Thoughts on Identity Politics.

Greeting all Withteeth here,

Long time no write! Today I want to talk about a lil’ol thing called Identity Politics‎. I’m no expert on this topic, but I do have quite a few years steeped in it’s topics and outcomes, good and bad, so I want to share my thoughts. As is always advisable bring some salt to the table and feel free to raise your objections!

Identity Politics, by my understanding, is most fundamentally a collection of shorthands for various type of individuals and group that allow for quick and concise descriptions and cues for numerous kind of people. From issue like Gender or sexual orientations, ethnicity, psychological descriptions such as ADHD, and Depression, and some times expands to include other descriptors more commonly things like introvert and extrovert, and more rarely briggs-myrer test results, INJP or the like‎. This is by no means a full list, just some common examples.

Though categorization is only the identity side of of identity politics. And as those on either the far left and right will tell you, and what may surprize you is there is a great deal of derision from both sides. Those complaints that to main stances. Identity politcs is political correctness run amock! Or Idenity Politics is divisive and needlesly splitting people apart.

Now I think when people say political correctness is running amock, or “I’m just teeling it as it is.” I mostly hear “I wanna be a jerk to people, without Soical consequences.” Occasionally I’ll hear a meaningful point, but Normally when I encounter it it’s used as a distraction or excuse for holding a unplesant veiw about some other group the person doesn’t belong too.

The argument from divisiveness, however really has some soild truth to it. Where ever you attempt to catigorize, you make seemingly neat division in a messy and complex world. By it’s very nature the identity part of idpol is dividing people. I have seen folk rise to defend, and attack solely based on these division, and use them as a method to strip legitimasy from one group. perhaps the best example is that of Bi sexual erasure in the LGBTQA community where Gay and Lesbian people will attack and condem Bi sexual people of having heterosexual relationships and ostracizing them for this perceived betrayal.

This obviously not cool, but if people who should know better use identity politics to hurt people who only want similar recognition they themselves have won, why do I think identity politics are ultimately a positive force?

One: awareness building. Yes having aware of a group and for a time make them a target, but I think we have seen enough through history that staying hidden is a terrible stratagy for long term survival in a human population. Unless of course you have the power already to maintain your secrecy. The best way to make sure someone isn’t going to ostrisize and single out a group of people is to make sure they know about those people, and have a direct and meaningful relationship with at least one member of that group. That way you can easy attain empathy for another. The end goal of any awarenessraising move in my opinion has to be normalization, and acceptance, and I think for the fault of identity politics it has help raised awareness about dozens of minority group who face real threats from scoiety at large, and in part has been key in pushing LGBTQA issues, and have and effect on ‘race’ issues although I am regertiable less informed on the effect of identity politics on Person of colour.

Two: this real problem with divisiveness is a lack of intersectional understanding. Intesectionality is hard. Really hard. People who claim to be intersectional feminist can and often still preptuate harmful ideas and will sometimes ignore other people’s lived experiences if they haven’t directly experinced them first hand.

What makes intersectionality so hard is that it requires empathy for others, and a deep understanding of the experinced and conditions which affects a given group of people. You basically need to have the basics of economic theory, a good grounding is the relevant history, and know a lot about the social sciences to really start making a crack at competent intersectional thought. You can have a good grasp of the categories of indetity politics but have no idea of the kind of power structures which affect how people interact, live their day to day lives, and how they affect individual and group opportunities and access. 

To really appreciate and utilize intentional though, and therefor use indentity politics for good you need to be curious , and have a real desire to learn about people, and critcally you need to be willing and actively want to push yourself to try to understand experinces that might be radically different from your own.

So to wrap this post up, my thought on Identity politics can be summed up as follows. Idtity politics on a practical level is little more then a list of labels and desripitions for indivials and groups to indetify themselves. Unless you are actively applying intersectional thought to these catigorization, there no reseason that people won’t use that lables as a tool to harm as much as help. Due to that I’m wary of agree with just anyone pushing idenitity politics, but I still think that it does more good then harm and the use of idenitity politicswill contiune to give power and reconition to unserved and unrepresented group in our societies. We as agroup just need to become better at applying intersectionality to issues of privledge and access.

Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Withteeth

Local Poltics in Alberta Canada: A responce to a post on Bill 6.

This is a response directed at natashamintram that I’ve put together for the benefit of a friend and besides it caught my interest.

natashamintram’s full article can be found here.

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“Their roots go deep. It is so sad to see what’s happening to Alberta’s agricultural history: a major part of our thriving economy. Historically, the government has used the divide between urban and rural Alberta to its advantage by “pleasing” either one or the other. This isn’t right: the government must work with both to bring unity, not division.”

