Yesterday afternoon I joined Raheel Raza, Muslim Canadian journalist, author,  public speaker, media consultant, anti-racism activist, and interfaith coordinator, on Sun TV News’ The Source with Ezra Levant. Levant is a polarizing figure you either love or hate. He’s well known for his book Shakedown,  which documents the censorship crusade of many Human Rights Commissions in Canada.  But that wasn’t the theme of our conversation.

The topic was our shared concern for the mixing of religion and public education through the continued public funding of Catholic Schools coupled with the introduction of outside religious leaders into schools, such as through Imam-led prayers in school cafeterias or the distribution of Gideon bibles in classes.

I firmly believe educational world religion classes are vital for each student to understand the world they inhabit and should be accessible to all students, but draw the line when it comes to granting exclusive and privileged access to students or schools to religious authorities for non-educational purposes.

Earlier in the morning, motivated by the article Ontario couple childless while Quebec parents enjoy fully-funded IVF, Associate Pastor of Westminster Chapel Scott Mason and I debated the pros and cons of health care funding for in vitro fertilization (IVF) on the John Oakley Show on AM640.

My heart goes out to infertile couples that want nothing more than to bring life into the world, and should be given whatever tools are available to assist. Additionally, as is the case in Quebec, provincial funding for IVF would provide enhanced maternal health and possibly save money in the long run. By mandating that public clinics provide no more than a single embryo at a time, we can reduce multiple pregnancies that often lead to unfortunate and expensive complications.

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The story of James Randi exposing Peter Popoff, the faith healer fraud and con artist (that’s exactly the section in which Wikipedia appropriately placed him!), is now legendary. So when we were approached by a secret source who had gotten 4 invitation only tickets to an event in Toronto, we jumped at the chance to put all our effort into following in the footsteps of The Amazing Randi!

Coached by Randi himself in an exclusive teleconference with an eager and excited half a dozen members of the Centre for Inquiry team, we discussed the use of hidden cameras, how to maximize the effect of passing out critical thinking literature, and what to expect from Popoff supporters who would attemp to acquire information from the audience in advance of the show.  Randi engaged with us for a half hour, during much of which he was somewhow simultaneously driving through the streets in rush hour.  

As advised, we arrived early to ensure we sat near the front of the room for “Positioning you for harvest”, as the event was named. I wonder if that name was actually a clue that Popoff was giving, unable to help himself from an inside joke, for the audience was literally being positioned for the harvesting of their hard earned money.  In fact, Popoff had them stand in rows, almost like a field of corn, while he whisked around the room blowing the devil out of everyone’s face.    

Popoff engaged in his classic laying on of hands “healings”, hosted testimonials which were a surreal blend of miracle cures, family reconciliations and spontaneous increases in bank account balances! The night’s climax involved him requesting large sums of money, namely $1000 from each audience member, to benefit from his divine intervention. We actually captured footage of him asking for attendees to put “their best seed” into envelopes he passed out, as well as close up of a sick man being turned away by security staff for appearing too ill to be credibly cured.

Popoff disappeared in a cloud of dust (not literally unfortunately) at the end of the night but we did approach his assistant Lee to find out why destitute people would need to hand a millionaire money to benefit from his benevolence, which earned the response that I was a “lunatic”.  Other members of our team then followed up by asking how much money the Popoffs had made that night, which resulted in the rather ironic response from Popoff’s organist, who had provided music during the healings, that we should “die of cancer”.  That’s quite a clever system. Popoff’s organist curses us with cancer, and then Popoff charges us to cure it!

Considering a provincial election is four months away, “we want to mobilize our supporters,” Justin Trottier, one of the conference organizers told me. “This is not a partisan activity … Ideally, we want to find supporters in all of the parties.”

Unfortunately, that conclusion ignores the immense debt in our province certainly exacerbated by a doubling bureaucracy in education, the continued closing of both secular and catholic public schools, catholic schools shutting down libraries (while chapels stay open), catholic schools (subsidized by atheist tax payers) banning atheist literature, suspending students advocating for pro-choice at a sanctioned pro-life rally, bussing in students and allowing them to take time off school to attend an annual pro-life rally in Ottawa, prohibiting gay student clubs from forming under their chosen name of Gay-Straight Alliance, stopping a gay student from bringing his same sex partner to the prom, among examples of discrimination and waste that come immediately to mind.

