I’d apply if I could speak french, but I definitely don’t speak it well enough to say I …well, can speak it. Check it out if you’re interested. I have everything else. Stupid french.

Gretta Vosper is a minister at West hill United Chruch. She’s a fantastic speaker (like, nice to listen to) and a really nice person. But her talk in general - less than impressed.

In my personal opinion there are a few things you need in order to call yourself a christian. i don’t claim to be any sort of religion expert - but I’ve grown up with it, lived with it and studied it. And from what I’ve seen in my short couple decades on earth is that generally, you need God and/or Christ to call yourself a christian.

Gretta preposes that neither of these really exists. She talks about not taking the bible literally or even really using it for anything useful.

Gretta is invovled with what the United Church is calling “progressive christianity“. Ever since the book Why Christianity Must Change or Die came out ministers who deem themselve “progressive” have been trying to save their church. What are they really doing? Taking steps to becoming secular.

• no god
• no christ
• not taking anything out of the bible literally
• admitting that the bible is basically…entirely fictional
• saying that “community” is what is important…

It’s secularism, only she’s covered it with fluffy bullshit about “love”…we all need to love, believe in love, follow love, let love guide the way… blah blah blah. She’s coping out by not just saying “I’m agnostic, and this isn’t progressive christianity, it is the realization that we’ve been obeying outdated and detrimental rules and thoughts”. I’d like for once for a minister to just say that. She did, however read some songs that her husband had written, it was nice to hear something like that being done in CFI - I didn’t particularly like it, because it just felt like church, but I know other people appreciated a more “artsy” approach to things for once.

My step dad tries to get around it by calling god everyone’s “something”, as if this is some sort of appropriate definition. Whatever you want to call god, you get to call god. Whatever you want to call faith, spirituality or belief is valid, because it’s your “religion” so no one can deny it. That’s where this is going. I can’t deny my step-dads god because apparently I don’t “understand” it, and I can’t take away his definition of “his lord”. I’m sorry, but to me, when you’re allowed to arbitrarily define things that are so important it tends to not only lose meaning, but credibility.

Two things specifically that Gretta said that made me nearly puke:

1. “I’m not an atheist. Just because I don’t understand - I don’t believe”
2. “The soul is your DNA altering your aura around you”

I’ll allow you to see the stupidity of #2 all on your own - but #1… it made me boil inside. I hate it when people tell me I’m an atheist because I don’t understand religion. I don’t get what it feels like to feel ‘christ’ and to be ‘loved’ by ‘god’. I do know what it’s like to think those things. I was religious for many years. So I do know what it’s like to feel the “love” and all the fluffy emotions that come with something that can offer so much support in life. I just refuse to not look past it all.

Anyway - good for CFI to put on an event with a minister, I didn’t like it, but it definitely brought in a different crowd and it was good to hear a different opinion and view point, no matter how much I didn’t like it. It made for good bar fights later, too.

That’s our picture from last year… I’ll be sure to get into the front this year….. as you can barely see me… tucked into the very back left hand corner… I think I was being all “i’m too cool for this” when now I’m like “aaaah! i wanna be in the front!”

So the leadership conference last year was amazing. That’s my coverage…here’s CFI’s actual write up on the weekend… with write ups by me, Tyler Handely, Jack Rivall and Elvia Nidia Gonzalez. Tyler is awesome and will be working at CFI this summer - which is totally awesome. We need a Canadian voice there! Jack is also all sorts of amazing… he’s hilarious and was definitely someone I kept in touch with after the conference was over.

The conference is what really pushed me full throttle into student activism in the secular world… (I was slightly involved previously, but after that conference I was like a weekly visitor to CFI and pretty insistent about taking over the Guelph group.) I thought about doing some “live blogging” of sorts this year - but then realized that I’d have to take a laptop… and not talk to all my USA friends as much as I’d be blogging. So … I won’t be live blogging, but I’ll bring lots or stories and goodness back with me to write about

Anyway - this year’s conference is in July! Yay! And anyone who is involved with on campus activism and what have yous of secular organizations should DEFINITELY go. I wasn’t 100% into all the speakers last year - although they were really interesting - it was FAR more productive and interesting to interact, network and toss ideas around with so many other student leaders from across North America.

So here’s the info for this year! I hope to see you ALL there! (yay Roy!)

CFI Student Leadership Conference 2008

The Center for Inquiry is pleased to announce our 2008 Student Leadership Conference, to be held July 18-20 at the Center for Inquiry Transnational in Amherst, NY. The conference will feature special keynote addresses by Paul Kurtz, Eddie Tabash, Robert Price, high school activist Matthew LaClair, and others.

The conference marks the 12th anniversary of our campus outreach program and will coincide with the opening weekend of the CFI Institute Summer Session and our annual CFI Community Leaders training weekend. The event brings together student and community activists from around North America for a blowout weekend of workshops, networking, lectures, and top-notch entertainment featuring some of the leading minds in the humanist and skeptic movements. You will not be disappointed!

We encourage every campus group to send at least one representative (if not more!) and we are keeping the costs down to make sure this is possible. Registration, room, and board for the entire three-day event cost only $35 for interested students. A limited number of travel and registration grants are available, based on need, to make sure every group can send a representative even if it lacks the resources to do so. The registration form and grant application can be found here.