Alright I go a clear idea on where the author stands on this issue, but one question. Which Government are you talking about? people reading this article are likely going to assume you mean the current Alberta NDP, however you haven’t actually been clear enough for me to say one way or another.

“Bill 6 is a combined bill, which means it amends more than one bill. It will affect the Workers’ Compensation Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act, Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code for the Agricultural industry.”

Yes and it sound like you’d need to make adjustment in all those area to affect the work place protections that the current government has said they want to do.

“This bill infringes upon the rights and freedoms of farmers and ranchers to work their land. As Bill 6 is written, it will remove most farming and ranching activities from their current exempted status.”

Without a lot context this sound less like “rights” and more like “privileges” but yes if your take away someone’s exempt status they are probably going to argue they will lose their right to something, but that alone it’s terribly concerning. Not too long ago men lost the right to beat and rape their wives and people complained about that too, the question I have is? Are these privileges ones we ought to fight for as a society, or at they simply protecting a few while allowing for some sort of exploitation.

(by the way thank you for using citation I do appreciate it)

For your second citation it doesn’t seem that you’ve really offer much proof that the government hasn’t been contacting experts, or farmers, but I will take your word for it on the farmer at least. That’s problematic is the NDP are not following through on their promise I agree.

“As the Workers’ Compensation Act and Occupational Health and Safety Act are currently written, these measures will both take effect on January 1^st, 2016. This is an inadequate amount of time to prepare for such drastic changes.”

Fair enough hopefully a good deal of leeway will be given over the next year or two, so that this will not be an issue.

“What about the farms and ranches that hire seasonal workers who aren’t family members? Now, due to that fact alone, Occupational Health and Safety will have complete jurisdiction over their operations, and they will have to make some serious decisions.”

 

“These farms and ranches will have to be brought up to OH&S standards, a process costing hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, which will be nearly impossible for small farms and ranches to afford.”

Really a small ranch or farm? can’t afford hundred or even thousands of dollars? No I understand that your typical farmer is not rolling in money, but if the costs are really only in the range of hundrends or thousands of dollars then there are likely enough financing options to pay for those changes. Now if the costs are a good deal higher then I have a question. does that make safety standards overkill, or does that mean that farms are ramshackle death traps? I’ve been to my fair share of farms over the years and some look like they won’t have an issue meeting most standards while others are in fact ramshackle deathtraps.

“Many times they have small profit margins and sometimes no profit at all.”

Yep and if that’s the case they like most business that teeter on a fine edge will eventually fail, this could be the catalyst for some that’s unfortunate, but that’s the capitalistic society we live in. Now I’m all for arguing if this is wrong on some moral level, but given how our society function do these small barely profitable farms and ranches actually bring significant value to society? Will the these changes causer enough fallout to warrant legitimate concern? I don’t know, but maybe you do and I’d like to hear what you have to say if you do.

“Currently, as the law is written, an OH&S Officer can enter the premises without notice or a warrant to search and seize anything that they deem in violation of the regulations, at any time of the day. This includes farmers’ and ranchers’ homes because they have their office inside which would be considered a worksite. If a farmer or rancher is non-compliant with the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, they’re subject to many penalties, and fines up to $500,000 or imprisonment.”

Yep regulation sucks, but if they can’t search business spaces then some farmers will undoubtedly hide questionable or illegal activates in their homes to prevent detection. Not all farmers by any means, but business is business and anyone who has lived in a rural community in Alberta knows there is no shortage of people who will go to great length if they think “they can screw the man.” It probably means in the long run there be more out building on farms, or extensions to preexisting homes, and for the first while there will be inconveniences. Though for routine inspection I doubt most OHS officers are not going to abuse their powers or try to make enemies with farmers, I’m such some will, but they will in turn end up suffering for it.

“WCB is being forced on farmers and ranchers, taking away their freedom of choice when most already have their own 24/7 private insurance with superior rates and benefits. Don’t you think they should have a few options to choose from when it comes to workplace insurance? To ensure the companies stay competitive so they can choose the best coverage possible? WCB will have complete control over how they provide coverage to the Agricultural Industry, without any competition. How would you like to have one sole provider of health insurance, auto insurance or home insurance?”

This is interesting do you have any more information on exactly what kinds of options farmers will and will not have?

 

“Farmers and ranchers already take safety precautions on their farms. The problem is that this bill moves way beyond “enhancing safety”⁴.”

Explain?

“Any person at any job can refuse unsafe work. We are free to choose where we work, who we work for and say no to something that could put us in a dangerous situation.”