If that’s what we consider a system that works, we are all in big trouble.

The following letter was sent to the national party offices for the Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Green and Bloc Quebecois Parties.  PDF version

Responses will be provided on our website here. Please feel free to use this document in its entirety or by choosing specific questions for local use, but we encourage you to reference the Centre for Inquiry in your correspondence and its national coordination of this initiative. Also, please send responses to jtrottier@cficanada.ca

Below we've provided contact information if you wish to be in touch with the parties to encourage them to answer these important questions.

The Centre for Inquiry is a registered educational charity which promotes reason, science, secularism, and freedom of inquiry.  We are also Canada’s most vocal organization representing atheists, agnostics and secular humanists, who constitute one of the fastest growing minorities in Canada. According to a 2008 Harris-Decima poll, roughly one quarter of Canadians are atheists and agnostics.

The Centre for Inquiry represents a membership of over 1,000 individuals, and is constituted of 10 branches in the cities of Vancouver, Kelowna, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.

In partnership with the Canadian Secular Alliance – a national non-profit organization seeking church-state separation and government neutrality with respect to religion – we have prepared the following
set of questions. The responses we receive will be posted, without modification, to our website and circulated to our members.

We understand that some of the questions reference propositions that might be complicated to implement, but we are looking for your position on the principles they embody.

Given how busy you are, we trust you appreciate the unique opportunity this request grants of reaching a community that until recently had little organized presence, and we thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Justin Trottier
National Executive Director
Centre for Inquiry Canada

Secularism

1. Does your party support the separation of religion and state, and government neutrality in all matters between believer and non-believer?

Freedom of Speech

2. Does your party believe there should be any legal limits on the criticism of religious opinion in the public square?



3. Would your party support repealing the law against blasphemy in the Criminal Code of Canada?

Religious accommodations



4. "What is your party's position on granting people exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws and policies based on their religious beliefs (e.g."religious accommodation")?

Charity status



5. Does your party support granting an organization tax-exempt charitable status for the sole purpose of the "advancement of religion", if such an organization undertakes no other charitable activity (e.g. feeding the poor)?

Anthem

6. Would your party support an amendment to the National Anthem Act to remove the reference to God in the lyrics of O Canada?

Charter of Rights and Freedoms

7. Would your party support an amendment to the preamble of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to remove the reference to the “supremacy of God”?

Religious law



8. What position does your party hold concerning the legally-binding use by religious communities of separate religious courts (eg. in family law)?

Medicine and Health
9. Does your party support the requirement that all products labeled "medicine", including homeopathic or naturopathic remedies, be required to pass the same rigorous testing as pharmaceuticals?
10. Does your party support vaccination as a good public health measure?

Andrea Houston is like a dog with a bone. She’s relentless in her pursuit of rights for gay, straight, bi and transgendered on the pages of XTRA! In person, more so. At your peril, no one messes with Ms. Houston.

January 2011. The sleepy, taxpayer funded Halton Catholic School Board decides to ban students from forming gay/straight alliances. End of story. Or it might have been had Chair of the Board Alice Anne LeMay not remarked that these alliances were akin to having Nazi groups. Andrea, along with the help of co-crusader Justin Stayshyn took her to task and LeMay, along with her Catholic crew, woke up to a public outcry.

The heart of the matter lies some 2000 years before Alice Anne got out of the wrong side of bed. It’s a code of ethics, rules of how we must live. Or you shall go into everlasting punishment. It’s phrases, some of the most famous ever written, translated into hundreds of languages. Interpreted by scores of religions. It’s a self help guide to get you the best seat in Heaven. The Bible.

Fast track to April 2011. The Halton Catholic School Board, having been crucified by Houston and verbally lashed by the public, are set to vote on allowing gay/straight alliances. Not just an umbrella group, but as requested by students, an alliance – God help us, every deceased Pope will spin in their crypts – with the word gay in the title.

