Atheists are people too

The religious apologists in Canada are still beavering away, honing their sophistry to a fine art.

The issue this time concerns a decision by the Quebec Superior Court in favour of Loyola, an old Catholic school in Quebec that did not want to teach the ethics and religious curriculum handed down from the Quebec government’s Education Department, unless the school could put a Catholic spin on it, declaring that the government was acting in a “totalitarian” manner by insisting the school teach the program exactly as set down in the curriculum.

The background to this is that the province of Quebec has pioneered a program to teach children at an early age – it starts in kindergarten and goes mostly to the end of high school – about ethical considerations and the approaches to those matters taken by various religions. In short, it amounts to a comparative religion course.

The course covers the full spectrum of world religions and belief systems, with an emphasis on Christianity, Judaism and aboriginal spirituality. Critics have said it promotes a moral relativism, in which all belief systems are of equal value. In its pleadings before the court, Loyola argued that this relativism trivializes the religious experience promoted in all facets of the school’s teachings.

See here for full news story.

Several parents and religious groups in Quebec are up in arms over it because they do not want their children to be exposed to the “truths” of other religious viewpoints, since, as they would see it, other religious viewpoints have no truth to them.

In a secular society you have two choices in a public school system with respect to the equal treatment of religions; either you simply do not have anything in your curriculum about religion, leaving it entirely in the hands of the parents to expose their children to the subject, or you introduce religion in a non-judgmental way, which requires you to bring many religious outlooks to the table for discussion.

What you cannot do, and maintain secularity, is favour only one religion to the exclusion of the others.

In the year 1901 the Canadian census disclosed that 99% per cent of the population identified itself as religious and 98% of those claimed to be Christian. This is not the Canada of 2010; Christianity is declining and Islam is the fastest growing religion. Furthermore, nearly 23% of the population is non-religious and, in the younger demographic (18 – 34), it is about 35%.

Three columnists in the National Post have tackled this news story, all crowing about the rightness of the court’s decision. I will get to them, but it is interesting to consider the words of the judge.

“The obligation imposed on Loyola to teach the ethics and religious culture course in a lay fashion assumes a totalitarian character essentially equivalent to Galileo’s being ordered by the Inquisition to deny the Copernican universe.”

He also said:

“Canadian democratic society is based on principles recognizing the supremacy of God and the primacy of the law – both of which benefit from constitutional protection.”

One might wonder why somebody with God's supreme powers would require constitutional protection, but that is a quibble about an oxymoron. It is worth reflecting, however, that God never seemed to need that protection until 1982 when he was introduced for the first time into Canada’s constitution.

The judge’s reference to the Catholic persecution of Galileo is telling. In that instance, the church was trying to shut down a competing worldview. Here it is Loyola trying to minimize alternative worldviews. Yet it is the government he accuses of being totalitarian! Go figure.

Columnist Barbara Kay tells us that, “The case was initiated by Loyola, a private, Anglo, Catholic high school located in Montreal.”

What she doesn’t tell you is that the school receives money from the government – it is not a “private” school in the strict sense of that term.

Kay continues:

Religiously committed parents and institutions such as Loyola High School, founded in 1848, believe “divergence and dissonance” and le questionnement — that is to say, creating doubt about one’s own religious and cultural identity — is the last thing a very young child needs to experience, since such a pedagogical strategy obviously undermines the serene internalization of the particular religious identity he is receiving at home.

Absorption of a particular identity does not preclude learning about other religions and cultures, and students at religious institutions such as Loyola do that already. But ERC goes further, obliging religious institutions to treat many ethical approaches as morally equivalent. Loyola High School would be refused the right to teach that, say, deferred sexual gratification and fidelity to one’s mate is a preferable ethical choice to hedonism and early sexual gratification.

Ah, disturbing the “serene internalization of the particular religious identity he is receiving at home.” What an elegant way of saying the child is being propagandized in the home by totalitarian parents. That is exactly why schools should be teaching courses in comparative religions. After all, it is supposed to be an “education” system.

And while it is true that the absorption of a particular identity does not preclude learning about other religions, I cannot see how it would preclude Loyola, which, after all, bills itself as a “Catholic” school, from also having extra-curricular programs in the Catholic faith. That is done by Catholic high schools in Ontario which are required to take students of all faiths or no faiths in return for public money.

Here is what Loyola’s lawyer said:

“Faith is omnipresent in this institution,” Loyola’s lawyer, Jacques Darche, said following a news conference at the school yesterday. “Before football games, they pray. Before a press conference, they pray. It’s quite bizarre that in the one course that you would expect to be a part of a Catholic Jesuit school, the religion program, you’re not allowed to talk about God, you’re not allowed to pray.”

So the issue is that when they discuss world religions in the classroom they can’t pray?

Give me a break.

What really seems to bug Kay is that the curriculum gives equal attention to animism and Wicca, not to mention feminism, which has the audacity to claim 27 pages in workbook compared to the 12 allotted for Catholicism.

Shucks. That sounds like a problem. Not.