Sadly the real world is not that simple, sometime people cannot refuse work because they can’t afford to be fired, and some time people won’t recognize the extent of the danger they might face. They reson why we have worker protections is to help counter balance for the imbalances of power that can occur which typically favor the employer.

“If it had truly only ever been about improving farm and ranch worker’s safety, there would never have been these major pieces of legislation. The appropriate way for the government to have addressed this would have been to document consultations, prepare proposals to farmers and ranchers, and begin improving safety programs through the farm safety programs that are already available.⁵”

None of that really follows from what you’ve presented thus far. Farmer are people, some a good some a bad, and that means some farmer will ignore safety program and mistreat employees (to various levels) if they are able to. If you rules don’t have teeth they are only guideline and can’t be enforced. And if you can’t enforce there’s a risk that undue harm can be done with no recourse available to those harmed.

“There never would have been such a huge uproar like what you’ve seen in the media, or in person these past few weeks.”

Uproar can be manufactured or misplaced and often is, I’m interested in the facts as they are currently available not in how people feel about it as that is already quite clear.

“This didn’t happen over “safety precautions,” it happened because this bill threatens their entire livelihood. This is not an exaggeration.”

I happen to question both of those sentences, so far you haven’t really given a compelling case that peoples likely hood are a risk, only that people won’t like the changes. Which in all fairness is certainly true. People don’t like change, and people really don’t like change if has a chance of affecting the bottom line negatively. Though so far you have not offer a proper case for this risk, but have only asserted it.

I want to understand your real concerns what prevision are going to cause things to really hurt for farms. The only one so far that seem to have merit is the issue surrounding enforced WCB. And even then how is that actually going affect farmers how much will they have to put into those programs? And why should they be except in the first place?

” Here is a great analogy that was shared on the Facebook group: “I asked how my urban friends, many of whom live in beautiful but older houses, would feel if the Government passed legislation requiring all homeowners to have their houses brought up to 2016 Building Codes by January 1, 2016, or risk fines of up to $500,000?”

Okay so again lets clear this up does the government actually expect farmers to meet all the requirement by Jan 1st? I highly doubt it, and I and quite sure they couldn’t enforce it even if they where insane enough to try. In addition companies typically get warnings long before any fines are handed out so why would we expect the Albertan government to hand out fines starting Jan 1st? I don’t think we would, analogies can be useful, but I think here you’re leaping to the worse possible scenario without giving any reason too. I don’t think further fear mongering is useful in already tense situation, and weather you indented it or not I think that’s what happening in this paragraph.

That said I do think there will be adjustment period and that means some people with have to change how they are doing things, but I remain unconvinced that many even older farmers will be hurt by this. That said however I am still happy to be swayed if you can convince me that harm is a real possibility.

” Farmers and ranchers didn’t give the government a blank cheque to sign – the government did it themselves, and robbed the former of their entire livelihood.”

Uhmm that is quite the leap. It is not like the government has taken away farmers property rights or something equally crazy. Also do remember this is a democracy you do have some say, and if the NDP do royal mess this up then you, me, and everyone else will have to vote a new party in, but I honestly do not buy the constant fear monger that the NDP are going to destroy the province, they really isn’t evidence for it. The only real problem the NDP have is that people only like to vote them in when shit has already hit the fan and they need someone new to clean up the mess, and people get upset that they can’t magically fix everything over night. And do political parties NDP included make mistakes, yep, but as humans what do you expect?

Again fear mongering, a good tactic for getting people riled up, but it isn’t going to convince me that your right, only that you’re afraid or at least want other to be afraid.

” Farmers, ranchers and workers aren’t benefiting from these new legislation – the government is. It’s not that Alberta was the last province to have “safety and basic protection rights” for farm and ranch workers, it was the last province that the government didn’t control.”

really to me is should like it’s going to cost both money, and time, I think the legislation is there to help unrelated employees and give them protections already afforded to employees in other industries. You continued to talk about how this will affect famers, but so far you’ve paid next to no attention to paid employees. That’s why I I think you’ve allowed your biases to blind you to the third party in all this.

” How is that creating job growth? Not to mention all the oil field workers who have been laid off.”

That has literally nothing to do with Notley fun fast the middle east controls the price of oil and Saudi Arabia is paying for a war at the moment and is selling oil cheap to pay for it. That and the oilfield are a boom and bust to begin with that just the reality of having an economy base on oil, and they only people who can be blamed for that are the PC’s.

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The rest of the article is made of excepts about concerns and fear from other farmers and ranchers, I think there are some legitimate concerns in there, but I don’t not have any expertise in many complex issues which, so in conclusion it may be very true that this legislation is being pulled through the house far too quickly, and I’m sure that the full extent of the bill has yet to be determined. I think I will discuss this topic with my local MP and see what he has to say about it, but otherwise I think I don’t enough working though the issues I have with this article and why I think we still have way more question then answers.