LeMay, defender of the faith, takes her seat in front of the cross. Hunched over the microphone like a pit bull, scowling at those heretics who dare enter her windowless chamber, a room without a view.

In session, opening prayers ensue, bowed heads, mouths murmur words by rote. Hands move in unison, touch the head first, across the torso. To the uninitiated it’s like watching tribal rituals in a film from the archives of National Geographic.

Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association faces the Board and makes a passionate speech, educating these educators about human rights and human respect. Trustees in repose, faces as in a Romanesque painting. No. More like images on a passport. Vacant, staring.

Relief as Noa completes her appeal. Board members squirm back into Board position, leaning forward, making their best efforts to appear learned, caring, compassionate. Hands rise to motion for motions, amendments, second and third readings.

Paul Marai, the gay trustee, sits amongst them but doesn’t seem a part of them. It goes unsaid, but the room reeks of it; love the sinner, or maybe not, but we hate your sin. For my Bible tells me so.

He asks the education director if a student requests a GSA, would they be allowed to start one. The red faced gentleman, out of his element, does his best impersonation of political spin. Attempting to recall the memo, he mumbles to the floor, “presently we have social equity groups that encompass students with any issue…”. “I asked you a yes or no question”, Paul dares to interrupt. The director has lost this battle. He is no professional politician. He rattles on until he hits a wall. “No” he says quietly, looking down at the table. Defeated.

Puffed up with self induced wisdom, a devious request by a trustee across the table, “the Pastoral Guidelines need to be included in the new policy, they are important and need to be recognized”. Translation; gay is not an identity, gay sex is immoral and sinful, gays should live a life of chastity. These are not guidelines as much as Bishop inspired homo-hate. They call it the Catholic perspective. Motion carried.

Houston perches, wired -  writing and tweeting. She raises her camera, targets her first victim, LeMay, and shoots. Click, fire, click, fire – she has them all in her sights.

The next Board circus begins in early May. The students, in their continuing fight for dignity will follow the motto of the Halton Catholic School Board; Achieving, Believing, Belonging. Those faceless Bishops, the elected Trustees, those who serve these courageous young people will not.

Religion in Canada is in decline, a serious free fall. Time is on our side as these humble servants of their Lord, clutching their self serving ethics, pass into silence. Human rights be damned, we’re off to meet our maker, the Glory of God welcomes us for defending his word.

It's the Holy Trinity. Within the last year, I’ve completed the Holy Trinity of the new age, alternative medicine and holism expos in Toronto.  First, I attended the Total Health Show and reported my findings with friend Michael Payton in commentary that appeared on the National Post (”If it talks like a quack“).

Then, I joined fellow skeptics from the Centre for Inquiry and Skeptic North to investigate the Whole Life expo last November.  As I described on various blogs, that experience ended in confrontation with organizers and security staff, accusations that a couple of members of our group took unauthorized photos and consequently many of us (including those that had done nothing wrong) being summarily escorted off the premises.  Michael, who was with me that time too, had been threatened with being thrown over a railing by one of the volunteers running the show, but Metro Toronto Convention Centre staff decided taking photos was a much bigger concern, at least in terms of protecting their lucrative rental agreements with Vitality magazine.  They ignored our accusations.

Now this past weekend I decided to check out the Body, Soul and Spirit Expo at the CNE.  I’m pleased to report that this particular Expo appeared unsuccessful in terms of the paltry number of participants.  There seemed to be only about as many attendees as vendors, the space was small and had a decor indicative of a very low budget.  Though limited in size, I still managed to make a few friends.

First stop: Kabbalistic astrology, where I learned that the Kabbalah predates all the world’s religions!  A few simple follow up questions and the wisdom of this particular initiate was tapped.  So we moved on.

In quick succession we visited the Messiah Foundation International (Do you await a Messianic personality?), Psychic Lai (winner of the Houston Press award of “Best Psychic 2005″), Lakeside Angel for Akashic Record Consultations (”A hummingbird is seen as a messenger between the worlds”) and then a Palmist. The palmist quickly deduced that I’m a very logical and analytical person.  Now that could be in my palm lines, or it could be evidenced by the notebook sitting in my palm.

