Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie agrees to abide by Surpeme Court ruling banning prayers at city council

Shortly after being elected last Fall, the new Mayor of Mississauga, Bonnie Crombie, decided that the City Council would continue to say a prayer before each council meeting. She voted in favor of continuing the practice even though she heard the arguments against it and even though she knew that the Ontario Court of Appeal (in 1999) had ruled it illegal [Mississauga council debates removing Lord’s Prayer from meetings].

Crombie, who is Catholic, said she doesn’t have a problem with the recitation of the prayer. But, she does want to touch base with the municipality’s 11 councillors to get their opinions.

She has already heard lot of different ideas from her peers, such as leaving the practice the way it is to replacing it with a non-denominational blessing to even rotating a prayer from a different faith before each meeting.

"I don’t think there’s anything wrong with (reciting the prayer)," said Crombie. "But, I am asking each councillor about it and there is a diversity of opinion."

...

Larry Moran, who described himself as an atheist, is also a University of Toronto professor and an advisory fellow with the Centre for Inquiry Canada, an organization he said strongly supports the separation of religion and government.

He wrote a blog post condemning the practice in Mississauga earlier this year and Moran estimates about 30 per cent of Canadians aren’t religious. He strongly believes the Lord’s Prayer before council should come to an end.

"There is no reason to invoke any of the gods at a public meeting of any government body," said Moran. "It sends the wrong message to … citizens who don’t believe in those gods or who believe in other gods. Nobody has been able to tell me why religion has to be mixed in with government business."

Now Bonnie Crombie says she will obey the law—no mention of fairness or of consideration for non-Christians in the community. Oh well, at least she's not going to fight it and cost the city lots of money.

The Toronto Star reports that the mayor of Oshawa plans to ignore the Supreme Court decision. I bet he backs down after talking to the city lawyers [Oshawa mayor plans to keep Lord’s Prayer].

Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey stopped the practice of reciting the Lord's Prayer before council meetings earlier in the year and today Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie indicated her council will now do the same, after the Supreme Court decision. At the beginning of the year she supported keeping the Lord's Prayer in Mississauga council meetings.

"Today’s ruling sets a precedent and the City of Mississauga will abide by the Supreme Court’s ruling," Crombie said.

At the beginning of the year Crombie supported keeping the Lord's Prayer in Mississauga council meetings, after Councillor Carolyn Parrish had pushed to remove it from council meetings.

---

Canada bans prayers at city council meetings

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that prayers at the opening of city council meetings are not consistent with a secular society [Quebec town can’t have prayers at council meetings, top court rules].

The Supreme Court decision is at: Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (City). The decision appears to be unanimous (9:0) provided I'm reading it correctly.

The state’s duty of religious neutrality results from an evolving interpretation of freedom of conscience and religion. The evolution of Canadian society has given rise to a concept of this neutrality according to which the state must not interfere in religion and beliefs. The state must instead remain neutral in this regard, which means that it must neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non‑belief. The pursuit of the ideal of a free and democratic society requires the state to encourage everyone to participate freely in public life regardless of their beliefs. A neutral public space free from coercion, pressure and judgment on the part of public authorities in matters of spirituality is intended to protect every person’s freedom and dignity, and it helps preserve and promote the multicultural nature of Canadian society. 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. If the state adheres to a form of religious expression under the guise of cultural or historical reality or heritage, it breaches its duty of neutrality. The Tribunal was therefore correct in holding that the state’s duty of neutrality means that a state authority cannot make use of its powers to promote or impose a religious belief. Contrary to what the Court of Appeal suggested, the state’s duty to remain neutral on questions relating to religion cannot be reconciled with a benevolence that would allow it to adhere to a religious belief.

This seems so obvious to most people that it's a wonder why anyone ever thought that reciting prayers at city council meetings was justified.

Now, let's see how long it takes for other cities to stop the practice.

---

Hat Tip: Canadian Atheist

Conrad Black attacks the shabby, shallow world of the militant, atheist

Conrad Black, also known as Baron Black of Crossharbour, KSG, was stimulated by a conversation with Christian apologist, and physicist, John Lennox. Black decided to write a column for the National Post (Toronto, Canada): Conrad Black: The shabby, shallow world of the militant atheist.

Richard Dawkins tweeted ...

Conrad Black seems to be at large again. Spot the factual errors, illogicalities and failures to understand.

Good advice. I wonder how many can be packed into a brief diatribe?

Keep in mind that no matter how many strawmen are erected, the important issue is whether gods exist. If you are a Christian, and you are going to attack the "shabby, shallow world" of atheists then the very least you can do is present your strongest case for the existence of gods.