Thanks to natashamintram for taking the time to write there article and I hope they don’t take this as any sort of personal attack, and it is intended only as a critique. additionally I do not expect a response, but would be happy to receive one if that ever where to suit natashamintram‘s fancy.

 

What Can Churches Teach Atheists?

So life has been quite busy for us lately. I have been working and trying to get some writing edited. Withteeth has been testing out a job as well. As such, it has been difficult for us to find time to publish posts. However, I do have some Bible posts that I’ve been working on. I’ll start publishing those in a few days.

But first I want to talk about the conference we were at this weekend. Gateway to Reason was a first time conference that took place this weekend in St. Louis, Missouri. It was probably the best organized conference that we have been to. I would definitely recommend looking into this conference next year if you are able to make your way to St. Louis for it. It was fairly cheep as far as secular/skeptic conferences are concerned and it had a large number of speakers. Russell Glasser, Matt Dillihunty, Aron Ra, Vyckie Garrison, and David Fitzgerald are just a few of the many speakers who presented a talk.

But it’s Hemant Mehta’s talk that I want to really discuss. His talk took place this afternoon. Hemant’s talk was about how atheists are failing to attract members and convince people to give up their religion. He said that there are a number of things that churches do better than atheist groups: First, churches really do give their members a sense of purpose. They send people on mission trips, they encourage people to volunteer, and they get people thinking about how to solve real world issues that affect the members of the church. Atheist groups don’t do these things. As such, we can’t get people to join us. People want to feel as though their local group is for something. They want to feel as though their is a purpose in attending that group. So how do we give people that purpose? Second, Churches offer community. Atheist groups do offer community, but our communities are makeshift. Christians will take care of their people. If someone loses their job, Christian groups will help that person until they are back on their feet. Atheist groups don’t do that kind of thing. This means that asking someone to leave their church is asking them to leave their safety net. Why would they do that? How can we better protect each other and offer that safety net? Third, the church is very good at death. They have a good story. A comforting story. We don’t have that. We don’t offer the same inspiration. So how can we inspire people to not fear death? Fourth, Christians have great messengers. They have a terrible message, but their messengers are great. Atheists have terrible messengers. Our messengers insult and offend the people they are trying to deconvert. Our messengers ignore emotion and aren’t very good storytellers. The strength of our message is irrelevant if we can’t catch the peoples attention to share it. So how do we improve our messengers? Hement’s point is that we need to fix the way that atheists bring people in. So how do we do this? Is Hement right or is he completely off base? Does it matter?

Apparently Americans Now Want to Move to Canada…

Because the US legalized gay marriage. Too bad for them, or luckily for us, we legalized gay marriage in 2004. I’m a little disappointed that none of those people would actually be willing to move here: it would be amusing to see the looks on their faces when they realised that Canada is not the place to find what they’re looking for.

http://mikesbloggityblog.com/americans-are-moving-to-canada-because-of-us-gay-marriage-ruling/

http://www.therebel.media/canada_legalized_gay_marriage

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/its-legal-there#.ufZpaA9g6

In God We Trust?

I watched this documentary yesterday and I thought it would make for a great discussion. Since we have both Christians (and I’m sure some theists who are not Christian) and atheists following this blog, I thought it might be worthwhile to see what you lot have to say about this documentary.

If you have the time, please watch the documentary and tell us your thoughts on it in the comment section.

I’m At a Loss

I’ve been finding it difficult to come up with ideas for blog posts, which is why this blog hasn’t been very active lately. As such, I’d like to leave it up to the readers: what would you like us to write about? Would you like to know something specific about our atheism? Do you have an argument that you’d like us to address? Would you like us to discuss a particular book? Do you have any questions about Philosophy, Biology, or History? Would you like to know our stance on a particular feminist issue? Is there something else you’d like us to write on? Let us know in the comment section.

Atheism 101: The Western Religions

Now that things have settled down and I’m feeling better, I think it’s about time to get back to the Atheism 101 posts. Since I talked about the Bible and Koran in the last two posts, I will now be talking about the Western religions as a whole.

The Western religions include many forms of Paganism (anything from western Europe and the Americas) and Judaism and Christianity (due to where the majority of their followers can be found). Scientology would also be included in this list. I will not discuss these religions separately here but as a whole.

