprising for a group united only by rejection of the blandishments and superficial consolations of religion. Atheists, it sometimes...
View ArticleThe Meaning Of Atheism, Part 2: Three Ways To Lack Belief
Is an atheist someone who doesn’t believe in gods, or someone who believes there are no gods? It’s a hairline distinction, irrelevant for most practical purposes, but there clearly is a theoretical...
View ArticleNocturnal Adventures Of A Skeptic
I was walking down a hallway on an upper floor of a fading, run-down apartment building, with a set of keys in my hand. I don’t remember why I was there, except that it had to do with laundry. I was...
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The Meaning Of Atheism, Part 3: The Meaning Of Agnosticism
In both Part I and Part II of this very intermittent series, I argued that the terms “agnosticism” and “atheism” were best used to describe distinct and mutually exclusive, though vaguely delineated,...
View ArticleHappy Holy-Ween?
If you thought Halloween was just a harmless occasion for dressing up like your favourite celebrity while skull-shaped celestial objects hurtled past overhead, think again. Experts understand that this...
View ArticleWar On Christmas: The Battle Of Starbucks
Here at Canadian Atheist we’ve been diligently preparing for the War on Christmas, but in the United States an opening skirmish has already taken place. Starbucks, that fount of decent enough coffee...
View ArticleRex Murphy On Institutes Of Higher Whining
I seem to have more time for Rex Murphy than do most CA writers and commenters. I don’t always agree with the man, but I appreciate his acerbic writing and his crusty, canny sensibilities. Even when...
View ArticleAux Armes, Canadiens?
After the recent Islamic State (also known as ISIL, ISIS and Daesh) attacks in Paris, France’s atheist President François Hollande was quick to vow to destroy the jihadist caliphate (full French...
View ArticleDavid Suzuki Will Kiss The Pope Anywhere He (The Pope) Wants
David Suzuki has raised eyebrows, we’re told, by deploying a colourful analogy in the course of a discussion about greenhouse gas emissions. As Maclean’s reports, Suzuki doesn’t have much time for Brad...
View ArticleMuch Ado About Comments
If you have something to say regarding news stories about indigenous people, the CBC doesn’t want to hear it until next year. Canada’s public broadcaster has taken what “Acting director of digital...
View ArticleWhen In Rome
When in Rome, one is supposed to do as the Romans do. Children know this, but the memo appears to have bypassed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani: Mr Rouhani and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi...
View ArticleDawkins And NECSS: An Update And Some Thoughts
You can love Richard Dawkins or you can hate him, but you can’t say he’s anything but a gentleman and a scholar. His response to being disinvited as a featured speaker by NECSS (short for Northeast...
View ArticleAnd Shub-Niggurath For PM
I’m not, generally speaking, the kind of Canadian who gets too caught up in the three-ring circus of U.S. presidential elections. The marathon campaigns that go on south of the border may be one of the...
View ArticleAn Unsermon For Palm Sunday
Any lesser prophet would have merely galloped into the city on a white horse, but Jesus had other ideas for his final one-way trip from Jericho to Jerusalem. The beginning of the 21st chapter of the...
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