Check out Conrad's Black's evidence for the existence of gods. (Warning: you will have to ignore all the rhetoric about the benefits of religion because it isn't relevant. On the other hand, there's a certain enjoyable irony in reading about how Christians are more moral than atheists.)

---

Are gods a delusion?

John Lennox is a mathematician from Oxford (UK). He likes to attack the so-called "new atheists" and defend the idea that Christianity is rational. He is just finishing up a tour of North America. This video is a recording of a talk he gave at a church in the Toronto suburbs on March 14, 2015.

It's quite similar to the presentation he gave a few days later at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada). Jeffrey Shallit went to that talk (bless his heart) and reports on the major fallacies and distortions [John Lennox - Talk #1: "Do Science and God Mix?"]. As you watch the video you'll see that John Lennox is a very good speaker. He sounds very, very, convincing in the tradition of many other religious Oxford professors and even atheist ones like Richard Dawkins.

As you listen and watch, you gradually come to the realization that the lecture is all about Irish charm and humor. Most of his arguments don't make any sense as we know from listening to them many times over the past few decades. How many times have we heard the argument that so-and-so Nobel Laureates were Christians so science and religion must be compatible?

---

C0nc0rdance reads from Dobzhansky defending accommondationism

Here's how COncOrdance explains his latest YouTube video.

To celebrate Darwin Day, Feb 12th, 2015, I offer the words of Dobzhansky, who was a central figure in the modern evolutionary synthesis with his 1937 book, "Genetics and the Origin of Species". Dobzhansky was also a deeply religious man who believed that God had a hand in the process of evolution, a view I don't share, but try to understand.

Dobzhansky cites Teilhard de Chardin, who was a biologist, a theistic evolutionist, and a controversial figure who described evolution as cosmic attainment of perfection, a concept I also strongly disagree with.

This is an excerpt from the original work:
The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Mar., 1973), pp. 125-129. [Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution]

I'm not sure what purpose is served by reading from Dobzhansky's book where he praises Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Keep in mind that Teilhard's most famous book was reviewed by Peter Medawar who described it like this: "... the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself."

That's pretty much the consensus view of Teilhard these days. It's also pretty common to point out that science as a way of knowing conflicts with religion as a way of knowing in spite of what Dobzhansky said 46 years ago.

Here's the video ....

---

Here's how an atheist discusses the problem of evil

Sophisticated Christian: My God exists and He is omnipotent, kind, and loving. He chooses to allow evil because X, Y, and Z.

Atheist: If your god exists (he doesn't) and if he is omnipotent, kind, and loving (he isn't) then he MUST create a perfect world where there is no evil. I reject your arguments X, Y, and Z for the following reasons. (Blah, blah, blah.) Because MY version of YOUR imaginary god requires that he create a world where there is no evil, and because there is evil in the world, god doesn't exist.

Discuss.

---

Patrick Ross, and the end of a very long road.

My friend, Robert Day, (Canadian Cynic) was subjected to a vicious and protracted serial defamation by Patrick Ross. Wanna know what happened?

Read: Patrick Ross, and the end of a very long road..

---

Evidence for the existence of god(s)

I am always on the lookout for evidence that some sort of god actually exists. The reason I'm an atheist is because I've never seen any evidence that's the least bit convincing. I keep asking for evidence but nobody ever supplies any. Somebody suggested to Barry Arrington that there was no evidence for god(s) and that really set him off [Astonishingly Stupid Things Atheists Say].

He responded with a list of all the evidence for god(s). Here's the list. I don't find it very convincing but some of you may want to head off to the the nearest church after reading the list.

• The fine tuning of the universe.
• The moral sense.
• The fact that a natural universe cannot logically have a natural cause.
• The fact that there is something instead of nothing.
• The overwhelming odds against the Darwinian story being true (estimated at 10^-1018 by atheist Eugen Koonin).
• The irreducible complexity of biological systems.
• The vast amounts of complex computer-like code stored in DNA.
• The miracles that have been reported throughout history.
• My subjective self-awareness.
• The fact that we do not even have plausible speculations to account for the origin of life.

---

Barry Arrington blows it by assuming he knows the mind of an atheist

I think it's ridiculous for atheists to get dragged into the argument from evil. As soon as you start down that path you are conceding that you are willing to debate "sophisticated theology" and not whether god(s) actually exist. The atheist must then be prepared to read a massive amount of literature beginning with St. Augustine of Hippo through Thomas Aquinas and including the most famous "sophisticated" theologians of the 20th century like Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne. If you don't engage the arguments made by those people, and many others, then you are not being honest.