So why don’t atheists agree with Western religion? Well, not all atheists don’t agree with the western religions. In fact, some atheists practice different forms of Paganism (actually, there are atheists who practice Christianity and Judaism too). Many of them do so because they enjoy the culture and the traditions even though they don’t believe in the gods. However, many of the atheists who have a problem with western religion have a problem because of the institutions involved. This isn’t so much the case with Paganism, since Pagans don’t really have any power in our society. However, a lot of religious institutions use their status as religious to unfairly regulate the actions of people, including those who aren’t a part of the religion. A number of religious institutions have also caused a lot of harm. Both Scientology and some forms of Christianity have been accused of holding people, generally children, against their will. Children have been abused and killed at the direction of those with power within a religion. People have been conned out of their money and been made to feel guilty for things that aren’t necessarily wrong. And religious institutions have created wars. Those things tend to make atheists uncomfortable with the power of religious institutions. Most atheists are less concerned with people simply holding to one of these belief systems, but we do view them as false. It is the fact that we believe religions (or rather, belief in gods) are false that cause a number of atheists to criticise believers, because they believe that the believers are either being conned into believing a falsehood or are willingly believing a falsehood (sound familiar?).

On a side note, it is the fact that atheists criticise believers for believing what we believe to be false that has led me to think of atheism as more than simply a lack of belief in gods. If we merely lacked a belief, then we wouldn’t care what others believed. However, if we also actively believed that gods don’t exist, then we have a reason to care what others believe. As such, I define atheism as the belief that there are no gods, not as a lack of belief in gods.

Back to the main article. As I have already stated, not all atheists disagree with western religions. We just disagree with the gods premises. Some atheists like religion. Some atheists are religious. Some atheists wish they could be religious. Some merely don’t care about religion. Others feel annoyed at the power of religion. Some feel annoyed at the people who are religious. And others believe that religion should be gotten rid of. It all depends on the atheist.

I’m So Tired of These So-Called Skeptics

I can’t help but think that there needs to be a test before one can call themself a skeptic. It’s amazing how many people call themselves skeptics while having no critical thinking skills once so ever. This is the biggest reason I don’t really identify as a skeptic.

Today I received a reply to a comment I wrote on YouTube. The person considered themself a skeptic, but they couldn’t be bothered to supply any evidence to support their claim that masculinity and femininity are biological despite the fact that different cultures around the world hold to different ideas about what is masculine and what is feminine. Skeptics are supposed to be critical of all claims, and they are supposed to look at the evidence before they decide what is true, but so few actually do that. So many skeptics ignore the evidence and determine what they believe to be true on what society accepts, or who they hero-worship, or what they simply feel to be right. But that isn’t being skeptical.

Skepticism is a fine line to walk. It isn’t easy. But it also isn’t that difficult. Somebody says the sky is blue? Look up. Does the sky look blue? If yes, then do you have any reason to believe you are being deceived? No? Then the sky is blue. Obviously not everything is this simple, but it follows the same pattern. Someone says god exists? Can you see god? No? Then what other ways can we know something using our senses? Can we feel god? No? Can we smell god? No? Can we taste god? No? Can we hear god? No? Then how else can we find out if this claim is true? What evidence does the person making the claim have to offer? Can that evidence be verified? If not, then what does this say about the claim? If you can’t verify something using your own senses, and the evidence offered by the person making the claim isn’t verifiable, then the person’s claim can be dismissed.

But skeptics don’t generally have an issue applying this method to gods. It’s other things, more mundane things that skeptics want to be true, where they have difficulty applying their skepticism. But applying skepticism to one area does not a skeptic make. So where do skeptics fail?

Skeptics fail at applying skepticism to claims about sex and gender. It’s widely accepted that men are stronger than women. But how do we know if this is true? Can you see a man lift something that a woman can’t? Probably. But this is one man and one woman. So how do you turn the “this man can lift something that that woman can’t” claim into a “men are stronger than women” claim? First you need a lot of men and a lot of women. Then you need to compensate for weight difference. What do the results show? Obviously the average person doesn’t have time to do all of these experiments to determine what they should believe. Luckily scientists have done much of the research for us. So what have scientists found when they have done these studies? Are there studies that contradict each other? Does one debunk the other one? Are there meta-studies that explain why one is more accurate than the other? And are you sure your sources are good (ie. can you follow the source back to original research?)? Once you’ve done all that, you can be reasonably sure that your belief is accurate. However, to be a good skeptic, you can not say that you are a 100% certain that your belief is true. There is always a chance that you are wrong, and a true skeptic understands this. The problem with most so-called skeptics is they do not understand this.

So do you need to use the process given above to determine if your believes are true if you want to be a good skeptic? Yes. But it is not as daunting as it sounds. We all do the process to a certain degree, but most people don’t look at both sides of an argument, and they aren’t often open to changing their mind. The research doesn’t have to be done all at once. It can be done over the course of months or years, but both sides need to be considered, and you need to be open to changing your mind. That’s how we learn and grow.