Here is what I think is the real problem for these religious apologists. It is the attempt by the Quebec government to alert students to the idea that you can be a moral and ethical person without espousing any religious belief.

In short, atheists are people too.

I liked the irony in Kay’s concluding paragraph, but I am disappointed at the gobbledy-gook from such a normally good writer.

This is an excellent decision and sends a clear, strong message that secular institutions should stay out of the business of instructing children in how to think about religion. That’s not to say schools shouldn’t teach the objective evolution of various religions or religious wars and so forth in their history courses. But scientifically acquired knowledge is one thing, the inculcation of belief another. In a secular state’s education system, evidence-based facts are welcome; in-your-faith brainwashing isn’t.

The program does not involve “how to think about religion”; it is aimed at thinking about religion(s). And how can you learn about religious wars unless you understand the differences in creeds that led to such bloodshed? How does eliciting other viewpoints from other belief systems become “brainwashing”? Brainwashing is presenting only one perspective. This is absolutely Orwellian language and Kay should be ashamed of herself for resorting to it.

Next we move on to Father Raymond de Sousa who writes

What happens to the credibility of teachers when they are forced to teach their students that their Catholic faith — presumably why they choose in teach in a Catholic school in the first place — is no more valid a path to salvation than witchcraft or atheism?

This is gross distortion of what is being asked of teachers, who were consulted before the program was formalized. What has salvation, a purely Christian conceit, got to do with witchcraft and atheism? And really, isn’t the issue that is bothering the good Father the matter of the credibility of the Catholic faith, not the teachers?

Pure rubbish, Raymond.

He quotes approvingly of this by Pope John Paul II:

“Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.”

Leaving aside the conclusion that calls for an example; i.e. “as history demonstrates, etc.”, I can think of few institutions that more exemplify the truth of the statement that, “ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power” than the history of the Catholic Church, starting with the Popes who preached the Crusades, through Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, and the Thirty Years War that devastated Germany in the 17th century. It was not for nothing that the Catholic Church was hammered by the Reformation and the French Revolution.

Finally we come to columnist Charles Lewis, who says:

It is the word “public” that is the trip wire. There is an assumption that “public” and “religious” are two separate things.

But public money does not mean secular money.

The origin of the money that ends up in the coffers of the government comes from all sorts of people, including religious people. That is because; as if this needs to be pointed out, that religious people pay taxes like everyone else. So when was it decided that those taxpayers are beholden to a superior group of non-religious taxpayers?

I might ask, when was it decided that the tax dollars of the non-religious could be spent proselytizing a particular faith? As a non-religious person, I have no objection to religious people maintaining religious schools on their own dime, but I do object to mine being used. I don’t mind my money being used for a curriculum of comparative religion, especially one that includes the idea of no religion.

He continues:

There will be an almost knee jerk assumption that the values transmitted by the state are always superior to those taught by those who hold religious values. But this is not an argument but rather a heavy-handed tenet of the state religion called secularism.

There is an assumption in society that only religious people can be intolerant and the state is always neutral. But that is beyond naïve. Secularism has become as much a theology as religious teaching. And in a fair society, there should be room for both, not just one.

Once again, Orwellian language.

Secularism is the antithesis of religion. It is the principle by which the instruments and institutions of the state perform their public duties without discrimination in favour of or against any particular religion. Parents and religious institutions are free in our society to impart religious values and teachings to their young people. Nobody is taking that away from them.

But the state has an obligation to provide an education suitable for the 21st century and I would say that the Quebec government has taken a commendable attempt at reforming the system to better reflect the demographic realities in that province and in the country.

The Quebec government has announced its intention to appeal the decision of the court.

Christians putting atheists in their place at the back of the bus

We have a society in which we are told that there is no state religion and that secular interests, when it comes to the public square, trump the religious.

And yet, and yet, the huffing and puffing this week over a couple of perceived atheist intrusions into the area of the separation of church and state brought out the conservative editorials in full force in defense of the supremacy of the Christian god.

First up was The National Post commenting on the New Brunswick flap over the elementary school prinicipal who cancelled the singing of the National Anthem as part of the morning ritual. He never did come clean on why this was done. He claimed privacy for two alleged families who wanted it stopped for reasons unknown.

That did not prevent the Post from speculating that atheists were the root of the problem, without any proof. After sounding off about patriotism and preventing the minority tail from wagging the majority dog, it had this advice:

It may be unfortunate that God still persists in the anthem as a historic holdover. But atheists cannot begin too soon in educating their children that they live in a historically monotheistic civilization, and that, for better or worse, we signify respect for tradition on public occasions as a matter of continuity with the past.

I wonder how this would have been received if it had been written like this:

But Jews, Muslims and Hindus cannot begin too soon in educating their children that they live in a historically Christian civilization, and that, for better or worse, we signify respect for tradition on public occasion as a matter of continuity with the past.

That is to say that Christians are running the show and we better get used to it.