So, what are you waiting for? Send in your registration today, or email Debbie Goddard at dgoddard@centerforinquiry.net for more information.

GO GO GO! If you’re going from ANY area that is moderately close by there will likely be a carpool. I know from Toronto we took two cars last year and paid very little for transportation. The whole weekend cost me tops $50… if that. It was such a good time.

So I hope everyone interested will attend! (for more info… although I dont know what else you’d need to know… just e-mail me!)

On Friday CFI held an event with the producer of the Agenda, Wodek Szemberg, on the topic of why we see so few atheists in the media. I *really* wanted to go - but again the whole sick thing got in the way.

I heard feedback about the event that wasn’t so hot, on point in particular stuck out to me where one of the members of our group said he was ignoring/disregarding scientific fact. As someone who has spent the last few years fighting for rationality and science that tickled me wrong. However - when I dug for more info the “truth” of the matter came out.

Some people in the crowd were getting angry because the speaker wasn’t feeling sorry for atheists. Because he was telling it like it is. He claimed that all shows that are free of God and religion, are essentially secular - like a sporting game.

Now I can see why people would get angry about this. Because when they think “secular television” they think TV that is actually catering to their… “movement” or whatever. They are thinking a show ABOUT atheism/secular humanism like the Skeptologist or Point of Inquiry. They’re shows made my skeptics/atheists/humanists to cater to that crowd about issues they deem important.

… People want to see atheist propaganda - and simply secular television isn’t good enough for them. Ah ha. But I see where the confusion is coming in for people.

People want to see loud and proud atheists on TV shouting “WOO DAWKINS!” or talking about how awesome science is. Having a secular program, just isn’t good enough for them. An important point that was made is that they weren’t feeling like the victims anymore - and that wasn’t good. Because if we’re not the victims, how can we make everyone feel sorry for us?

Simply put, I feel bad that this guy took flak from the audience for telling the truth. The fact of the matter is - the proposals that are put in to make secularist television shows are SO lame and cheesy. It’s difficult to create a television show surrounding a movement. There aren’t really that many environmentalist television shows, or feminists television shows. There are shows with feminists on them, there are also shows that are written and directed and produced entirely by women - but the theme isn’t always feminism. That doesn’t make it a non-feminist show.

If there was an “atheist” show on television, I likely wouldn’t watch it. Just like I don’t read many blogs that are loud and proud about atheism 24/7. The one statement that really got me worked up was this by Rod “He sure doesn’t sound like an atheist.”

Why? because he didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear? because he didn’t make it seem like the media was giving atheists a spanking? because he didn’t start spouting anti-religious propaganda? Ask me about my views on religion - I don’t sound like your everyday Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris atheists. I can assure you of that. To say that someone “doesn’t sound like an atheist” because they didn’t tell you that the people in your movement are being victimized is pure crap.

I really wish I would have gone to that talk. I think the speaker was spot on, and deserved much more credit and appreciation than what he was shown.

*UPDATE*

Zak has a blog. I think I knew it existed a long time ago, but couldn’t find it again. Anyway, he does write ups about CFI stuff - and I like them because he a) doesn’t sugar coat things and b) usually formulates some of my thoughts into sentences that I usually don’t know how to formulate. His sum-up of the event:

Overall, the evening was a refreshing look into atheist activism in Canada. I now realize that about half the visitors at CFI events are morons who have more in common with the religions they claim to oppose than the freedom of thought and ideas that CFI is suppose to really be about. However, the question period that followed was long (as was expected) but the questions were generally polite and supportive since the rude and crazy people made themselves heard throughout the presentation and, I suppose, couldn’t think of any new ways to rant. More importantly, the activists in the crowd (the ones who actually do things) were generally supportive of the message being presented so I hope we can use the opportunity to start working towards more productive and realistic goals.

Amen.

*update #2*

So… I had to take all the quotes out from the e-mails, it’s hard to gain the same message from the post, but alas… gotta do. Everyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows I hate more than anything on earth taking stuff off of my blog - especially when it’s been there for more than a few days and has gotten a lot of reads. I remember when the christian camp asked me to take stuff down it nearly went as far as court.

I think the last time I willingly took content down from my site is when a friend of mine was arrested for manslaughter… after I posted the stuff, I decided I didn’t want it up.

However. …I … whatever.

I’m running out of energy to keep blogging. I get in trouble too much.

Last night the Guelph Skeptics were fortunate enough to hold an even featuring one of my favorite science bloggers Larry Moran. The talk was entitled Evolution as a Fact and Theory, and addressed just that. We had just over 80 people show up for the talk, and plenty of discussion right until the school started shutting lights off. Our good friend Andrew from Campus for Christ showed up and gave an entertaining debate on creationism and evolution with Moran.

He asked one of the age old questions about how a bug with chemicals that would explode on their own could evolve. Larry didn’t know the specifics to answer him back, but Ryan (an evolutionary biology prof here at Guelph) has been kind enough to give resources for an answer.

The executives of the Guelph Skeptics took Moran out to dinner before the event. This was nice… I wished it would have been longer, and that my co-executives would have stopped talking so much about biology, there were so many projects I’m working on that I wanted to share with Moran, and so much about religion I would have liked to hear his opinion on. However - I have a very chatty vice-president so I didn’t get to much of what I wanted to say being as quiet as I often am. Such is life, and perhaps I’ll run into him at CFI one of these days and get to talk a little more.