atheist student faces discrimination

I'll always remember a rather ominous line from an old Rory Leishman column in the London Free Press and Church Bulletin where he pointed out that in Canada, one does NOT have freedom FROM religion.

I think this sort of stuff happens more frequently than we know.

But on the other hand, I'm rather astonished by how many people confide to me that they are, if not atheist, at least have no truck or trade with religion.

I have a rather unscientific gut feeling that there are a lot of quiet people out there fed up with religious excess, both here and in the U.S.

Taslima Nasreen, the self-exiled Bangladeshi writer, recently had to put up with attacks on her person from religious bigots in Hyderabad, India.

[url=http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=13544]Ci... India, Stand Up![/url]

Nasreen was attacked by bigotted MLAs. Parliamentarians. The response to the violence against the poet was useful reading.

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For a start, our citizenship—and all the rights and obligation that flow thereof—do not accrue to us from anything written in the Gita, the Quran, the Bible, the Granth Sahib, or any other scriptural text.

It accrues to us from the Constitution of the Republic of India as by law established.

Thus, if on the one hand, the Constitution furnishes us the freedom to practice and propagate what religious faith we will, it expressly stipulates that whatever hurts or grievances, real or imagined, we may have on this score must be settled through the due processes of law. On no account does the citizen have the right to usurp the prerogatives so stipulated where they concern the sphere of public conduct and controversy.

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I also like this:

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And we say to you and your fellow MLAs that if indeed your religious allegiance (if it truly be such, of which we have great doubt) precedes and supercedes your sworn allegiance to the Constitution of India, the least you can do to prove your bona fides is to resign your membership of the Assembly, and then take up the work of liquidating infidels and dissenters in right earnest, unshackled by your secular oath.

And should such an honourable course not be forthcoming from the MLAs in question (as we do not think it will be), we call upon the Election Commission to do the needful as per provisions of the People’s Representation Act.

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Indeed. If fundamentalists in Parliament think their religious allegiance supercedes the Canadian constitution, then they should resign their seats so they can be completely free in their views. And we could be free of them in our Parliament.

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We have consistently pleaded with them to learn the courage to assume with conviction their rights and privileges of equal citizenship that our secular democracy bestows upon us, and to join with the secular majority of the republic who hold the Constitution to be the one indubitably holy book for all citizens of India.

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I feel the same way about the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights. These are our shared, holy texts. Shared, that is, except by bigots who suffer from the "The Unacceptable Excesses of Irreligion". A great article and a good read on a Canadian issue from another part of the world.

I like where the author outlines the centuries-old Islamic traditions of love of learning:

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Do not then permit an Owaisi to hijack the educated traditions of Islam into the politics of fascism. Think how repeatedly the Quran and the Prophet emphasise the central value of learning; had that not been the case the Arabs may not have given us the marvels of Algebra and Geometry and wondrous architectures and canal systems built to impeccable scientific principles—traditions that need to be deepened and carried forward. Think also that had a Copernicus or a Galileo not questioned Church teachings with regard, for example, to the placement of the earth within the solar system, the modern world in which the Owaisis practice politics and speak freely may never have been born.

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Religious bigotry may go by different names in different parts of the world, but it still sounds the same. And humane secular humanists, along with those who keep the humane traditions alive within the different faiths, sound the same as well.

[ 16 August 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

[url=http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-69-97-795/life_society/religion_classroom/... difference between Chris Tait[/url] and what's happening to Nicole is that, according to the clip at that link, 75% of his fellow students stood by his right not to stand up for the Lord's Prayer.

The rotten little religious creeps at Nicole's school, on the other hand, are completely ostracizing her and persecuting her and making school a misery for her.

Also, what happened to Tait happened TWENTY YEARS AGO. It's amazing to me that these dumbfuck Christian Taliban freaks in the US pull the kind of crap NOW that is way worse than the kind of discrimination atheists suffered in Canada twenty years ago.

Ad additional link regarding Chris Tait quoted him as saying that in addition to relations coming to a permanent end and vandalism done to his family's property, there were more ominous threats. The bigots found a way to get to him.

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Chris Tait: We had vandalism done to our property, relations have terminated forever, and I have people that want to kill me. I don't think anyone should have to go through that again.

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[url=http://archives.cbc.ca/400d.asp?id=1-69-97-793]Court challenge over prayer in schools[/url]

[ 16 August 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

Can they apply for refugee status in Canada?

I would refrain from calling the Charter a holy text though. It is quite a flawed document.

I thought it trivialized the spiritual values embodied in the elegant set of equations over which we had done so much work. One hears, [i]ad nauseam,[/i] about how science fails to comprehend beauty, values, etc., and then you see a Physics prof participating in this sort of crap. I was so disappointed by his behavior.

It was like painting a scarf on the Mona Lisa because you're worried she might get a cold. Something beautiful was made a a little bit ugly. Anyone who has spent time studying Mathematics knows the aesthetic values and pleasure embodied in a well-derived proof - especially proofs of such importance in Physics as Maxwell's equations.

But, yea. I'm remembering through my 18 year old eyes. And I was a very uncompromising atheist in those days. Now I sing in a choir. Ha ha.

Are you sure of that? How many use Tipler's introductory text? I don't think I would feel comfortable using the text of someone who is so keen to blur the lines between science and religion. Call me suspicious.

[I presume you know that Tipler is the author of [i]The Physics of Christianity[/i]. Here is a review ...]

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(from Publishers' Weekly) The relationship between science and religion has long been a tenuous one. Some have worked to put these disciplines in "dialogue" with each other, while others have dismissed any possibility of a collegial relationship. To his credit, Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, attempts the former. He proposes that Christianity can be studied as a science, and its claims, if true, can be empirically proven. "I believe that we have to accept the implications of physical law, whatever these implications are. If they imply the existence of God, well then, God exists." After a cogent description of modern physics, Tipler embarks on a crusade to prove that God exists, that miracles are physically possible and the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus do not defy scientific laws. The author's arguments are somewhat intriguing—his knowledge of science seems exhaustive and this may attract other scientists to consider the importance of religion. Many of his theological insights, however, are problematic. Dubbing Christianity a "science" does not automatically make it so, and Tipler seems to dismiss the centuries-old importance of the apophatic tradition in Christianity, that is, approaching the mystical nature of the Divine by positing what cannot be said about God. Tipler's interest in integrating science and religion is noble, but his method is uneven. (May)

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[url=http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Christianity-Frank-J-Tipler/dp/0385514247]... J Tipler - The Physics of Christianity[/url]

Whoops. I just checked my old texts. It looks like those are two different Tiplers. [i]mea culpa.[/i]