On Euroscepticism
One of the most influential books I’ve read in the past couple years was Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of our Nature. In it, he attempts first to build the case…
Ian
Quebec Charter hurting secular efforts
Efforts to defend the separation of church and state in English Canada are already suffering as Quebec’s Charter of Secularism Values is used to argue that secularism is “exclusionary” or…
Launching the Sunday Assembly Leeds!
Over the past few months, I’ve watched with keen interest as Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, two British comics that I hadn’t heard of before, founded and started hosting The…
Important Issues, Sound Science, Real Change
I was asked at a talk I gave at Leeds Skeptics in the Pub on Monday what lesson I would import to the UK from Canadian skepticism. My answer was…
Political Atheists
The Huffington Post has a piece comparing open atheists in government in the USA with the UK. They note that only two American legislators have only ever really professed non-belief:…
A quick guide to UK Politics for Canadians
I follow politics pretty closely and among the first things I did upon arriving here was register myself and Sonia to vote (I’m a citizen through descent and Commonwealth citizens…
Skeptic with an Eh?
Seeing a gap in the Leed’s Skeptics in the Pub event for September, I volunteer to give a talk on the skeptical movement in Canada. Here are the details if…
Moves and News
I think it’s far past time for me to drop fully back into blogging. I’ve posted a few updates over the past couple weeks but I want to aim to…
Atheist Freethinkers: Stop embarrassing yourselves
David Rand’s Quebec-based “Atheist Freethinkers” is positioning itself as an embarrassment to the Canadian freethought movement. Rand stands nearly alone in the debate in English Canada by supporting Quebec’s proposed…
Good and Bad People
There’s a Steven Weinberg quote that my atheist friends like to trot out (and I’m likely equally guilty of sharing). With or without it you would have good people doing…
Not my secularism
Critics of religion (such as myself) are sometimes not precise enough in our criticisms. We will sometimes lash out that the “moderate Muslims” don’t condemn fundamentalists enough or complain that…
A pox on (some of) your houses
Recently, numerous allegations have flown throughout the blogosphere (at least, the portion that I read), identifying numerous high-profile skeptics/atheists/scientists as varying degrees of creepy to rapist. Others have jumped to…
A note on “Skepticism and Gypsy Stereotypes”
Hopefully you took the time to read the article I just posted entitled “Skepticism and Gypsy Stereotypes.” I want to give some backstory to this piece, separate from the article…
Skepticism and Gypsy Stereotypes
By Ian Bushfield and Edwin Hodge At a recent skeptics conference and during a discussion of the sorts of charlatans and frauds that are best known for peddling woo, a…
City of Windsor to raise the Christian flag… again.
I got a phone call this morning from Susan in Windsor, Ontario. Susan’s rightly infuriated that her city council is violating it’s own policy by raising the Christian Flag as…
Atheist and Republicans
I haven’t had time yet to deal with a piece of nonsense from last week on Canadian Atheist. The arguments put forward by the Monarchist League of Canada are entirely…
BC Secularists who aren’t white men
Inspired by similar lists of diverse secular thinkers, I thought I’d put out there a compilation of some rising secularists – both thinkers and activists – who break the mould…
Things You Can Do to Help Calgary’s Secular Community Grow and Thrive!
Found this (public) note on Facebook with some exciting news about the secular community in Calgary. Keep it up! And when I say “we,” what I really mean is you.…
Canadian Atheism Panel
Tomorrow morning (9am out here), I will be joining Ian Cromwell, Jesse Brydle from Halifax, Donna Harris from Winnipeg, and Veronica Abbas from Peterborough for a panel on Freethought in…
Man of Steel Review–at BCHA Blog
Just a quick note that I posted a review of Man of Steel on the BC Humanist Association blog. Make sure to follow that blog for the occasional update. Tl;dr…