So please, if you call yourself a skeptic, please make sure that you are as willing to apply your skepticism equally to all of your beliefs. And please make sure that you are willing to accept that you might be wrong. Because as soon as you say “I know x for certain” you cease being a skeptic. And as soon as you fail to apply the rigorous research needed to accept a belief you cease to be a good skeptic.

Anxiety Does Not Make For an Easy Life

Lately I’ve been struggling quite a bit with my anxiety. I barely made it out of school with my sanity. I haven’t been able to care about much, because everything is just too intense. But that’s what anxiety is.

Anxiety is the need to do everything, but the sense of being overwhelmed with everything that causes you to do nothing. Anxiety is the deep rooted fear that something is terribly wrong even though you know that nothing is wrong. Anxiety is the fear that success is impossible for you no matter how hard you try. Anxiety is the feeling that people don’t actually like you regardless of what they say or do. Anxiety is the fear that everything you do is somehow wrong. And on top of all that, anxiety is the knowledge that you fears are irrational and the inability to stop them. People with anxiety know that their feelings aren’t based in reality, and telling us this doesn’t help. In fact, it just feeds our fear that we aren’t liked or are thought to be stupid. But anxiety isn’t built on rationality or logic. It is a malfunction of the brain. Reason can’t stop anxiety. I wish I could just reason my way out of an anxiety attack.

My anxiety has gotten worse. It’s bad enough that I have to go get blood work done to see if it has any physical causes. It’s bad enough that I get to discuss medication options with my doctor after the blood work is done. It’s bad enough that I actually look forward to the zombie-like feelings that come with most anxiety like medications. I look forward to it because I can’t function. I want to blog, but when I think about writing a post I think of everything else I need to do and I get overwhelmed until I do nothing. I want to write, but I can’t find the motivation or the words to say. I want to get a job, but that’s overwhelming to people who don’t have anxiety. So instead I binge watch T.V. shows because that doesn’t overwhelm me.

Anxiety is a crippling mental illness. One that I wish people would take more seriously. One that I wish wasn’t so stigmatized. Sometimes it feels like I’m expected to put a band-aid on a broken leg and just walk it off.

Prayer in Canadian City Councils

Like in the United States, Canada has been having public debates about the role of religion in society for a number of years now. But, unlike in the US, religion, while it prevails in the public sphere quite openly, is not something that we openly discuss. If I go to a store at Christmas time, I will hear “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful” as often as I will hear “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” There are also churches everywhere, and religious groups have a lot of privileges where taxes and land ownership are concerned. And, of course, we have prayers in public offices. Our country has a National Day of Prayer and council meetings tend to start with a prayer. While these prayers are often more on the interfaith side of things, they still assume a god and they are still religious in nature. As such, this has sparked a debate.

One of my city’s news papers, the Herald, published this article on recent events:

“City of Calgary lawyers will review the Supreme Court of Canada’s 101- page ruling against prayer in council to determine if Mayor Naheed Nenshi can still recite the 30 words that begin every council meeting.

Many cities have announced they will suspend or cease their traditional council prayers after Canada’s top court ordered the town council of Saguenay, Que., to discontinue the practice and remove Catholic symbols from council chambers.

The reading of a Catholic prayer at council meetings infringes on freedom of conscience and religion, the court said in a unanimous ruling Wednesday.

Canadian society has evolved and given rise to a ‘concept of neutrality according to which the state must not interfere in religion and beliefs,’ the judgment said.

‘The state must instead remain neutral in this regard.’

The ruling puts an end to an eight- year legal battle that pitted atheist Alain Simoneau and a secular- rights organization against Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay.

Several municipalities reacted swiftly to the ruling. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson skipped prayers at a council meeting Wednesday pending a review of the decision. Windsor said it will do away with the Lord’s Prayer in the wake of the ruling, but the mayors of Winnipeg and Oshawa told reporters they would not immediately put an end to the practice.

Calgary isn’t yet sure how to proceed at Monday’s special council meeting.

For council’s long- standing custom, the mayor asks everyone in chambers to stand for a customary opening prayer that invokes God but doesn’t single out a particular faith:

‘O God, author of all wisdom, knowledge and understanding, we ask thy guidance in our consultations to the end that truth and justice may prevail, in all our judgments. Amen.’

Nenshi, a practising Ismaili Muslim, recites the same prayer used by predecessor Dave Bronconnier, a Lutheran.

In an emailed statement, the mayor said the city’s law department will review the decision.