We come to the climax of this story.  I met Brian, President of the Eradicator. No, my mistake, as he quickly corrected me. The product is called a Lotus Shield which protects against geopathic stress and EMF radiation.  He, the person, is The Eradicator.  The Eradicator seems to have never met any of The Skeptics before and seemed immediately frustrated by impertinent critical questions about his device and its function. The conversation turned to dowsing rods, to homeopathy and finally - of course - to problems with the medical community. When I defended the latter I was told “You can go now. I’m done with you.”

But I was not quite done.  I informed the organizer of this rude behaviour.  My $12 entrance fee was reimbursed (thanks Mr. Eradicator for buying me lunch) and Brian was warned that he’d be removed from the Expo if he didn’t shape up and accept some critical questions from paying visitors.

I’m not sure if what we’re experiencing is a response to the skeptic movement flexing its muscles, but I definitely noticed a different tone at this particular Expo. Vendors were far quicker to withdraw from difficult questions and state things like “I’m not here to argue with you” in response to the same respectful but challenging queries I’ve always asked at these sorts of shows.  The latter was a response from a lady selling negative ion bracelets to my question as to why positive ions were so much more harmful to your health than negative ones.  My previous question, “What are ions?” had been answered with “ions are molecules.”

Realizing I was wasting both our time, I asked one final question before moving on “Can you ever have too many negative ions?”  No, she said. Now think about that. Wouldn’t that eventually make your body negatively charged, and if the problem is that most people have an excess of positive charge, wouldn’t we have a bigger problem on our hands than ion imbalance, namely an inability to do anything without flying into the people beside you via electrical forces?

Finally we had a nice long chat with Heather Hannan, Vice President of the Sound Reiki Institute, “Exploring the art and science of sound healing.”  She was a pleasant woman, but a little confused. Firstly, in her exhortations on sound, she claimed sound moves fastest through the “space time continuum” than anything else.  I think the folks over at the light therapy booth might have something to say to that.

She also claimed quantum physics - and even string theory - for support of the assertion that positive effects of sound are measurable at the molecular level. At least that’s what she had been taught by practitioners of tantric quantum physics, a quantum mysticism Deepak Chopra-style pseudoscience.  And, to add insult to injury, she was proud to announce partnership with Magda Havas, famous for her declarations regarding health effects of low energy level EMF radiation and wifi.  Havas was intrigued by sound reiki’s ability to fix problems caused by EMF fields!

I thought talking to ghosts at the Spiritualist Church was crazy, but after these holism expo experiences over the last 12 months, that judgment needs to be put into a whole new perspective.

Once again, the messages were given by 3 mediums.  What was most striking about this, as one member of our group noticed, was how each medium had a particular theme to which they dedicated the majority of their readings.  The first was focused on the importance of putting yourself first and not being overwhelmed by the problems of those around you. The second prioritized the pursuit of happiness. Finally, the third spoke mostly about balance in your life.  Odd this pattern, considering these were supposed to be random messages from the spirit world merely coming through these vessels.

Obviously the messages were all essentially variations on a common theme, a theme that was generally applicable to mostly anyone who would be motivated to attend a Spiritualist Church.  Having said that, one member of our group did receive a jumble of messages which could be interpreted as not altogether inaccurate, that is if one were to stretch them like an elastic.  He was told he was an artist into painting. Well, he does run a photography company.  Photography is kind of like painting, right?  He was described as “inspired by nature”.  He does enjoy his cottage north of the city and the views it affords.  Finally, he was encouraged to continue writing as he had a lot of “followers”. Hard not to equate this with his columns in the Ottawa Citizen, where he writes on humanism and ethics, and has indeed acquired quite a few fans.

Now before you jump to any conclusions, you might consider my own reading for the night. My medium (of the happiness variety) could see two uncles of mine, dressed in suits, leaning on each other in a friendly kind of way, who were apparently very pleased with my life.  I do in fact have 4 uncles.  However, they are all alive.  Oh, she also said I needed to worry less about what others say and think more highly of myself. Nobody who knows me could possibly think my problem was with thinking too little of myself!