The "problem of evil" is not simple and atheists do not do themselves any favors by pretending that it is. That's exactly the criticism we level at theists who don't even try to understand nonbelievers.

Let's look at an example of a stupid argument used by a Christian. Barry Arrington thinks that atheists are "simpering cowards" [The New Atheists Are Simpering Cowards]. Why in the world would he think that?

Because he's using the argument of angst to promote the idea that atheist logic is flawed. What is the argument from angst? It's a favorite of naive Christians like Barry Arrington and it goes like this. Friedrich Nietzsche was a troubled man and part of his problem was that he couldn't cope with the moral freedom that came from abandoning god. It drove him crazy. (Syphilis may have helped, but he was certainly manic-depressive.)

Christians would have you believe that this is what should happen to all intelligent people who don't believe in any gods. Here's how Barry Arrington explains it ...

Nietzsche was wrong and tragic and, in the end, insane. But at least he was brave and honest. Brave enough to stare into the abyss and honest enough to report back what he saw there. He would be disgusted by the puerile, simpering cowardice that characterizes atheism in the 21st century.

Apparently, the people of Denmark are just not experiencing enough angst and that's because they are "simpering cowards." They have built a secular society that avoids facing up to the extremely troubling aspects of not believing in god(s). This pretty much applies to most of the people in my neighborhood as well. We seem to be getting along just fine without any gods to guide us but, according to Barry Arrington, we aren't suffering enough.

I feel like my ears are going to bleed at the bleating of the new atheists who write in these pages. They go on and on and on and on about how morality is rooted in empathy and the avoidance of suffering. Nietzsche would have spit his contempt on them, for they are espousing the “herd animal” Christian slave-morality he disdained and which, ironically, they claim to have risen above. How many times have the atheists insisted, “we are just as ‘good’ as you”? Why have they failed to learn from Nietzsche that “good” means nothing. Why do they insist that they conform to a standard that they also insist does not exist?

The answer to these questions is the same: They refuse to acknowledge the conclusions that are logically compelled by their premises. And why do they refuse? Because they are simpering cowards.

I can respect while disagreeing with a man like Nietzsche, a man who follows his premises where they lead, even if they lead to asking questions such as “Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?” I have nothing but contempt for smiley-faced, weak-kneed, milquetoast atheism that insists that God is dead and all is well because we are just as nice as you.

For the record, I do not insist that gods are dead. They never existed in the first place. Being good was an important value for all societies long before they invented the Christian god.

In addition to their ridiculous "problem of evil," it looks like Christians also have a "problem of good." They don't understand how you can be good without god. It's probably better if they keep believing in their gods because, otherwise, the streets would be full of ex-Christian mass murderers. Here's what Barry Arrington thinks ...

When Nietzsche urges us to go beyond good and evil, he is urging us to recognize the implications of God’s death for morality. God is the only possible source of transcendent objective moral norms. If God does not exist then neither do transcendent objective moral norms. And if transcendent objective moral norms do not exist, neither do “good” and “evil” in the traditional senses of those words. There is only a perpetual battle of all against all, and “good” is a synonym for prevailing in that battle, and “evil” is a synonym for losing.

---

Stephen Fry blows it by assuming he knows the mind of god

This video is making the rounds and a lot of atheists are wetting their pants over Stephen Fry's response to the question of what he would would say to "he, she, or it" if he encountered god when he dies.

My questions would be "Who are you? Which groups of humans (if any) got it right when making up a religion? Tell me about yourself and why you didn't reveal yourself to me."

That's not what Stephen Fry would do. He makes the assumption that he knows the mind of god and attacks the god for not being nice to humans. In other words, he accepts the problem of evil and assumes that the god he is facing gives a damn about some obscure species on a minor planet in one of billions of galaxies. Later on Stephen Fry concedes that he could be talking to the Greek gods or some other gods but by then it's too late.

The god he is addressing may or may not have done any of the things in the Bible. If he isn't that god then he will know that Stephen Fry is attacking a strawman. If he is the god of the Bible then presumably he/she/it had his/her/its reasons for doing apparently evil things and Stephen Fry is about to get educated about the real mind of god. That may turn out badly for Stephen Fry.

If you ever run into any real gods I'd advise you not to mess with them.


Many of my atheist friends think that Fry's response is fantastic because he really shocks the interviewer, Gay Byrne [Stephen Fry on God]. That's naive. Most intelligent Christians have developed some very good rationalizations concerning the problem of evil. They've heard it all before and they know how to respond. One of the classic responses is that cannot they know the mind of god. But Stephen Fry knows the mind of god and this is puzzling because Fry is an atheist.