‘However, I do believe that faith has a role in the public square and we will explore ways of doing that in the context of today’s decision,’ Nenshi said.

Council has begun with a prayer since at least 1977, according to the city clerk’s office. A policy in place since 1986 allows for a minister to recite a prayer, but commonly the mayor or presiding deputy mayor does the honours.

Although the Supreme Court decision ruling is based on the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the province’s legislation parallels the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms on these tenets, says law professor Errol Mendes.

That would make a legal challenge by another community an uphill climb, according to Mendes, who teaches constitutional and international law at the University of Ottawa.

‘I think it’s a fairly strong signal to the councils across the country that they really have to look at their practises,’ he said in an interview.

While many Calgary councillors are not religious, Jim Stevenson, a member of his Lutheran Church board, says it’s not the court’s place to decide if council prays.

‘Asking the Lord to watch over what we’re doing and to guide us — that’s what the purpose of prayer is, to look for spiritual guidance,’ Stevenson said.

‘So that would be offensive to me if they said we can’t do that if we choose to.’

If the regular prayer was stopped, Stevenson said he would silently pray to himself.

Coun. Gian- Carlo Carra, a nonpractising Catholic, said he understands separation of church and state but also likes the interfaith tradition that commences each meeting. ‘I’m fine with it. Apologies to the atheists out there,’ he said.

In the Saguenay case, Simoneau filed an initial complaint in 2007.

City officials introduced a bylaw in 2008 that changed the prayer to a new one it deemed more neutral.

But in 2011, Quebec’s human rights tribunal ordered an end to the prayers and religious symbols.

The Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the tribunal’s decision in 2013, expressing some reservations about religious symbols in the council chamber, but concluded the city imposed no religious views on its citizens and ruled reciting a prayer does not violate the religious neutrality of the city.

The Supreme Court of Canada disagreed.

‘This neutrality requires that the state neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non- belief,” the ruling read. ‘It requires that the state abstain from taking any position and thus avoid adhering to a particular belief.

‘When all is said and done, the state’s duty to protect every person’s freedom of conscience and religion means that it may not use its powers in such a way as to promote the participation of certain believers or non- believers in public life to the detriment of others.’

In the Alberta legislature, the speaker starts each daily sitting with prayer. The justices’ ruling makes a point of not touching the House of Commons prayer because of parliamentary privilege, and that would also apply to Alberta’s house, legislature law clerk Rob Reynolds said.”

As I’m sure you can imagine, Withteeth and I aren’t really fans of our government having a religious bias. However, what Withteeth and I think isn’t as relevant as the data. To give you a bit of insight into the state of religion in Canada (unfortunately I don’t have the most up to date data because our Prime Minister doesn’t understand the value of it), in 2011 non-religious people made up 23.9% of the population. It has risen since then, but I don’t have reliable data on how much. I have read that anywhere from 30-53% of the Canadian population now identifies as non-religious. The 23.9% was an increase from the 16.5% of people who identified as non-religious 10 years earlier in 2001. Catholics made up 38.7% of the population in 2011, which was a decrease from the 43.2% of the population that had considered themselves Catholic a decade before. Again, I don’t have the numbers on how much it has decreased since 2011, but it has been suggested that the decrease in the number of people who consider themselves Catholic has continued. In fact, from what I read, it appears that only Orthodox Christianity has recorded an increase in followers in recent years. The Baptist church had gone from 2.5% of the population to 1.9%. The Presbyterian church had stayed at 1.4% of the population. The United Church had gone from 9.6% of the population to 6.1%. And the Anglican church had gone from 6.9% of the population to 5.0%. However, the Orthodox Church had stayed at 1.7 during that 10 year period and has apparently grown by 14.82% since then. Non-Christian religions as a whole made up 8.1% of the Canadian population in 2011, which was an increase from the 6.4% that they had made up in 2001. As such, the religious traditions of Canada’s past are a little out of date. While I mentioned that the prayers in councils tend to be more interfaith, they do still have a distinctly Christian feel to them. But we are no longer living in a time when Canada is nearly all Christian. In fact, we may have entered into a time when Canada is more non-religious than religious (though I don’t believe we are quite there yet). I believe that it is time that Canada begins to reflect these changes in how things are done.