Following the event, our group was approached by a man who was motivated to attend by the recent death of a loved one.  He suspected there was something unusual about our attendance since there were 5 of us that had entered together.  It turned out he too was a skeptic investigating the accuracy of the mediums in the hopes of hearing from his loved one.  Unfortunately, he was totally disappointed.  The medium failed to pick up a message from the specific individual from whom he was hoping to hear.

It was another fascinating look into the spirit world.  I’m not sure I see much need to return. Having said that, next week’s psychic tea will feature a special guest who can draw our spirit guides.  I may find that hard to pass up!

When the service started, three healers were immediately asked to join the event’s host at the front of the room.  While we in the audience were asked to breath and meditate, people would take their turn sitting in front of a healer to be cleansed.  The healers would place their hands on the head of an individual, then move down their back, until coming over to their front and undertaking what looked like the energy healing technique of distance healing (which apparently detects and manipulates an energy field).

Following this, the four service leaders took hold of a large red urn, holding it in the air and declaring

we are asking that the forces will take the names of everyone in this urn, that they can be touched by the healing forces, we ask this in the name of our father

We had just jumped from energy healing and some sort of purification ritual I had never seen before to a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer as though it were a regular church. To confirm that, we then sang several flat and monotonous Christian hymns, all on the theme of forgetting about the pains of today and reflecting only on the joyous afterlife that god was preparing for us.  Oddly, this was followed by a sermon on how important it was not to obsess over the past and future, for these were uncertain, but only to focus on what could be accomplished today.

The guest of honour, Catherine MacDonald, was then invited to give the sermon.  MacDonald runs a meetup group called The Etobicoke/Toronto Mediumship/Psychic Development Group , which is how I learned of this event.  She also hosts a show called Psychic Street Smarts Radio .  The meetup group appears to be mainly a front to advertise her training workshops and her radio program (not a bad idea really!).  MacDonald concluded her speech by sharing her response to the death of a member of her family: “Hurray for her! Where’s the party? She gets to have a great afterlife.  My sisters think I’m cold”.  Cold is an understatement.

Just as I was recovering from nausea and frankly ready to leave, the spirit communication and mediumship began!  The church was smart enough to keep the distribution of messages from deceased loved ones to the end of the program.  Otherwise, I would imagine the congregation would have thinned out, given the banality of the proceedings to that point.

One message was conveyed to each congregant from one of their dead family members, usually a grandfather or grandmother.  Most were variations on the theme of trying not to take the world too seriously and to relax and balance your life.  For example:

- “sometimes you feel you’re holding the world”
- “you’ve been hard on yourself. she’s telling you to cut yourself some slack.”
- “a mom or someone like a mom. you’re always having to put yourself first”
- “dad talks about you needing to take care of you. you have too many hats and need to give something up”
- “I have a female maybe a grandmother.  She’s seeing a feeling of overwhelmed, at all the healing you’re trying to do.  Your folks are still alive right?” Actually no, was the response.

When they gave vague wise-sounding advice people seemed satisfied.  There were few attempts at actual specifics, like the above, and those were usually wrong.

- “Did your dad have a stomach problem when he passed?” No, he had a stroke.  Oops, another miss.

In my case, I had a message come through from a great aunt (an “aunt vibration”), who has been following my path, is happy I was there, and then gave some advice about how I shouldn’t divide myself so much between my interests in the maths and sciences, and those in the arts.  This was interesting.  Of about 30 readings, mine was the only one to reference science or math. On the other hand, I was the only one there writing everything (including my own reading) furiously into a notebook. Perhaps that was a strong indication of an analytical personality.

