The draft medical assistance in dying bill has overly restrictive criteria that will leave entire classes of people without access to an assisted death. Dying With Dignity Canada and the BC Civil Liberties Association, our allies in the fight for greater recognition of personal autonomy, have begun calling for the bill to be defeated.

While it’s easy to let the perfect become the enemy of the good, in this case good just isn’t good enough. No law is better than a flawed law.

The Supreme Court of Canada was clear: People who are suffering from a grievous and irremediable illness have the right to choose an assisted death. That decision does not have qualifications about a “reasonably foreseeable” death, nor does it restrict mature minors or people with mental illnesses from making that choice. It also doesn’t preclude making that decision through an advance directive.

If this bill passes in its current form, the people excluded by the Government’s assisted dying bill will be forced to once again turn to the courts to defend their rights. This means more time, more money and more suffering for those who’ve made their wishes abundantly clear.

On June 6 assisted dying becomes legal in Canada. The Government, however, is treating that date as an absolute deadline to push through its legislation. It has resorted to different procedural tricks to force the bill through - some of these tricks go farther than ones the previous government used to limit and silence debate over its more controversial legislation.

Over the past week this pressure has led to increasingly desperate antics by opposition Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister himself. This has delayed the bill's timeline and given us more time to make our case for Parliamentarians to reform - or outright reject - the flawed legislation.

Please write to your MPs and Senators one more time and ask them to stand up for choice and dignity.

Freedom of expression and the freedom to dissent are of vital importance to Humanists. This is why the BCHA has signed onto the new Voices-Voix Declaration.

The 2016 Declaration succeeds the previous declaration that decried the muzzling of government scientists, political audits of charities and general advocacy chill. With the election of a new government in October, the new Declaration calls for an overhaul of laws and regulations to foster a strong and independent civil society.

These changes are vital to ensuring that groups like ours are able to continue to challenge religious privilege and push for greater equality for all.

By Kelly C. Smith, Clemson University

NASA’s chief scientist recently announced that “…we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.” Such a discovery would clearly rank as one of the most important in human history and immediately open up a series of complex social and moral questions. One of the most profound concerns is about the moral status of extraterrestrial life forms. Since humanities scholars are only just now beginning to think critically about these kinds of post-contact questions, naïve positions are common.

Take Martian life: we don’t know if there is life on Mars, but if it exists, it’s almost certainly microbial and clinging to a precarious existence in subsurface aquifers. It may or may not represent an independent origin – life could have emerged first on Mars and been exported to Earth. But whatever its exact status, the prospect of life on Mars has tempted some scientists to venture out onto moral limbs. Of particular interest is a position I label “Mariomania.”

A number of years ago, I was fortunate enough to have a job that took me to Fort McMurray for a week to teach science workshops at local schools.

What struck me about the town was the incredible contrast between the wild beauty of the surrounding boreal forest and the massive tailings ponds of the oil sands only a short drive north.

So when I watched the scenes over this past week of tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes in the face of this fire, my heart sank.

This is why I'm proud to announce that the BCHA has launched a fundraising initiative to do our small part for the people of Fort McMurray and neighbouring communities. We've secured a pledge to match up to $5000 in donations to the Canadian Red Cross for relief efforts - all of which will be matched by the Government of Canada.

So please visit www.redcross.ca/bchumanist and give a little bit to help those who were forced to leave everything behind.

In freethought


Ian Bushfield, Executive Director

I am a single vibration, in a single note, in a magnificent symphony, and in prayer I consciously respond to and add my voice to the chorus of life. March 16, 2016 Post

Just finished Gretta Vosper’s With Or Without God. She concludes with a discussion about the meaning of prayer in a universe where there is no god, and examines what the urge to pray might mean when there is no-one out there to pray to?

Vosper references Freud’s theory that prayer is a carryover from infancy, when we are wholly dependent upon our parents – primarily our mothers – for sustenance and protection. Our parents are the archetypes of God, projected into the larger world beyond the circle of family.

Seems an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of prayer, but I think it would be a mistake to settle on that as the only reason we pray. For a narrow atheist the Freudian theory is convenient because it effectively removes God from the equation and demotes prayer to the realm of thumb-sucking. In winning an argument, however, I think such a facile dismissal of prayer as a meaningful urge diminishes the relevance of atheism itself.

The correct definition of ‘atheism’ is a disbelief in the existence of a god or gods. That definition is not at all incompatible with a belief in a spiritual realm. And when you think about it, many of humanity’s most moving and convincing experiences are rooted in the belief in something irrational, something spiritual.