But not everybody agrees with me. My interfaith group received an e-mail from a man who does not like the Supreme Court’s decision. He wrote “The Supreme Court of Canada’s Decision below [referring to the Herold piece above], is wrong – period!” His reasoning? “If there were ‘No GOD’ ~ the term ‘GOD’ could NOT have come about!” This is very faulty reasoning. We have a lot of terms for things that don’t actually exist, such as “unicorn” and “fairy.” And the concept of what a god is as changed over time. Many early gods were essentially just really strong humans. Humans are storytellers. We use stories to help us make sense of things that we don’t understand. We also use stories to teach values and traditions. Stories don’t necessarily reflect reality, so there is no reason to believe that gods must exist simply because the word exists. And, if the existence of a word did mean that the thing itself existed, then wouldn’t that mean that Thor exists? And the Flying Spaghetti Monster? And every other god that has ever been given a name? This logic simply does not work.

The man went on to say that “They [the Supreme Court] should have UNANIMOUSLY decided to STRENGTHEN the Social/Moral/diverse Religious ‘Fibre’ of our Canadian Mosaic Society by changing the House of Commons Prayer & that of ALL City Council & Government Public Sessions, etc.” When your society is highly secular, as Canada is, pushing religion on the populous doesn’t strengthen it, it tears it apart. Look at the US. Has it been strengthened by the push to make the country more religious? From where I stand, the growing non-religious populace has just been made to feel attacked and put on the defensive, which has led to them fighting back against the religious push. All of the court battles over 10 commandments and school prayers have resulted fro the push to make religion a more dominant part of the social landscape. Those types of battles don’t occur in countries that allow the populace to worship how they want while religion is kept out of the public sphere. He also assumes that religion and morality are interchangeable. This is not true. The moral strength of Canada is not threatened by the removal of prayer. He suggests that we make “All religions are facets of the same TRUTH ~ Let the different faiths exist & let them flourish in our Great Country of Canada to the Glory of the ONE GOD!” the prayer used at all government events. This is not adequate. For one thing, most religious people do not believe that all religions are facets of the same truth. Saying that they are will only enrage the most conservative of religious believers. For another, the one God remark makes it very clear that the Christian God is assumed to be the only true god, which kind of destroys the whole attempt at interfaith that occurred in the beginning. Further more, it ignores the secular populace completely. We make up a large percentage of the population, so we deserve to be represented as much as the religious do. Nobody is taking religion away, they are merely saying that no one group deserves to be represented above all others. This fact seems to go over the heads of so many religious people, and it is quite annoying.

He finishes by saying “Our Founding Fathers based our Canadian Constitution upon the Judeo/Christian Faith – the above would add & proclaim our ‘Unity in Diversity’ & ‘Unity in Divinity’ of ALL Canadian citizens!” Yes, the “our founding fathers” argument exists here too. The hilarious thing about this is we don’t have founding fathers like in the US. We have the Fathers of Confederation who came together to negotiate the creation of the country of Canada, but this is not all that similar to the work done by the Founding Fathers to create the US. For one, we were still a British Colony and had no intent to change that. For another, we had a lot larger of a land mass to deal with and were largely interested in preventing the US from taking any of it. They negotiated terms with one another to bring the various provinces (only some of which joined at the time) together as one country, but they did not need to make a constitution since Canada was still a colony. The original constitution of Canada was developed for Canada by the British parliament. Our constitution is not based on any religion any more than the American constitution is. It is merely a set of rules that has been revised many times to reflect changing times that is meant to give Canadians certain rights and freedoms. And no, the prayer he offered does not in any way support or reflect all Canadians. My diversity is ignored, as is my right to not believe in any divinity. How can anything that ignores a large chunk of society proclaim anything about all of us.

It is a huge mistake to assume that representing your personal beliefs represents all beliefs. Just because you feel represented doesn’t mean that everyone else will. And just because you believe something to encompass everyone doesn’t mean that it does. We all have biases, and those biases blind us to the various beliefs that we don’t hold. What is more, not representing anybody is not the same as taking away your rights. If the government doesn’t say a prayer, then they aren’t representing any specific religious beliefs. However, they also aren’t removing any freedoms from anyone. The religious can still pray when and where they want to, they just no longer have the right to force their prayers on me. They are losing a privilege that I don’t have, but their rights and freedoms are still in tact.

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/city-hall-to-review-council-prayer-custom-as-supreme-court-ruling-prompts-other-cities-to-stop

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/supreme-court-rules-against-prayer-at-city-council-meetings-1.3033595

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/supreme-court-rules-saguenay-mayor-cant-say-prayer-ahead-of-council-meetings

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/city-council-drops-morning-prayer-after-supreme-court-ruling

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/city-hall-to-review-council-prayer-custom-as-supreme-court-ruling-prompts-other-cities-to-stop

http://globalnews.ca/news/1940589/prayer-at-regina-city-council-meetings-suspended-following-supreme-court-ruling/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Canada

http://www.canada.com/life/Religion+Canada+breakdown/8354112/story.html

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-15.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Canada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_of_Confederation