All and all it was a fun experience.  I particularly enjoyed when towards the end the third medium started to experience a form of writer’s block.  Running low on ideas, she glanced around the room, noticed a pot of fake sunflowers on the front table, quickly fabricated a story centred on the image of flowers generated by the spirit world, mumbled something incoherent about flowers as a symbol for life, and finished by glancing once more at the pot of flowers as some sort of confirmation of the validity of what she had just invented out of whole cloth.  Unfortunately there were still several people that hadn’t been given a message.  She was only able to squeeze out one more package of wisdom before having to yield the floor to one of the previous mediums to return to finish off the group.

The stories weren’t exactly meaningful or specific, but, as MacDonald admitted during her talk and in conversation with me afterword, it’s really not about prediction, but about bringing happiness, comfort and clarity.  Clearly, most people visit a spiritualist church because they’ve suffered a loss and desire that kind of closure.  I was also fascinated by the mix of the traditional Christian aspects of the service, including the use of the Lord’s Prayer and the singing of hymns (although they also had a statue of Buddha) with the ghosts’ stories.  The connection was clarified by MacDonald in an intriguing way: “we use old hymns because your deceased family is most likely to have known them.”

I’ve also been invited to her spiritualist workshop as apparently I have some kind of gift to read people. I guess you could say that.

While we ended up spending the entire period debating the involvement of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) in advising the Ministry of Education on their new Equity policy, in fact the two issues I had been asked to prepare to discuss were:

Coalition of churches condemns Ottawa’s justice plan

Outrage as picture of Elton John’s baby is covered with shield by U.S. supermarket to ‘protect children’

I wish we had spent some time on these two, especially the second, although I was able to manoeuvre the discussion on the OHRC towards gay rights and specifically the ongoing controversy regarding the ban and then pseudo-rescinding of that ban, on Gay Straight Alliance student groups by the Halton Catholic Public School Board: GSA ban lifted by Halton Catholic school board - Fears that policy replaced with quiet ban on ‘gay’ While the Board claims the ban was lifted, the Halton Board has insisted that only general purpose social justice groups will be allowed. They are still not relenting on censoring any group containing the word “gay” and at present there is not a single GSA that has actually been successfully allowed in a Catholic Public (that is, tax-payer funded) school in Ontario.

CFI’s Think Again! Youtube Channel will have a series of videos exploring this topic shortly.

But the issue of the coverage (literally) of the Elton John baby photo was certainly worthy of some discussion.  A grocery store in Mountain Home, Arkansas, called Harps, covered the magazine with a shield saying ‘Family shield. To protect young Harps shoppers.’  It’s the kind of thing they generally reserve for pornographic publications.

Harp’s insisted they do not have an opinion on the issue, but were responding to a few complaints.  But the message on the “Family shield” is, whether they like it or not, an official message from the management of the store.  And while they might have a legal right to do this, they can’t plead innocence.  Why not write the truth on the shield? “Some of your fellow shoppers are homophobes and we the management are so spineless that we’re going to go along with it”

Much homophobia is fueled by the stereotype of homosexuals as overly lustful and sexually loose. But here’s an image of a very happy family, against all such stereotypes. This is precisely the sort of family-focused image one would imagine everyone would wish to show off, not hide.

Luckily, Harps reversed their decision.  If they simply respond in zombie-like fashion to whichever complaints are the loudest, did they really believe that in caving in to the homophobes, they weren’t going to attract far more cries from the other side?

In preparing for the AM640 gig, i also had to become a temporary expert on the Tory Justice Plan and all aspects of our prison system, even though we didn’t end up discussing that other topic.  It was interesting to see the Church Council on Justice and Corrections, which includes a number of conservative denominations, siding with left-leaning think tanks like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on the empty rhetoric and wrong-headedness of Stephen Harper’s proposal to invest billions in building more prisons to fill with more prisoners.

What was heartening was their agreement that policy should be based on evidence, rather than ideology, with both sides pointing to a drop in incidences of violent crime over the last couple of decades, in contrast to generalities being made by the PM.

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This morning at an hour that I much prefer to be sleeping through Gretta Vosper of the   Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and I faced off against Evangelical Christian Reverend Charles McVety on the topic of the   Extraordinary Claims Campaign (“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: Allah * Bigfoot* UFOs* Homeopathy * Zeus * Psychics * Christ”) on the   John Oakley Show on AM640 .  Though a high profile show and certainly great for the Campaign,  It would probably have been more productive to have been asleep (nightmares and all).  But since radio shows are no time for ranting, I apologize if the following comes across as rant-like, but I think you’ll enjoy some of these thoughts.