My convoluted, existentialist logic leads me to the unavoidable conclusion that, not only is the spiritual realm likely, it’s essential (Who am I?) – for me the irrational is perfectly rational, it would seem, and I have friends and enemies who will confirm that is my honestly expressed state of being. Without a spiritual realm history, art, science, humanism in its deepest and most elevating manifestations, becomes meaningless if not impossible.

But there is no such thing as spirit disassociated from energy and matter as far as I am concerned. Spirit is incarnate, always and everywhere. And individual manifestations of spirit evaporate when the material context they inhabit – commonly known as our bodies – dies. I experience and express the Life Force for my twinkling; the urge of the Life Force in me is to explore, express and experience the consciousness of the universe awakening; the awe and wonder of that arousal only resonate in me when I recognize myself as part of a much larger evolution – an evolution that encompasses me in both space and time.

Prayer, then, is my fervent, conscious hallelujah shouted into that greater, collective consciousness. I hope that shout is in some sense ‘heard’; that my celebration of the universe that is, and yearning for a world that’s better, will vibrate sympathetically in the realm of spirit.

And if it doesn’t? That’s a topic for future consideration in Why do I pray? – Take 3

Upcoming Ideas: Who am I? / Nothing out of Nothing – so every thing’s always been / The four aspects of living spirit: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Spiritual / Morality, Ethics and Natural Rights / Ego: The necessary illusion / Just because or jest because / I think, therefore I spam / Who do I pray to (Take 3) / Killing gods is no laughing matter.

By John Krebs, University of Oxford

Ocean acidification is causing fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry of the world’s oceans yet only one in five Britons has even heard of ocean acidification, let alone believes it a cause for concern. Around 97% of climate scientists believe global warming is principally driven by human activity, yet only 16% of the public know the expert consensus to be this strong.

These are just two examples of common misconceptions among the UK public on the science of climate change. When surveyed, many people report feeling unsure and confused about various aspects of the discipline. Furthermore, they lack trust in scientists: in the wake of the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, nearly four in ten people felt that scientists were exaggerating concerns.

We had a successful AGM on Sunday.

We reviewed some of the highlights of the past year and Colin presented our financial position. Thanks to our generous supporters and members, we've managed to turn our 2014 deficit into a small surplus for 2015!

We said goodbye to Kirsten who is stepped down from the board. With Goldis, she will continue to host the book club though. We also welcomed Anna d'Archangelo and Dan Hanna to the board.

We're looking forward to working with our new board toward an even greater BCHA through 2016.

By David Dunning, University of Michigan

In the hours since I first sat down to write this piece, my laptop tells me the National Basketball Association has had to deny that it threatened to cancel its 2017 All-Star Game over a new anti-LGBT law in North Carolina – a story repeated by many news sources including the Associated Press. The authenticity of that viral video of a bear chasing a female snowboarder in Japan has been called into question. And, no, Ted Cruz is not married to his third cousin. It’s just one among an onslaught of half-truths and even pants-on-fire lies coming as we rev up for the 2016 American election season.

The longer I study human psychology, the more impressed I am with the rich tapestry of knowledge each of us owns. We each have a brainy weave of facts, figures, rules and stories that allows us to address an astonishing range of everyday challenges. Contemporary research celebrates just how vast, organized, interconnected and durable that knowledge base is.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that our brains overdo it. Not only do they store helpful and essential information, they are also receptive to false belief and misinformation.

By Joseph P. Laycock, Texas State University

Robert Eggers' period horror film “The Witch” has been one of the surprise hits of 2016. It’s even gained a second wind since its February 23 release: the first weekend of April it played on 666 screens around the country, raking in an additional $465,000 USD.

The tale of a Puritan family turning on each other as they attempt to root out the supernatural evil plaguing their farm, the film won Eggers the award for best director at Sundance – and even frightened horror master Stephen King.

But neither of these accolades has generated as much buzz as an endorsement from The Satanic Temple (TST), a satanic political movement that first appeared in 2013.

The BCHA and Canadian Secular Alliance have been granted leave to intervene at the BC Court of Appeal in the case of TWU vs Law Society of BC. This means that secular voices will be at the table, arguing for the limits of freedom of religion when it conflicts with the promotion of a more just and equal society.

This is a huge opportunity for our organization and the broader secular movement in Canada to set a strong precedent to define secularism in Canadian law.

The case will be heard from June 1-3, 2016 and the hearings will be open to the public. We'll share the specifics closer to the date.