---

If you take away religion, you can't hire enough police

Here's a Harvard Professor, Clayton Christensen, telling us with a straight face that democracy in the USA requires religion because in the absence of religion people won't choose to obey laws. He ends with, "If you take away religion, you can't hire enough police."

It makes me wonder how much critical thinking goes on in his classes at Harvard Business School. Do Harvard students let him get away with this crap?

---

Creationists trash Denmark

Denmark present a real problem for many Christians. It appears to be a successful secular society that has all but abandoned extreme forms of religion. These Christians can't figure out how a country could be moral if it's full of nonbelievers.

Vincent Joseph Torley (vjtorley) has found the answer [Is something rotten in the state of Denmark?]. He's responding to claims by Jerry Coyne that Denmark is a successful country.

Perhaps Coyne might be interested to read an eye-opening article by Carol Brown over at American Thinker on what is happening in Denmark. Ms. Brown paints a terrifying portrait of a society which is falling apart under the influence of religiously motivated violence. Crime in Denmark has exploded, and street gangs "have taken over large parts of Danish towns and cities. There are numerous "no go" zones where even the police are afraid to venture. Is this Coyne’s idea of a successful secular society?

Some morals to be drawn from Brown’s article:

1. Not all forms of religion are good; some are toxic.

2. Nature abhors a vacuum. Secularism is powerless to drive out toxic forms of religion.

3. The only proven way to drive out toxic forms of religion, and keep them out, is with wholesome forms of religion.

I was in Denmark for seven days and I never saw any sign of this sort of lawlessness or even heard about it. But maybe I was just in the wrong places? Or maybe it's not true? (Heavens!)

---

The ten commandments of faitheism

An accommodationist is an atheist who generally believes that religion and science are compatible but certainly believes that other atheists should go easy on those who believe in gods. Jerry Coyne doesn't like some words (e.g. bl*g, d*g)) so he invented another word for accommodationists—he calls them "faithiests." I'm going to stick with accommodationist.

Alex Chituc posts at "Nonprophet Status" on the patheos website ("Hosting the Conversation on Faith"). He defends the accommodationist position and tries to lay out their position [Our 10 Commandments of Faitheism].

Here's how he explains it ...

In most debates, especially arguments over the internet, each side brings along a list of premises, premises that originally gave rise to their conclusions and often go unaddressed. Unless a counter argument addresses any of these often unstated premises, all it accomplishes is bringing in a whole new set of premises to be addressed, and nobody gets anywhere.

Given a recent list I saw floating around twitter titled "10 commandments of faitheism," which is nothing but a list of things nobody associated with the term "faitheist" actually believes, I thought it would be a good exercise to try to list all of premises that we at NPS, at least, bring to the table. I should state upfront that, obviously, only Chris Stedman can speak for Chris Stedman, but since most people lump us at NPS in with him anyway and “faitheist” is the most convenient term on hand right now, I decided to use it.

This is a laudable objective. I fully support the concept.

Let's see how he interprets his opponents (I am one) and let's see whether his accomodationist premises stand up to close scrutiny. Here's Alex Chitic's "10 Premises of Faitheism."

The Non-Conference Is Coming

Website Countdown Clock

---

The atheist barmaid's error

I'm usually a big fan of Jesus and Mo but today's cartoon is a bit disappointing. It is "resurrected" from 2009 [nerve2] and it is prompted by an excellent article on militant atheists written by Nick Cohen [The phantom menace of militant atheism]. Even Jerry Coyne likes it [A wonderful attack on the "militant fundamentalist atheism" trope].

The issue here is whether an atheist needs to study all religions in order to be an atheist. The barmaid seems to concede that point since she advances arguments that require knowledge of specific religions. Both of her examples require the provisional acceptance of gods because they refer to particular properties of those gods (i.e. whether they can have sons and prophets).

A Christian, for example, would happily engage the barmaid in a debate about the the divinity of Jesus as long as they begin with the assumption that gods exist. In order to engage seriously in that debate, the barmaid would have to read a ton of Christian apologetic literature. In other words, she would have to understand "sophisticated" religion. She would not be defending atheism even if she won the debate since there are billions of religious people who don't believe in the divinity of Jesus.