McVety - the leader of the anti-gay marriage campaign in Canada who recently referred in a   media release to transgendered people as “perverts” - believes that our Campaign and its call for evidence for claims like Allah and Christ, constitutes hate speech as defined by the criminal code.  Never mind that section in the   Code is specifically for speech which actually ”   incites hatred against an identifiable group ” and ”   in such a way that there will likely be a breach of the peace ” or which ”     wilfully     promotes hatred “.  Our Campaign totally fails this test.  By calling for evidence for beliefs, we neither have created hatred nor are we wilfully trying to promote hatred.  The original Atheist Bus Campaign (“There probably is no God…”) was also similarly criticized, but it too succeeded in sparking a great debate and failed to breach the peace.

On the other hand, McVety calling transexuals (not ideas people choose, but actual people who have no choice in their sexuality)  “perverts”, would, if anything, so quality.  It’s also interesting that legitimate defenses to the hate speech clause are if the matter ”   were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds it was believed to be true ” or ”   were expressed in good faith, it was attempted to establish by argument and opinion on a religious subject “. I would say we qualify for both of these defenses.  Most of the contentious subject matter is on matters of religious opinion, and we are certainly engaging on matters of public interest, while our skepticism is believed true by the Centre for Inquiry and its spokespeople.

Now perhaps I shouldn’t lose too much sleep over McVety’s opinions.   He also stated that Richard Dawkins sparked the Extraordinary Claims Campaign (totally wrong), that the “Origin of Species” explicitly advocates atheism (Darwin couldn’t have been more careful to maintain strict agnosticism in his magnum opus) and that CFI wants to ban bibles in schools, despite the fact that only last week I debated him on the news and stated explicitly - and repeatedly - that while we didn’t want bibles distributed by Gideon in classrooms we believe bibles did belong in school libraries (unlike the Catholic and equally tax-payer funded schools that have banned atheistic literature outright).  Actually, McVety acknowledged that point, only to return fire by retorting that relegating bibles just to the library was equivalent to banning them!

Today’s radio show featured 4 or 5 callers, all but one of whom were totally critical of the Campaign.  But host John Oakley informed me that the callers his producers were fielding were actually 50-50 on both sides.  Apparently, quite a few they couldn’t put on the air.  All Oakley’s notes told him was that their main thrust was “McVety is out of his mind”.  I don’t know what exactly they plan to say, explained Oakley.   I have some ideas.

To give McVety a break, there was one caller I need to comment on.  With the original “There’s probably no god…” Campaign we got continually taken to task for targeting specifically Christianity, which of course wasn’t the case.  But in order to make it very clear of our aims,  with this new Campaign we have Allah and Christ both on the main ad,  and several other deities dealt with on our website.  So it was very surprising to get a caller who reflexively shot us the same line about how we wouldn’t be so tough if we were targeting muslims.  It wasn’t clear if he realized we actually did have Allah on the ad, but when it was pointed out to him, his response was odd. He still had a problem. We weren’t discussing Allah enough in the Campaign.

But that’s of course the fault of the journalists and members of the public (like himself!) who overwhelmingly come at us from a Christian perspective and choose to make Christ the issue. It’s ironic that we keep hearing from Christians that   they’re not offended, but rather are worried that we’re offending muslims.  Yet the muslim community has been quiet, at least thus far, on this new Campaign. I think such remarks betray their own insecurity which they choose to externalize upon some other faith group rather than come out and admit it.

Just a few thoughts, as I need to vent.  It’s amazing how much attention this Campaign is getting, all of which serves to prove our aim, which is to spark this kind of debate.  Today McVety claimed that our Campaign would lead to no productive debates but only to hatred. He then launched a debate with Gretta on the existence and miracles of Jesus.

Please visit   www.extraordinary-claims.com to support the Campaign by donating and/or adding comments to posts.