Had they printed that there would have been weeks and weeks of pundits and editorials from one end of the country to the next, castigating the Post for being insensitive to Canada’s diversity and the religious sensibilities of non-Christians, even if it was right about the importance of respecting tradition. The Post would have backed down.

The point of this observation is demonstrate yet another instance in which it is taken for granted by the main stream media that atheists are second-class citizens when the sensitivities of the religious are weighed in the balance, and like the generation of feminists before them, they should just suck up the objectionable language and like the homosexuals of twenty years ago understand that remaining in the closet is still society’s preferred option.

By the way, I would be more impressed with the heritage argument if the words of the song hadn’t been rewritten more than half-a-dozen times. The current version is actually circa 1980, when it was blessed by an act of Parliament. Hardly a heritage year, if you discount the fact that the government of the day was being run by Saint Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada’s patron saint.

If it can amended to change with the times, as this site so readily shows, it can be amended again to get rid of this obnoxious Christian diety, and then it can be sung by everybody as lustily as possible, instead of having about a third of the participants remain silent – the 25% who are non-religious and deeply resent these words and the other 8% who are of non-Christian faith and feel that they are being disloyal to their faith if they sing the praises of the Christian god.

But of course if we did that sensible thing we would forgo the opportunity to be a good example to the rest of the student body, as in this suggestion of the Post:

And if you don't like it, you don't have to sing along; that might be the most important lesson of all. It's one that is crucial not only for children of atheists or religious minorities, but for the classmates who might see their example and discover a new dimension in that quality supposedly most prized by educators: diversity.

Gosh, what to do, what to do? Be patriotic and sing the National Anthem or shut up and teach fellow students about diversity? So many roads are open to atheists.

I just don’t think the thick-headed Christians understand (or truth be known, care) how unsettling it is to have to choke back on the Anthem when these words pop up.

Then we have The Calgary Herald rattling on about some atheists at the University of Alberta rolling back the references to God in the Convocation ceremonies. The Herald wags its finger at us and warns us about how ungrateful we atheists must be to do such a thing when we consider what our fates would be in more faith-dominated societies:

There are many countries where they would be very silly atheists, (sic) if they challenged observance of the dominant religion.

True enough, but we are not acting in those countries, we are acting in this one which claims not to impose religious observance of any particular faith on its citizens.

One could just as easily have written, “There are many Muslim countries where they would very silly Christians, if they challenged observance of Islam.”

Does that require Muslims in this country to go about and wish everybody Merry Christmas in this country? Of course not, that would be tantamount to imposing one religion on another. But it is ok to impose it on atheists, because, well, they are only second class citizens anyway.

Do these people understand the implications of what they are actually saying?

It goes on a historical road, drawing on the U.S. emphasis on individual liberty and trying to weave that with Christianity. You would think that the well known rejection of a religious creed by the American founding fathers was simply an accident, nor did the impact of the Inquisition or the French revolution have much to do with the fate of Christianity.

Canada has always shared proudly in the so-called Anglo-American tradition of personal liberty, that (sic) regards individuals as society's building blocks and joint owners of the state, rather than the other way around. This belief in personal liberty is peculiarly compatible with what Christians understand of God. For, this Sovereign is nevertheless a respecter of individuals, making His appeal to people one by one rather than by race or tribe, leaving them personal responsibility for accepting Him -- or not.

Well, Calgary, get this. Atheists accept that personal responsibility and reject him. So why keep shoving him literally down our throats? If I attended a Christian church I would expect to be treated to that and would have nothing to complain about. But when I attend a publicly funded educational institution, I don’t have to praise anybody’s deity, nor should I have to.

Islamic education, Saudi style

There is a story in the National Post about Saudi school textbooks still containing passages showing hatred towards the west and contempt for Christians, Jews and Infidels, along with homosexuals. Children are taught that murder is religiously justified in certain circumstances. Apparently, the U.S. government has been pressuring its friend and ally in the Middle East to tone it down.

The following is a passage, on page 52 (paperback edition) of British historian Charles Allen’s interesting book, God’s Terrorists, The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad:

In about 1744 a remarkable partnership was forged between Muhammad ibn Saud and Al-Wahhab (founder of Wahhabism). This was formulated in an oath-swearing ceremony between the two by which the former took upon himself the role and title of emir, or secular leader, and the latter became the imam, soon afterwards assuming the rather grander title of Sheikh ul-Islam. This alliance allowed the one to become a powerful local ruler and the other to transform the province of Nejd by stages into a dar ul-Islam, that much sought after domain of Faith wherein the true sharia prevailed.

In the 1930s, the Sauds became the effective rulers of all Arabia and the pact continues to the present day. Does the U.S. really think that an oath that has stood for two and a half centuries is going to be set aside in a year, just because America doesn’t care for Wahhabism?

One of the problems with the Saudi-Wahhabi version of Sunni doctrine is that the Saudis fund madrassas (Islamic religious schools) all over the globe, tens of thousands of them, and these materials are the root of the students’ understanding of Islam.

For further reading on the threat these madrassas pose to the west, see here and here.