But atheists, by definition, don't believe in gods. The only arguments that are relevant are whether gods exist. Those arguments are not specific to any particular religion and they certainly aren't going to be found in the Bible or the Qur'an. I do not accept the premise that gods exist so I'm not the least bit interested in studying the religious beliefs of anyone who begins with the "fact" that gods exist. I'm about as interested in debating whether any of the gods had children as I am in debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.¹

The atheist barmaid made a mistake. She should have said "Let's see - I understand that all religions begin with the idea that gods exist. What evidence do you have that this is true?"

---

Or, for that matter, the problem of evil. If there are no gods then there's no problem. Debating the "problem" of evil or whether Jesus is the son of gods is just like debating the cut of the Emperor's new clothes [On the Existence of God and the Courtier's Reply].

Atheists really do believe in god!!!

Last year at this time I was in Copenhagean, Denmark. This is a country full of people who don't believe in god(s). At least they think they don't believe in gods. Turns out they are probably wrong according to Casey Luskin [Evolutionary Studies Suggest that Atheists, Whatever They Say to the Contrary, Really Do Believe in God].

Luskin thinks that evolution is true after all, especially when it supports his prejudices beliefs. He quotes some really silly articles that make a really silly claim; namely, that it's impossible for all those Danes to have abandoned belief in gods because lack of belief in gods is psychologically impossible. We have evolved to believe in Loki and Freyr and there's no escaping our evolutionary destiny.

Just when you think that the IDiots can't get any stupider, they come up with something like this.

---

God's not dead

God's not dead is a movie that's gaining some notoriety in the USA. Here's a synopsis ...

Present-day college freshman and devout Christian, Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper), finds his faith challenged on his first day of Philosophy class by the dogmatic and argumentative Professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo). Radisson assigns him a daunting task: if Josh will not admit that "God Is Dead," he must prove God's existence by presenting well-researched, intellectual arguments and evidence over the course of the semester, and engage Radisson in a head-to-head debate in front of the class. GOD'S NOT DEAD weaves together multiple stories of faith, doubt and disbelief, culminating in a dramatic call to action.

I haven't seen the movie (yet) but I'm guessing that the 18 year-old Christian student wins the debate against his "dogmatic" professor.

This sort of thing happens quite a bit in the movies. It's pretty rare to find a university professor portrayed as a good person, or even a smart person who knows their stuff. If you are one of those university students who watch the movie and are convinced that you can win a debate with a professor on the subject "Do gods exist?" then please contact me and we'll set up a time and place for you to make the attempt. I'm pretty sure I can find a smart professor at most major universities.

---

Religion & Prayer in Canadian Public Spaces: Exploring Issues of Secularism, Neutrality and Equality

The Canadian Secular Alliance is hosting a talk by Lauren Forbes tomorrow evening in rm 4171 of the Medical Sciences Building at the University of Toronto. (My building, one floor below my office.) Contact me if you want to meet up before the talk.

It's important to note that Ms. Forbes is going to DEFEND things like prayer at city council meetings. Come out and hear the other side of the issue. She is a Master's student at the University of Ottawa.

Read her article: To Pray or Not to Pray, is that the Question?: How the Increasing Desire for State Neutrality Affects Prayer Before Council Meetings in Canada. Here's the abstract ...

Historically, in western liberal democratic states, Christian prayers have often been recited at the opening of various public institutions' meetings. However, the recitation of such prayers is now being questioned on the grounds of being too particular in promoting specific religious denominations; of promoting a particular religion over another; and even of promoting religion in states where no longer everyone subscribes to one. Many such disputes spring from the growing desire for equality and neutrality in increasingly diverse and secular societies. This paper focuses on the recent legal disputes in Canada, concerning the recitation of prayers before the commencement of primarily council meetings. It examines Canadian tenets of neutrality and consequently secularism, questioning what each looks like (or could look like) and whether they require public spaces to be religion-free in order to hold true, or whether they can be inclusive to both religious and worldviews of non-belief in these public spaces (i. e. council meetings in this context). In this paper the relevant legal cases are analyzed and current solutions to the disputes are discussed. Concerns are raised and finally, solutions that may be more neutral and that equally do justice to both freedom of religion and freedom of conscience are considered.

---

Prayer at Mississauga City Council

I am reliably informed that meetings of the Mississauga City Council¹ still begin with a prayer. I'm not sure why city councilors feel the need for extra divine guidance since Mayor Hazel McCallion² is already present in the room.

Like most places in Canada, Mississauga is a diverse community with a substantial number of nonbelievers and a substantial number of non-Christians. Prayer has no place in a secular society and beginning a City Council meeting with prayer sends out all the wrong messages. Imagine that you are a nonbeliever waiting to petition City Council over some grievance and you have to watch your council member praying before you can speak.

Jesus and Mo Wednesday

---